6.1 The Neo-Braun round
After round 2 (5) I asked for five Neo-Braun designs. Neo-Braun is a name I gave a look a couple of weeks ago, on the cat litter air filter: Dieter Rams by way of Muji and the HomePod. One matte-white, soft-edged volume, a front that floats on a 1 mm shadow gap, and one ornament, a radial halftone of holes that does a job. The holes all sit on one 8 mm pitch, and only their size changes, from 1.6 to 6.5 mm, biggest over the thing that needs the air.
The style and my brief pull against each other. The style wants one calm material and nothing that asks for attention. I want the boards on show, a screen on the front and lights inside. So the five designs run from calm with the boards hidden to every board on show.
As before, ChatGPT drew each one first, and Claude modelled it in FreeCAD and ran the same checks: fits the A1, nothing clashes, survives the 10 degree tilt, and no ballast.
N1 Halftone Tower
A2's inside in a white shell. The halftone on the front is the exhaust, and through the biggest holes I'd just glimpse the boards, lit by two warm-white strips. The purest of the five, and the boards are hidden. 145 × 175 × 288 mm, 4.5 N to tip it.
N2 Vitrine Tower
N1 with the boards on show. A floating white frame holds one clear window over the five trays, and the halftones move to the sides, where the air leaves. The tower prints in two halves, with a joint over the roof and down the back. Claude's pick of the round.
N3 Lid Cube
B2's inside in a white cube with a clear lid, after the Braun SK 4 radiogram, the "Snow White's coffin". The boards show from above, and as a glow through the halftone on the front. The steadiest of the round at 5.1 N, and the lightest print.
N4 Gallery Slab
The only new layout of the round: six cells, two across and three high. Five hold a board each, face on, behind one clear sheet; the sixth holds the screen. It shows the boards best of all, but it's the tallest (316 mm), the least steady (3.6 N), and the air goes through the boards in series, three and then two.
N5 Top Halftone Cube
The calmest. B2's inside, closed all round, with a halftone over the whole top where the air leaves, and a plain front with one thing on it, the screen. No perspex at all.
The numbers
| N1 | N2 | N3 | N4 | N5 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inside | A2 | A2 | B2 | New | B2 |
| Size, W × D × H (mm) | 145 × 175 × 288 | 145 × 175 × 288 | 161 × 139 × 199 | 204 × 160 × 316 | 161 × 139 × 190 |
| Boards seen | Glimpsed | Through a window | From above | Face on | No |
| Push at the top to tip it | 4.5 N | 4.5 N | 5.1 N | 3.6 N | 4.9 N |
| Mass, of which printed | 1.85, 0.92 kg | 1.88, 0.88 kg | 1.57, 0.53 kg | 1.72, 0.64 kg | 1.50, 0.57 kg |
What I learnt
Deep holes look like bumps. Through a 5 mm wall, a hole seen at an angle shows only its own sides, so every halftone is a thin skin over a pocket, with something dark behind it so the holes read as holes. And the halftone has to have a reason to be there: on N1 it's the exhaust, on N3 it lets the light out, on N4 it's over the fans.
Still open: whether the lights should stay warm white when something gets too hot. The firmware turns them red, which isn't very calm.