As a high school student, Dylan Gastel started a company that built backyard ice rinks in Rhode Island. Unlike building, say, a basketball court, an ice rink is a relatively easy affair that doesn't require pouring asphalt; with construction lumber and a waterproof membrane, you can build a structure, fill it with water and let Mother Nature do the rest.
Yet Gastel saw an opportunity to make the process even simpler. "We spent weekend after weekend fabricating each component of our rinks from plywood and two-by-fours," Gastel says. "It was during those long hours sawing, drilling and hammering that we envisioned the day we could provide our high quality backyard rinks more effortlessly across North America and beyond." Thus after entering Yale University to study mechanical engineering, he developed the EZ-ICE, a backyard rink that can reportedly be assembled in 60 minutes:
It's a pretty clever bit of engineering. Your typical DIY rink requires stakes to be nailed into the ground for stability's sake--meaning such rinks must be planned and installed before the ground freezes. Gastel's design, in constrast, uses straps/tension and the weight of the ice itself to keep the walls in place, and can be installed when the weather's already freezing.
Secondly, for kids playing hockey, pucks slamming into the typical DIY plywood walls don't rebound the same as they do in a rink; but according to a customer testimonial, "The puck plays off the [EZ-ICE] boards much better than it does with wood. The action is closer to what you get on a real rink."
Man. This is Gastel's second company and the kid hasn't even graduated yet!
A desktop CNC milling machine can be a practical addition to your prototyping or small-scale fabrication operations.
3D modeling has been a part of the profession of industrial design since before computers were even conceived.
With so many online learning platforms out there, it can be hard as a designer to decipher where to go...
We are building this list as a resource for designers who are looking for a starting point in picking a...
In the 1990s 3D printing was adopted by forward-looking design studios for prototyping – it was not widespread though for...
Community driven, engineering oriented, detailed and aesthetic, 3D printing oriented, royalty-free, paid, free.
Technology can be a great help when it comes to organizing your research on an ongoing project or in new...
Create a Core77 Account
Already have an account? Sign In
By creating a Core77 account you confirm that you accept the Terms of Use
Please enter your email and we will send an email to reset your password.
Comments
Clever.
Great idea. Let me know when they start selling the curling variant.