Drip Wheel

Drip Wheel

Like many other sneakerheads I have way too many shoes and not enough space to store them. The Drip Wheel is designed to hold shoes efficiently and display them in a cool way through its rotary capability. This creation consisted of TIG welding a stainless steel base, cutting and riveting aluminum sheet metal pieces to hold the shoes, and adding bronze bushings and shaft collars to enable rotation. This was a really fun project to build from scratch and the main attraction in my bedroom!

My first concept was to place the shoes in sheet metal compartments (like a pie), that would spin around an axel.

My rapid prototypes showed me that a size 12 shoe is bigger than I thought… and that it would require too much material to hold 12 pairs of shoes.

After brainstorming several ideas, I decided to hold the shoes via hooks on the soles, rather than have them lie flat. I developed a CAD design to show my idea visually before building it.

Bought four stainless steel tubes & fish-mouthed their edges using the hole-saw on the mill (Picture above shows the aluminum tube I practiced with)

Learned how to TIG weld for the first time.

Welded the tubes onto the stainless steel tubing.

  • Sheet metal cut the aluminum

  • Sawed a hole in the center

  • Cut inner diameter of bronze bushings on the lathe to be a press fit with sheet metal

  • Sheet metal cut the hooks and riveted them.

Putting it all together

After cutting and riveting all the metal parts, I press fit the bronze bushing onto the aluminum octagon to join them. I then fastened the first shaft collar on the lower end, placed the first octagon over the tube, then repeated the same for the upper octagon. This rotated well, so I finished the “Drip Wheel” by sand blasting it and adding rubber felt pads to the base.