Grouse Whiskey Bottle

Case Study

Vacuum Formed Famous Grouse Bottle

The Brief:

Our client required a 1.5m high scale model of their famous grouse whiskey bottle. The bottle would be used at exhibitions so it had to look exactly the same as the original bottle,while also giving the impression that the bottle was filled with whiskey.

The Solution:

Our client provided the 3D CAD data for the bottle which was imported into our CAD software SolidWorks. From here the CAD could be scaled up to the required size. Due to the size and number of bottles required the manufacturing technique chosen was to vacuum form the bottle in two halves from a single mould. Due to the shape of the bottle being fully symmetrical only one tool was needed,so the scaled CAD model could be cut in half to leave one side of the bottle as a mould.

This CAD data was then passed to one of our CNC engineers where the tool was machined from ureol. The machining was done on one of our 3 axis machining centres, with the programming undertaken on Delcam PowerMill. The vacuum forms were then produced from the tool and had to be cut out by hand to leave 2 halves of the bottle. As the client wanted the inside of the bottle to look like it was filled with whiskey our model makers had to come up with a solution, as actually filling the bottle with whiskey would be impractical and costly. Therefore, several ideas were tested to find out which one produced the most realistic finish. This turned out to be painting the inside of the bottle a specific colour that matches the colour of the whiskey

The lid was also scaled from our clients CAD with the same manufacturing method used as producing the bottle. The lid was then painted matt black and secured to the bottle,with the decals applied as the finishing touches to the models.