Engineering Proposal

CCNY

ENGL 21007: Writing for Engineering

Sara Jacobson

Assignment Due: 5/1/2023

Introduction

Raman is a very popular dish in eastern culture and has existed for over 200 years. It was first made in China and soon expanded to Japan were remained very popular. Because it has existed in these regions for so long the locals have adopted a certain way of consuming it. With chopsticks being the most common utensils in the east, many people have learned to enjoy the noodles first and then finish their broth at the end of the meal by drinking it straight from the bowl. Despite its long history Raman is relatively new to the rest of the world.

With its first appearance in the US being in the form of instant ramen in 1973. From their demand for ramen has just gone up. With the introduction of this Raman has become a fast, convenient and affordable meal that can be eaten by anyone anywhere, but one problem remains. The expansion of ramen doesn’t mean that other eastern things are as much of a hit. Chopsticks aren’t as mainstream as spoons or forks in the US because they are much harder to use. Along with this not many people are a fan of the broth that remains at the end of a meal and would rather have it along with their noodles.

To help with this issue we have made an easy-to-use utensil that is specifically designed to help those who can’t use chopsticks. Along with this it will also help the individual get more broth in with every bite so that their meal is more enjoyable and so that they don’t throw away or waste the broth. This new invention is something that is much more familiar to the rest of the world and doesn’t require that you learn how to use chopsticks when all you want to do is enjoy some ramen. Not to mention that buying it is not going to put a dent I your wallet. Price wise it would be rather close to a normal utensil, so anyone can afford it without needing to invest much to try it.

There are other people in the world who have already noticed a need for an invention like this and have attempted to make something to fulfill this role. However, most of these inventions are very lazily designed and are very ineffective. The concept of these inventions is extremely simple and the creators don’t bother to make any major improvements to their design. One example of this is the MoMA spork.

Body

The most popular product made forming an effective method for broth and ramen consumption at once is the MoMA spork. To pick up the broth, the spork must be faced horizontally. However, all the broth is lost when having to pick up ramen as the spork must be faced down. Similarly, the same could be said when doing this in vice versa. You could pick up ramen first, but when trying to pick up broth, the noodles get in the way and may not allow for much broth to be picked up and may even cause some noodles to be dropped due to this contact. This product has the basic idea down but fails to execute this with the desired and efficient ease because it is not ergonomic in its design.

Another similar product in picking up food and broth at once is TiTo’s spork. However, due to the material of this spork being titanium, it is easier to bend than stainless steel even if this allows for the spork to be much more lightweight. Though this spork does allow more broth to be picked up than the MoMa spork, it still has the same issues as the MoMa spork in that it is harder to pick up ramen and broth at the same time because of moving the spork in different directions.

To combat this issue, we created a design consisting of combining a fork and a straw directly underneath it. The straw would be divided into two sections in the front and branch out at the two end punts of the outer fork. The straws will be placed under the fork itself so that they don’t change the overall shape of the utensil and make it difficult to eat. Those two ends will lead to the back of the fork which will allow the user to skimpily stick their fork into their meal to receive a serving of broth. This design allows for easy picking up of the noodles with the fork while still being able to collect the broth with the straw at the end of the utensil. Additionally, it avoids the potential discomfort of having the noodles in the way, and there is no risk of broth falling when grabbing the noodles. Compared to the MoMa spork, the straw design completely frees up the movement of the fork. There is no longer a need to pick up the broth and soup in one go and that frees up the mobility of the fork and allows you to not only use the fork with ease but also frees you from shoving a whole fork in your mouth to get Raman and broth. Along with this the straws themselves also give you more freedom than any spork design. After you get a helping of Raman in your mouth you can chew on your noodles before you sip up some broth. Not to mention that spoon severely limits your broth to a few drops and requires you to scoop up broth multiple times for satisfactory flavor. With the straw the collection of broth is easy swift and most importantly, determined by your own desire as there is little to no limit on the amount of broth you can gather in one action. The final major plus is the neck pain this product saves you. When you have that little bit of broth on your spoon you ither have to lift up your spoon and balance the liquid until it reaches your mouth, which could lead to spill, or you have to constantly lower your head for every sip. But the straw saves you trouble, as the long body of the utensil makes the broth available to you without the need to completely lower you head. The material we use for this design is stainless steel so we can always wash it over and reuse the tool again. Compared to the MoMa and TiTo spork, the separation of a spoon and straws allow for more ramen and broth to be consumed rather than infusing a fork and spoon utensil as one.

Production process:

Not only will the physical design of the combo fork provide much more efficiency and ease in picking up ramen and broth at once, but there are other features that make this combo utensil an appealing item compared to the MoMa spork. To begin, our combo fork spoon would be priced at $12 each, which is much less in price than MoMa’s $27 spork on Amazon.

Conclusion

The final product will be around 9 inches and weigh 65 grams. It will be made of stainless steel 18/8 which should lead to material cost being $0.32 to make seven Fubes. We plan to sell our products on amazon where we will sell one for $12 dollars with amazon taking a dollar per sale. Now we will include the price of processing the stainless steel and the labor cost of producing one single Fork. Not much information is available when it comes to the cost of producing a single fork or utensil, but some sources say that a plastic fork can cost up to one cent to produce, because our product is very similar to the shape of a fork we will assume that it also cost us around a cent to produce one fork. Amazon will have varying cuts based on the item but in order to do that they need to inspect our item, which we can’t do because its not real so we will base our the idea of amazon cutting one dollar from their seller website and ignore the cost of taxes as Amazon will also have to determine that based on the regions they sell in. With this this we have a spending cost of $7.39 to produce seven Fubes and sell it on Amazon, with a profit of $12 per Fube sold. With this we make a profit of $76.61 for every 7 Fubes sold, not including tax and other fees.

Links

Stainless steel price per pound (https://www.scrapmonster.com/scrap-yard/price/stainless-steel-scrap/6)

What type of stainless steel (https://fable.com/blogs/nest/stainless-steel-flatware-guide#:~:text=Stainless%20steel%20flatware%20is%20the,resistant%20to%20rust%20and%20stain.)

Amazon sale policy(https://sell.amazon.com/pricing?ld=seussoagoog-sitelink-calculator-D#cost-calculator)

Stainless steel processing (https://www.reliance-foundry.com/blog/stainless-steel-production)

Possible fork manufacturing cost (https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-making-one-plastic-fork-cost)

Presentation

YT Portion.pptx (Slides)

(YouTube Presentation)