Sarah England
Product Design and Technology
Final year project
Making In-Tent Cooking Safer for Family Campers
A safe camping stove for in-tent cooking
Using a camping stove inside a tent presents the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning and a fire hazard. 97% of 118 campers surveyed were aware of these risks, despite this 20% still admitted to cooking inside a tent mainly due to inclement weather. This product provides a safer option to cook a meal for four while camping, either inside or outside of the tent. The solution is based on a contained gas stove that is connected to pods placed outside the tent, one which draws in air and another that vents the exhaust gases. The product incorporates several safety features such as a pan shut off valve and a flame supervision device to ensure a safe cooking experience.
Camping stove project work
This project required a wide range of design skills to be employed, for example, sketching, ideation and development, project management, 3D printing, fabrication including brazing, water-jet cutting and silicone casting as well as coding with Arduino and user testing. This prototype was manufactured to test the interaction points with users to evaluate and improve the design.
Finished AeroPress
This AeroPress group project required the design and fabrication of an automatic, fully-functional, electro-mechanical prototype. In a team of five we designed, built and tested this prototype. Manufacturing required the use of 3D printing, turning, drilling and finishing over a 6 week period.
Soldering AeroPress
I was involved heavily in the electronics of the prototype both coding and physical circuits. Coding in C to a PIC micro-controller was undertaken to make the product function. Several bells and whistles were added such as automatic stirring, the option to personalise brew time to the second and an interlock on the door for safety.
Camping stove - ready for travel
This image shows the stove packed away ready for transport. The stove is designed to be complete with all parts required for cooking such as the pots/pans, hoses and pan handles stored inside the main body of the stove itself.
Functional prototype
A functional prototype was constructed to test the concept. It proved the concept! The air flow required a more powerful fan than was previously specified however after adjusting this the seal was successfully shown to function.
Sarah England
The area of design I find most exciting is problem solving. Put simply, I like fixing things for people and hope my work reflects that.
I enjoy working on and leading technically-challenging, design projects. I aspire for projects to involve complex problems and realising meaningful and viable solutions. One of the biggest challenges facing designers today is sustainability. I have a keen interest in this due to a desire to improve the world as well as finding the scale and complexity of the task fascinating. My key strengths: Problem-solving, Creativity, Leadership I am proficient in the following software: Autodesk Inventor, AutoCAD and Sketchbook Pro, Solidworks, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, Keyshot and Microsoft office.
Awards
'19 Diploma in Professional Studies
Experience
'19 Design School, Degree Show Team '17 Tutoring A-level Product Design
Placements
July 2017 - September 2018
Product Design and Support Placement Student at Brett Martin Daylight Systems