Brief: To create a comfortable yet secure cube box for the ball
Understanding the NET of the cube:
NET: the 2D shape that when folded and secured together becomes a 3D shape.
We initially sketched out some initial ideas of a cube's net in order to work out the number of tabs and where to place them...
My first few sketches had far too many tabs as it makes far more environmental sense to have only one glued tab as well as making it easily collapsable. The final sketch is in the bottom left hand corner - it has one glued tab (closest to the bottom of the page) and to rounded edged tabs to fold into the top and corner (far left and far right tabs) and four extra squared edged tabs to secure the rounded tabs in place.
In order to start drawing out the net we needed to find out the dimensions of the ball. We found that the ball's circumference was 160mm so to work out the diameter we needed to do the calculation of
circumference divided by pie =
160mm divided by 3.1416 = 51mm (rounded to the nearest decimal place. So for the dimensions of our box we will need to increase that width slightly to allow room for the ball to fit into the box.
First Attempt:
For my first attempt I widened the box width to 56mm and added some thin tabs with quite obtuse angles. The box fitted well around but when I tried to close the bottom and top sides in they immediately popped out. To improve this I will need to decrease the angle of the tabs and make them wider to keep the tabs secured in place.. This would not secure the ball inside and so was unsuccessful. It was also too big and allowed the ball to rattle around - this is because, although I only added 5mm to the width of the ball this increased the surface area by a big amount overall - so I will be adjusting that with my next attempt.
Second Attempt:
For my second attempt I decreased the width to 54mm and increased the tabs to 20mm for the security tabs and 15mm for the rounded top and bottom tabs. I have also made those tabs more acute to have a tighter space for the rounded tabs to be held by. This one worked well; the box stayed shut no matter how much you shake it. However, it is still too big for the size of the ball so I will be doing one more attempt making the box smaller.
Third Attempt:
For my third and final attempt at the cube activity I decreased the width to 52mm which works much better and would be a successful piece of packaging for a product in the market. It would still be a little bit smaller but I am happy with this as my final result.
Extra Net Experimentation:
For this extra net experimentation I decided to make a box for a golfball with cut out circles to allow the golf ball to be exposed outside the box. I made the box smaller than the ball but the holes in the side allow it to fit inside while looking more interesting. It is a bit too big but I think for a first attempt I think it is a good result.
