Vanity

Vanity is a product I manufactured in Stanford University's Design and Manufacturing course. It's a vanity mirror that can either be held upright or sit on a flat surface.

Brainstorming

I had originally intended for this product to look like a conventional hand-held mirror. It would have had an elliptical face and an ergonomic handle with a hinge in between the two that would allow it to sit on a flat surface.

The Issues

There were two main issues with the design shown above. The first issue was that the organic shapes I wanted to create would be very difficult to create using most types of machines. Therefore, my project would be almost entirely hand-crafted, which reduces the precision of the design and the speed of manufacturing. The second, much larger issue was that it is impossible to have something rest on a flat surface with a single axel of rotation located on that surface. Therefore, I would have been forced to come up with a much more complicated hinge design in order to make this design functional.

The Solution

Instead of trying to redesign the hinge and make a hand-crafted object, I was encouraged by Teaching Assistant Kathy Spriggs to change my mirror design from the organic shapes drawn above to the rectangular shapes seen in the final product.

The Process

This product on an end mill.

After cutting down blocks of aluminum to the correct sizes, each block was shaped to the correct geometries on the end mill.

After each part was made, they were sanded down until the mill marks were no longer visible.

The Final Product and Assembly

The final product consisted of six manufactured parts: four frame pieces, one back plate, and one handle/prop piece.

There were also 12 purchased parts of this product: eight 5/16 inch flat head screws, one 3 inch shoulder screw, two belleville washers, and one 5x5 inch mirrored glass.

The 45º angles and step geometry of the frame pieces allow the frame, back plate, and mirror to sit together well and be held together by the flat head screws.

The handle/prop piece and the bottom frame piece were held together by a shoulder screw. The belleville washers were added to give the joint some friction, which would keep the mirror from falling down while it's propped.

All together, vanity looks like this! The face is a 6x6 inch square and the handle is four inches long and about 3 inches wide. Each frame piece is one inch wide with one 1/2 inch and two 1/4 inch steps. The protrusion connecting one frame piece to the handle is about two inches wide. The back plate is a 5.5x5.5 inch square.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge Professor David Beach, Professor Craig Milroy, Professor Marlo Kohn, Teaching Assistant Kathy Spriggs, and Teaching Assistant Kevin Mori for teaching me so much and being so supportive throughout this process.