The container fits nine quart containers…
It also fits twelve pint containers.
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After putting the finishing touches on our model by adding the color and graphics we went out to the Solly Bros.
Farm who are soon to be part of The Food Trust in Philadelphia. These are some photos of the process of our box.
The first step is to pick the produce and put it in the container.
The next step is to pack and transport. The boxes latch together, and if there is a larger size of produce,
the lid adds extra space. The lid is also able to be linked to.
The last step is to direct display the produce in the containers at the farmstand. This is a photo of our container at the
Farm to City stand for Rineer Family Farms. It was where we first began noticing the farmers using the baskets and
quart/pint containers as the elevation for the bins that they transfer their produce in from the wax boxes. We thought
to show them how our container works.
These are a couple of ideas we have been thinking of for our produce container
side panels that were inspired by the vintage produce crates.
We have been starting to think a bit about graphics that would be shown on the side of the box.
We have been researching graphics of the produce industry and have noticed that a lot of boxes
have the vintage style graphic on the sides. On the wax boxes even today there seems to be a sort
of old fashioned font and picture of fruit on the side. We are thinking we will explore this style
and put some sort of design on our box.
As we are building our functioning model, we have been researching structural
properties of traditional crates and have come across some very interesting ones.
We have been thinking a lot about adding more structural formations like those
of the traditional milk crate.
We began cutting our next model on the CNC machine.
This is the start of the front panels that have the locking mechanism.
Our next task is to cut the handles and set them into the MDF.
The sides look like this…
These are the panels that we cut a space out
in so that we could reduce the weight of the MDF.
Ideally, our model would be molded plastic like the milk crate,
but for our first model it was more possible to make a usable
model out of 1/2″ MDF, 1/4″ pegboard, and 1/4″ corrugated plastic.
These are the corrugated plastic cutouts that fit into the side panels.
We decided to cut holes in them for breathability. Before we had circle
cutouts, but we changed the model so that produce would be less
likely to fall out of them.
Back Front
This is the orthographic plan of our final concept. The idea is that the metal bar that locks the containers
together would also act as a display angle bar.
These are some sketches of our process in determining how we want our container to work.
We have decided on a wire connection that functions as both a handle, a latch and a propping
mechanism.
These are some of the models we worked on to figure out how we wanted our containers to connect to each other.
Here are some of our second stage of sketches. We decided to make our container shorter and less box-sized for a more user friendly display. The containers would be able to connect to each other and would be able to be tilted at an angle for better viewing. Also, we thought it would stay more connected with the original farming crate if our design had a wood grain appearance.