Sam Feller’s latest at-home invention might have sugary origins, but it also stands as a case study about using the latest tools — and a bit of creativity — to make solutions to simple problems.
We’re living in a golden age of Oreo innovation — Kraft Foods has been hard at work cramming more cream into their cookies while a Ph.D. has developed a machine to scrape the high fructose corn syrup stuff off. Still, despite being a $2 billion dollars a year product, food scientists have not yet figured out how to dunk these sweet cookie sandwiches in a glass when the milk gets low. Some think a new utensil is the answer, but self-proclaimed “Awkward Engineer” Sam Feller thinks that’s a hack solution.
Instead, he offers his own fix: a custom chalice that could stylishly serve Snoop Lion if he had a case of the munchies, but also maximizes milk displacement for the engineering-minded. The cup has a wide mouth and an Oreo-sized pit that makes dunking easy no matter how much milk is left…
The cookie dunker started with a sketch, became a CAD model, and ended up as a series of progressively nicer 3-D printouts. Rough prints created on Feller’s kitchen table helped him refine the general shape and plastic thickness and a $700 SLA print became the star of his Kickstarter video…
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