Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2015/09/14/collapsible-pots-would-be-amaz.html
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Could someone explain how it holds its shape when it’s full? What stops it just collapsing in on itself?
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Too bad the base isn’t magnetic… this could be awesome coupled with a little inductive cooktop for RVers.
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We’ve got a plain silicone bowl in roughly the same design. It concertinas and is pretty rigid folded out into the bowl shape. You have to physically press down on the top to get it to collapse, so I guess there would be some risk of spillage if you put some weight on the top or downward on the sides, but I never had a problem with it being unstable.
How about designing one for induction stoves, with a metal insert in the base rather than different materials on the outside? That way you wouldn’t have the problems with the join at the base. Apparently some people use silicone discs to protect the surface anyway, so it shouldn’t be a problem in principle (at least on lower temperatures).
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Oh really? To me it looks like it’d be floppy at the sides, and quite “squishy”, but your explanation makes sense, cheers.
Silly gimmick. They’re collapsible and lightweight, but who cares about weight or size when camping out of your car? What, your car’s gonna collapse from an extra pound of pots? And a set of these collapsed is no smaller than a set of nesting pots. So you’re not actually saving any space, either in camping or in a tinyhouse/apartment.
And if you’re backpacking and therefore have an actual reason to care about size and weight, then you’re not carrying enough food/water to need a giant 3 qt. pot. Nor do you probably have enough fuel to heat it.
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So the quality is poor, the pot breaks and leaks, but these problems are “not insurmountable?” How does one go about surmounting them? By using the commission on all the rubber pots you sold to buy a metal pot that’s not broken?
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You care about size if you’re a family of five, living in a 600sqft flat in London, which describes our old neighbours.
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[quote=“doctorow, post:8, topic:65580, full:true”]
You care about size if you’re a family of five, living in a 600sqft flat in London, which describes our old neighbours.
[/quote]I have an all-metal set of nesting pots with removable handles that we use for camping that are essentially the same size as these. Pretty sure they’re more durable, and certainly cheaper.
These things just don’t make any sense. Not their intended usage, or the alternative you’re suggesting.
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I wish I’d had these while I attended grad school in the San Francisco Bay area and was living in an RV! They’d have been PERFECT!!!
Yeah, the durability of silicone pots is going to be absolutely terrible unless you’re not doing anything other than boiling water, just because of the process of cooking in it and cleaning it out (though I suspect the join would always be a weak spot). I imagine that with constant use, their lifespan could be measured in months, whereas I still regularly use pots and pans that were owned by my great grandmother. Even non-nesting pots can have other things stored inside them, so it’s not even much space saved - it might even be a detriment that way, depending on the space. You can hang pots from walls/ceilings, after all.
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It’s got a rigid base, and I think a rigid rim. Everything in between just holds the stuff in.
This is actually pretty smart. The accordion design in all-silicon (including the base), and then a metal disk that you put on the inside which would head up from the induction cooker.
Again, only really useful for boiling water, and only useable where you have electricity, so I’d never buy the thing, but at least it would improve the join at the base…
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