Chopstick Training Kit for Beginners

Today we will go over how I was able to build a Chopstick Training Kit for Beginners.

I am from Korea, and I wanted to teach my friends at school who did not know how to use a chopstick.

I used the woodcutting machine, the CNC machine, and the 3d laser cutter.

With these, I was able to build a working chopstick training kit!

First, I needed to make the wooden chopsticks that would be the essence of our product. To do this, I used a wooden stick and cut it into 4 equal lengths. Then, I utilized the sandpaper machine to grind down the pointer sides of the chopsticks. Through this, I was able to turn the wooden sticks into smooth chopsticks.

Next, I used the CMC machine to cut out the pieces for the hinges, that would be used as support for the learners.

By cutting out circles of two different radii, I was able to piece them together to form the hinge.

In order to keep all the parts together, I punched a hole in the center of each part and fit a wooden stick in the middle so that it would act as a hinge.

Next, it was time to glue to parts together. I attached one chopstick to each side of the hinge so that the sticks could rotate along the axis(=hinge) (figure 3). Initially, I tried to glue the top of the chopstick to the hinge, but it was difficult to maneuver the chopstick, so I adjusted the position of the hinge to make it feel more natural when using it. With a few more attempts, I was able to fix a good enough position for the hinge. As can be seen in the 5th picture of this section, the chopsticks would need to be at an acute angle when they were to gather, not be parallel.

Next, I used the 3d printer to build 3 rings for the product. The rings would be attached to the chopstick and act as I guide for the fingers. When people first try out chopsticks, it can be very complicated to figure out where to place their fingers. Thus, the goal of the 3D-printed rings was to act as guides. Within a few minutes, the machine had done its job, and the rings were ready to be added on!

Step 5 was where it took the most time for me because it was crucial to get the angles correct for the fingers. So starting from the thumb, I added the rings to be around the first crease of each finger.

After figuring out the optimal angle, I used a glue gun to fix the rings onto the chopstick.

And with that, the Chopstick Training Kit was complete. I even tried it out with a few friends who found the product to be intuitive. They stated that they had always wanted to learn how to use chopsticks but never had really set aside time to learn. By interviewing some of these potential users, I realized that they would soon want to try their skills on regular chopsticks as well. In that regard, the second pair of chopsticks will just be included for future use.