h a l f b a k e r yWhy did I think of that?
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All disposable hot drink cups are flawed.
Instant coffee from a coffee machine comes in a bog-standard plastic coffee cup. Worldwide, we use about seventeen million of these cups every day.
For some reason, the design of such cups hasn't changed for decades, despite it being fundamentally flawed.
It is a tapered trunkated cylinder, which is the least practical design for storing hot liquids.
A full plastic coffee-cup is top-heavy. It only takes a gentle push to topple over, causing horrendous burns to everything within an eight foot radius.
Surely the answer is to make the base of the coffee-cup wider than the lip? Invert the shape and it would be extremely difficult to push over and would even sit nicely on the dashboard.
Such a design would also be easier to carry, as you'd be able to grab it by the meaty base, rather than grappling it, claw-like, around the rim as the liquid trickles over the edge and burns your fingerprints off.
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It would certainly be much less likely to tip, but much
harder to store. These wouldn't be stackable so they'd
take up a lot of extra space. |
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It would also be somewhat harder to hold. |
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Were it extruded, like a pet's water/feed bowl, it would be stackable and stable. Cutaway side view:
/\__/\
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Thumbwax, the image of suited commuters drinking their
morning coffee out of pet bowls is just too priceless! |
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babies' feeding bottles are pretty nifty. great big rubber teats to fit over the cup might be the answer? |
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po: would help those fantasies, eh? |
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A friend of mine carries her drinks around in a babies bottle. |
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Picture kpx's wider-at-the-bottom cups, with no base. This retains stackability. You attach the base on-site - a more secure variation on the ordinary plastic lid (they're a bugger to remove when you want to, so we may as well use that to our advantage). |
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Now, grip becomes the only problem. I need to eat some breakfast, so I leave the grip problem to you, the HB community. |
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Perhaps some sort of handle is in order. That would, however, still impede stackability. Maybe the cups can be made out of striated rubber, a la 'mushroom grips' on BMXs in the 80s. |
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I’ve seen folding handles which don’t impede stacking. Two opposing flaps sit flush on the cup and are folded out then together to form the handle. Some variation of that? |
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I'm with BCookies on this one. Save the environment and purchase your own travel mug for refills. |
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I'm told that the coffee machines here at work allow you to use your own cup/mug. I haven't tried it, though, so I couldn't tell you if it actually refrains from dispensing the cup or if you're supposed to remove the styrofoam cup before you put yours in place. |
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This is baked so much it's not even funny. I have one in my cupboard. Conical coffee cup. It'd be hard for them to be made of paper and be disposable because of the funny shape. |
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I couldn't agree more. I just burned myself in the scenario you mentioned last week. Good job! |
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//Extruded? Are you sure?//
[marked-for-tagline]? |
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