Power Cube

2008

Mid-level designer at ...XYZ Design

Industrial design, Detailed mechanical design, Design for manufacture

Sunshine Company supplies equipment to the photography industry in South Africa. They identified a need for remote power supplies to charge batteries and operate equipment when shooting out on location. The solutions on the market at the time did not satisfy this need since they didn't allow for batteries to be hot swapped when they ran flat. This need initiated the design of the Power Cube. The aim of the Power Cube was to design a power supply that could output 12V and 240V to run various photographic and computer equipment for up to 4 hrs on a single charge and to be able to swap the batteries out when needed.

Sunshine Co. wanted the design to look beautiful as well as functional, unlike the rest of the industrial looking products on the market at the time. By distilling the product down to its simplest form without looking hard and industrial, the product took on the shape of a split cube with softened rounded corners. 

The bottom of the cube housed the batteries while the top housed the inverter electronics. The enclosure was made from a combination of GRP and sheet metal to suite the batch manufacturing volumes required and was offered with two different finishes, a high gloss or super tough velvet coating. The two halves were held together by a mushroom shaped interlocks between the two halves that provided a solid connection to handle the weight of the battery packs. The Power Cube had two anodised aluminium handles for lifting and moving it around which also provided protection for the user interface.

 The interface of the Power Cube offers two 240V 3 pin power outlets as well as a 12v outlet, a power switch and a charging point for charging the batteries. The battery could be charged with the cube assembled or separately and the charge indicator lights made use of fibre optic light tubes to transmit the light up to the user interface when the cube is assembled.  Working in collaboration with electronic engineers to develop the electronics, the final design was a beautifully resolved product that was easy to understand and use. 

The battery packs housed two 12V deep cycle lead acid batteries. The hot swapping of the battery packs was enabled through the use of a circular power connector between the top and bottom halves of the Power Cube. The battery packs also make space for the storage of a power cable as well as a fold away handle strap for lifting and moving the battery packs around easily when not attached to the inverter section of the Power Cube.