Cozy Cooktop
Portable Electric cooking system:
Spring 2022
The Cozy Cook Top was a project I developed as part of an Invention and Innovation based course in which students were tasked with creating a unique invention, complete with in depth plans to market and mass produce.
To summarize the project as a whole, our team built the Cozy Cook Top as a means to bring people together by making cooking more of an interesting experience. The cook top was designed to be used in a communal setting, where people could sit around a table and cook together on a larger heated cooking surface.
When developing this product, we wanted to make something that didn’t feel like a cheap appliance, but was rather aesthetically pleasing but still completely functional. This was the reasoning behind the choice to use a special type of African Mahogany, as the main body of the cook top.
While wood and heating elements don’t exactly sound like they mix, we did extensive research on high temperature insulation, and were able to effectively prevent the wood from being affected by the heating element. For the heating element, we used a standard heating element from a panini press to heat up our food safe aluminum cooking surface.
During our design expo, in which we demonstrated our design to the public, we had a great time cooking eggs and bacon for other students on our fully functional cook top.
This was a really challenging project overall, but I was very pleased for how well it turned out. After being rated by industry judges during the project expo, this project was Best in Section Design Award.
