The Drink Link has been designed and engineered to fit on your typical chain-link fence. It has smooth curved edges that allow you to easily attach and remove your drink link from the fence when needed, while still being strong enough to keep your drink safe.
How it Works
Dimensions
Here you can see the dimensions of the Drink Link, designed to fit a wide variety of beverages. Anything from a typical can of soda or beer, to gatorade or water bottles and it can even hold a Stanley. Max tested weight: 4lb full Stanley cup as shown
How it's Made
The Drink Link was designed using CAD software and printed on a 3D printer, where it's printed layer by layer to create a finished product. We are currently in the process of creating a mold for faster and cleaner production but for now the 3D printer is doing great. Here you can see a timelapse of 4 DrinkLinks being made at once.
How Drink Link started and its current progress
The Beginning
Pickleball is a sport that requires drinking, that’s the only way to play. Our pickleball group always had our beverages on the ground and they were constantly being knocked over either from the ball or being kicked. One night we were playing and one of us saw a loose piece of fence and rigged his beverage onto it creating a cup holder of sorts. That moment was when someone had the idea of a cup holder that can attach to the fence. A few days later a prototype was designed and printed for testing. As pictured, the prototype was a two piece design with the original idea of having different sized cup holders that can be interchangeable and the possibility for other accessories like bag holders. We pretty quickly moved away from the two-piece design as the cup piece was always falling off and it just wasn’t strong enough.
Beta 1:
After moving on from the prototype and spending time redesigning it to be a single piece, we settled on a cup holder with a diameter just big enough to hold the most common large bottles and the center hole shrunk slightly so that it fits the tall 12oz cans comfortably as well, while still being able to hold a majority of paddles. We used beta 1 for a while and it was looking great. We were starting to see a future in this product. So, we started brainstorming names and slogans and eventually DRINK LINK was the name we settled on with the slogan “Fence your Thirst”. The Drink Links were working great, our courts were looking so much cleaner as everyone’s beverages were connected to the fence and there were no more spilled drinks. After multiple uses we noticed the drink links had a few weak spots and started warping after long exposure to heat like being left outside or in the car. So, we stopped production of beta 1 and moved to Beta 2.
We tweaked the Drink Link slightly to make it stronger. The weakest spot was where the cup holder met the fence attaching piece. To combat this, we increased infill in that area and blended it together with a curve instead of right angles, thus creating a much stronger surface. We also switched print material from PLA to PETG. With the change to PETG it created a much stronger layer adhesion bond making it incredibly stronger, while also solving our warping issues as PETG is extremely heat resistant. After those tweaks beta 2 was introduced and can hold a 5lb Stanley bottle without any issues, unlike beta 1. We also left a few outside and in cars for long periods of time with no effect to them at all. Beta 2 was working great, so we started selling a few to friends of friends. Then, one of our testers realized our design doesn’t work with all fences since they are not all the same size and dimensions.
Beta 2:
Beta 3:
After doing some research on fences, Beta 3 solves the fence size issue by shrinking the center part to fit comfortably in the smallest commercial fence while still working on the biggest fences without it slipping out or being unstable. Along with these dimensional changes beta 3 is now more visually appealing as we curved all the corners and edges. The curved surface also gave benefits of easier install and removal to the fence. We loved beta 3 and that’s when we created our website here so that we could start selling more to a wider range of people.
The Drink Link:
With the current success of our product we decided to graduate from beta versions to production versions, but we weren’t happy with the cost of production and the amount of wasted material produced after each print. This was also around the time we caught the eye of a company who wanted some sample products with their logo on it, so we decided to do some rearranging with our word placement. We shifted everything down so that Drink Link replaced Fence your Thirst and Fence your Thirst was moved to the bottom on a flat surface layer. Having the words on the flat surface significantly reduced cost by 60%, as it eliminated so much waste. We also decided to go from a smooth outer layer to a more rugged exterior which drastically improves the look of the product, especially at night when the light bounces off of it. With the rearranging of the words that gives exclusive access for companies or teams to work with us and display their logo on the top open area. If you would like to work with us on creating custom branded Drink Links in bulk, please reach out to us at drinklinkinc@gmail.com and we can work something out.
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