Tetra is a modular wall pocket unit that can be nested with multiples of itself to form beautiful 3D wall patterns.

Each unit was designed as one flat piece with three living hinges to limit warping of the front panels and simplify mold machining.

While simple to machine, the design called for extensive testing with gate and runner placements. For the living hinges to work probably, the plastic needs to flow across all three hinges. This was tricky to obtain as the hinges are not parallel to one another in the design.

I employed Solidworks Plastics plugin extensively to simulate how different gate size, length, and placement can contribute to changing the flow of plastic. Additionally, from the plastic simulation tool, I also learned that the part needed 2 gates to fill, given the max injection pressure limit of the machine we had at the Product Realization Lab.

Materials: Polypropylene, aluminum 

Processes: Injection molding, CNC milling 

ME 325 | Making Multiples: Scaled Manufacturing Tooling