#HTE

When Non-Designers Beat Us: Couple Creates Superior Anti-Clogging Drain Device

Industrial designers: Do you find it stings when non-designers invent a successful product that you should have thought of?

Serge and Elena Karnegie identified a problem that everyone with running water has: Drains must be periodically cleared of hair or else they clog. If you’ve ever had to use one of these things…

…then you know how disgusting the clearing procedure can be.

What the long-haired, pet-owning Karnegies came up with is this:

The TubShroom, as they call it, relies on a principle that is a problem with vacuum cleaner rollers: Strands of hair, when propelled with any kind of force, like to wrap around cylindrical things. But because the TubShroom is made of soft silicone, the ringlet of hair comes off with a single wipe.

What’s interesting is that the Karnegies sought funding on both Kickstarter and IndieGogo—and smashed it on both. They gathered $59,267 on the former and about $120,000 on the latter.

That was last year. This year they’ve returned to Kickstarter with a smaller version called, unsurprisingly, the SinkShroom. The $12 device has already been 400% funded, and there’s 18 days left to pledge if you want one.

Question for those of you with molding experience: Can you describe the mold required to make one of these? Here’s the largest photo I could find:

I get that you can do things with softer silicone that you couldn’t with rigid plastic, but I can’t figure out the holes on the vertical shaft (nor what those dark lines are between the columns of holes). Obviously there’s a core that provides the central cavity—if you can’t tell, the bottom of the object has a large hole in it—but is this core studded with stubby cylinders, or are the holes created by the surrounding parts of the mold? In the photo above, there appears to be draft angle on the holes making them wider on the outside, which mystifies me.

The Karnegies have revealed that the tooling for the TubShroom ran $12,000, if that gives you any clue. Am dying to hear from the mold-savvy among you.