Design Disassembly

The project we had was to disassemble an everyday appliance. From this we then had to identify the materials and come up with some improvements. The appliance we were given was an iron.

We first started by timing to see how fast we could disassemble the iron. It took really long as we had to find special screwdrivers to unscrew the main housings. Once that was done we then proceeded to disassemble the internal components. This was very difficult as most of the plastic parts were ultra-sonic welded. We managed to pry and break our way through the internal components. 

We realised that the iron had many more parts than we originally thought, and hence it was taking us longer than expected. Eventually we got there, and asked to cut the heat plate in half so that we could see all the internal channels. 

From this we gathered that the iron was made in many parts with numerous materials. Our suggestion was to limit the amounts of material used by making some if the similar parts in the same material (i.e. having all the housings as a uniform polypropylene). This allows it to be recycled better as less needs to be done to separate the parts by their material properties.

We also suggested that it could be easier to disassemble, but upon further thinking the iron is probably an appliance that doesn't need users to access it's internals, as it can be dangerous.

 As designers, if we can eliminate the types of materials used and make it easier for consumers to recycle, we are helping to reduce that going into land-fill as well as increasing people's awareness of the need to recycle what we can.