Design Challenge
To design an appliance which caters to the entire process of laundry such as washing drying and folding of clothes with minimum human interaction.
mood board
Sketches
Mock up of the internal drum and folding mechanism
Two mock ups were made for the internal drum.
one was made at quarter scale to experiment with feasibility of the design and its locking mechanisms. While the other was made at half scale to show how the clothes would fold within the drum its self
1/8 Scale Prototype
the Loading process
The drum of the washer has a capacity of around 20 pieces of clothing with the capacity to fold up to 12 clothes per wash, which are loaded on to the hangers.
The washer is equipped with two types of hangers, an inline hanger for all your tops and shirts while the other being with a live hinge for pants and sleeveless tops.
For items such as towel, bed sheets and lingerie would not be hung on the hangers as they would be be able to be folded, but simply thrown in to the washer and would be found under the folded clothes in the collection compartment at the end of the wash cycle.
control panel
Once you are done loading the clothes the control panel will ask for the type of items loaded and give you options for the type of wash you would prefer and prompt you with optimum temperatures and wash cycles based on the items loaded so you have more control on the wash cycle and temperatures that the clothes are exposed to.
know exactly how long your laundry will be done in
Once the cycle begins, the countdown for each cycle to end is projected on the glass panel in front so the the user knows exactly how long will it take for the cycle to be completed and when the clothes will be ready for collection.
folded and ready for collection
Once the clothes have been washed and dried they are folded and kept ready for collection in the drawer below.
working of the machine
Animation credit - Prathamesh Sawant, MFA Animation.
The door of the machine opens upwards allowing easy loading and the ability to hang the clothes in the drum.
When the door closes the ball bearings around the drum are moved over the door with the help of hydrolic rods to seal the door shut.
Once the wash cycle begins, the hangers move freely within the channels in the drum so as to avoid stretching or pulling of clothes. At the end of the wash and dry cycle the hangers move towards the back of the drum and into the folding bay, which is located within the door itself. At this point the door opens downwards to allow the clothes hanging on the hanger to open up to their full length. There are folding panels placed on three side of the door to the octagonal drum which allow the clothes to be folded perfectly each time. Once the clothes are folded the hanger clips open up to let the folded clothes slide down the door in the the collection drawer at the bottom.
