Being an owner of a filtered water bottle, I am motivated to continue using it as a source of my clean water. Having access to water is particularly vital for me while biking and commuting to school.

Unfortunately, the bottle´s above-average size makes all the bike water bottle cages too small. Determined to keep biking and enjoying my water bottle, I decided to take on the challenge of designing one myself as a project for my DIY Design & Fabrication class.

I have found amazing inspiration in exploring the way a water bottle can be held, as well as in my school´s design patterns. I love how Carnegie Mellon embraces its visual identity, and as a proud Tartan, I was hoping to reflect that in my design.

The constraint of the project was to use sheet acrylic only, which posed challenges in the realm of fabrication. I am excited to have tackled them and learned about some of the limitations of this particular material.

I decided to form the cage by laser-cutting a shape out of a sheet and then forming it into a cylinder by heating up the material with a heat gun and rotating it over a cardboard tube of my desired diameter.

In terms of the bottom support for my water bottle cage, I cut it out of an acrylic sheet and then inserted it into a cutout of the cardboard tube so that the cage itself would roll over it and trap the support inside.

The cage has two holes which I then used to bolt the water bottle cage to my bike. In the process of developing my design, I made a cardboard prototype, as well as two acrylic prototypes.

The final product serves me well in my everyday biking journeys. I hope you enjoy the documentation of my journey as much as I did developing the bike water bottle cage.