Experience designing & building a sharps container

The experience of designing and building a sharps container provided an opportunity to directly implement the engineering design process.  Initially presented with a need for a reliable mechanism to properly dispose of sharp objects, our first step in brainstorming plausible designs was to define the problem and understand our design parameters.  The sharps container would serve as a place where we could throw away sharp objects safely, never endangering anyone who would be taking out the trash our handling the container in the future.  When the container becomes full, it will be added to the trash can, so the container its self should not have sharp edges that could potentially cause a trash bag to rip.  The last design parameter to consider before we began the brainstorming process was the materials we would have to build with.  Our containers were to be made out of only cardboard and hot glue.  The rugged nature of cardboard gives any design an element of structural integrity, which is a clear advantage in building a sharps container; however, cardboard is not a very flexible material and thus limits the variety of possible designs. 

During our brainstorming process, we came up with a plethora of designs that were a variety of shapes and included a range of features.  The most basic design was a rectangular box with a small slit in the top to allow someone to easily dispose of a sharp blade without needing to do anything to open the box.  As our brainstorming process continued, we came up with many more shapes, including a circular container that would be easy to throw in the trash once it became full.  The one element of the rectangular box that needed the most improvement was the top opening.  We did not feel it was safe to have an uncovered slit in the box, so we developed a “switch.”  Our switch would simply be a piece of cardboard you would pull to uncover the slit in the box, dispose of the sharp object, and then push the piece of cardboard back over the hole to eliminate the danger of an open hole in the box.  In the brainstorming process, we found ourselves spending too much time thinking about the logistics of constructing a switch.   Taking elements from our best design shape and switch apparatus, every member of our group had a clear and unified idea of what our final product would be.

Actually designing the sharps container was relatively simple.  The cardboard piece we chose already had creases that we chose to use for edges.   However, we accidently created a base that was too small and had to attach extra cardboard to ensure that there would be no holes in the box where sharps could fall out.  To create a switch, we took two pieces of cardboard and glued one on top of another so that the top one was hanging out slightly over the bottom, and made two of these contraptions.  We then placed one long piece of cardboard in the middle of the two.  We glued the two double-stacked cardboard pieces to the top of the box, positioning them over a small rectangular slit.

We did not complete the box, however, the semi-final product appears to be structurally sound, but if we were to construct another container, I think we should take into consideration the necessary size of the container.  Given the size of the sharps we will be disposing, and the size of the container we designed, it will take a very long time to fill, so in the interest of efficiency, we should have built a smaller container.