Playing with knives

Ok, so maybe we weren't actually playing with knives, but for a group assignment, we had to create a container for sharps, or dull knife blades. The challenge was to create something practical, safe, and to work as team to accomplish these objectives.

My team, Diana, Ananya, and Kavi had these grand ideas originally about using a combination of heat and pressure to crush and melt discarded blades into sheet metal, completely recycling the pieces. But when it came time to actually creating the product, we realized we would have to scale down our approach to come up with a more feasible idea. We decided on something that would double as a container, and as a tool for safely breaking off the sharps from the Olfa knives.

We used an old can as the container for 2 reasons: it was an easily acquired and cheap item, and it was made of metal so it could be recycled along with the blades. We discarded the lid to the can, and replaced it with a much stronger piece of metal with a small slit in one end so that we could slide the tip of the knife in and brace the blade against the can and break off the sharp part. Ananya came up with the idea to also attach a small piece of metal to the side of the can to prevent the blades from falling out of the container, should we accidentally drop the can.

The end result was a working container that we could successfully use to break off the blade, and safely hold the sharps. However, one of the major drawbacks of our design was the fact that when it filled up with sharps, we would have to recycle the whole thing and make a new one. It was a relatively easy assembly, though. It might be practical with a little perfecting.

I consider myself as someone who works better alone, but I found that working in a group on this project was really beneficial, because the other members came up with lots of ideas I never considered. The experience was definitely positive.