{"id":7996,"date":"2017-06-15T07:07:43","date_gmt":"2017-06-15T14:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/?p=7996"},"modified":"2017-06-15T07:07:43","modified_gmt":"2017-06-15T14:07:43","slug":"liquid-hardware-bottles-magnetic-twist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/liquid-hardware-bottles-magnetic-twist\/","title":{"rendered":"Liquid Hardware Makes Bottles and Mugs with a Magnetic Twist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Q: <\/strong>What do you get when you combine an entrepreneurial spirit, a medical need for steady hydration, and frustration with water-bottle lids that get lost?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A: <\/strong>An all-new approach to go-cups from Liquid Hardware<\/a>. Company founder Steve Kitto uses Fusion 360 to make insulated and non-insulated BPA-free bottles and mugs that include innovative magnetic lids that are internationally patented.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Making of a Product Designer<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Kitto came to product design through roundabout means. Due to a kidney condition called PKD, he is required to drink lots of water. One day a few years ago, as he was drinking from a traditional traveling mug in his pickup, the lid fell to the floorboard and ended up under one of the pedals. That motivated him to research how to make a magnetic lid, and inspired him to focus on designing bottles and mugs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Funding, Building, and Evolving a Product Business<\/strong><\/h2>\n

When Kitto\u2019s father passed away in 2010, he left him a small inheritance that was enough to give\u00a0him a start in the manufacturing business. In subsequent years, he ran two successful Kickstarter campaigns, which brought in more money while allowing him to validate his products in the marketplace.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the design side, Kitto continued to develop prototypes and evolve his working approach. His early efforts were frustrating. \u201cI ended up hiring a broker to design my first bottle, and it didn\u2019t go so well,\u201d he says. \u201cThere was just such a breakdown between design and the actual manufacturer.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After the second Kickstarter, he attracted a better manufacturer in southern China. The situation was better, he says, because \u201cI had more control.\u201d Still, he wasn\u2019t using CAD software at that time, and he describes the design process as \u201creally time-consuming and frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The product was more successful, and he ended up using that manufacturer across two generations of bottles, yet he still ran into issues. In particular, that manufacturer was really good at plastic and silicone, but didn\u2019t do any metalwork in-house. As Kitto puts it, \u201cIt was basically a reeducation every single time\u201d they farmed out metalwork.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Finally,\u00a0he traveled back to China and found the perfect manufacturing partner\u2014a family-owned facility near Shanghai, in a town that makes about 90% of the world\u2019s stainless steel water bottles. That manufacturer, Kitto says, \u201cnailed it right away.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

Prototyping with Fusion 360<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It was around the same time, he adds, that \u201cI got latched onto Autodesk.\u201d He worked with Autodesk staff members to improve his designs and rebuild the basic model for his product. \u201cI was really afraid to go back and start from scratch,\u201d he says\u2014but Autodesk helped him around that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From there, he brought in his own designer to work with him on the fine details. The designer initially modeled things in SolidWorks, but, as Kitto points out, \u201cSolidWorks is so cumbersome.\u201d His designer would go through \u201cthese incredible, painful processes . . . just an incredible amount of steps to get it to do what it needed to do.\u201d Today, the company uses Fusion 360 for cross-section analysis and 3D printing of prototypes for rapid design iterations, and for working with their manufacturer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Their entire bottle designs are now in CAD, but it\u2019s the lids that are the real focus. As Kitto explains, \u201cThe lids had a bunch of really intricate tolerances, and everything had to snap properly.\u201d It\u2019s tricky because each lid must accommodate a rare earth magnet, silicone covers and seals, and a two-part plastic lid with threading. The designs must balance enough surface friction from the silicone so the lid won\u2019t spin against enough pull from the magnet to hold the lid in place.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What\u2019s Next for Liquid Hardware?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Response to the bottles has been strongly positive. The embedded magnet keeps the lid from rolling away\u2014the whole point of the design\u2014but users have also discovered that its pull is strong enough that they can also use the magnet to stick a full water bottle to a piece of gym equipment or a metal surface on a vehicle, which makes it even handier.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kitto continues to expand on his designs, adding 32- and 40-ounce bottles with wide-mouth lids and experimenting with ideas for other products as well. All of this work is accelerated by the 3D printing enabled by Fusion 360.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cCAD is really the key,\u201d Kitto says. \u201cUnless you can touch the thing, and tweak it to get it right, you\u2019re going to waste a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Never lose your water bottle lid with Liquid Hardware’s patented magnetic lid technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":894,"featured_media":8020,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-7996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fusion","dhig-theme--light"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLiquid Hardware Makes Bottles and Mugs with a Magnetic Twist - Fusion Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Never lose your water bottle lid with Liquid Hardware's patented magnetic lid technology.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/liquid-hardware-bottles-magnetic-twist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Liquid Hardware Makes Bottles and Mugs with a Magnetic Twist - 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