Funky & Functional - Modern Wine Racks

The newly Australian designed wine rack with a unique collar system called ""winocol"", suspends the wine bottles from the neck rather than the body.

Created by Place Concepts the wine collars prevent the risk of wine oxidation, eliminates scratched labels and suspends the bottles in a straight or curved design.   

Place Concepts utilised Formero for its ability to provide a single source of full line product development, including Rapid Prototyping, Tool Design and Part Design Recommendations, Production Tooling, Trials and Production Moulding. 

Choosing to work with Formero gave Place Concepts access to an array of capabilities and time-saving product development opportunities, with the security of manufacturing their product in China.

Stage 1: Design Validation

Utilising SLS Rapid Prototyping technology, several prototype models were made in glass filled nylon, allowing Place Concepts to validate the design and ensure the wine bottles would be positioned correctly in the racks. 

Stage 2: Tool Design

Moving into the production phase, there were some Design For Manufacture (DFM) concerns, such as thick wall sections and acute draft angels.  Formero worked closely with Place Concepts during the tool design phase to ensure that any part design modifications would not impact on the function of the wine collars, to achieve their required quality expectations.

Stage 3: Production

Utilising Formero's production facility in China , tools were created over the Christmas holiday period, allowing parts off tooling trials to be delivered early in the new year for evaluation before commencing final production.

In all, the time taken to produce the tools for immediate approval by the customer was around 1 month (3 weeks for tooling and 1 week for moulding). 

Formero's flexibility and project management between sites allowed this project to run smoothly and efficiently.  Adrian Smith of Place Concepts said ""Arrk's fantastic service and excellent communication was the key factor to facilitate the product in the time frame required"".

Today, ""wino racks"" and ""winocol"" wine collars are gaining interest in a variety of applications, not only as a piece of funky and functional furniture, but as storage in cellars for wine connoisseurs, wineries, restaurants, retail liquor outles and commercial kitchens.

If you are interested in bringing a modern, stylish and completely different piece of furniture into your home, visit

http://www.winewithoutwank.com.au/news/144.php