So, we decided on garlic processing, as I said, and we've made a bunch of interesting mind maps.  Here's a few:

 Zoom.  This was one of the more effective things we did, though it's also the thing that has changed this project from redesigning this particular garlic press, and led us into new prototyping far outside making this thing out of a better material, with a better grip.  The world kind of opened up, especially when I looked at the quantity options.  Out of all the fields we used in the above exercise (power, material, etc.), quantity took me the most by surprise.  I hadn't really given it thought in my earlier design renderings, none of my ideas went beyond the amount of garlic I use, but there are chefs out there that might want a lot more fresh garlic on hand.  That's where my prototype idea came from.

Here's a "mind-map" proper.  Fun, but not as effective as the matrix above.

So at this point we're coming up with new garlic processing solutions.  My brainwave is a hand powered garlic processor that can dispense say, 20 or 30 cloves, for a chef that wants fresh garlic over and over, without pre processing, and without effort.  My drawings are pretty basic, and my prototype was sort of pointless, as it hardly expresses the amount of engineering that I have to explain for people to understand, and even then, maybe.  For this reason I don't think we'll probably end up choosing my idea.  It's a bit complicated.  For those who care, here's the concept, and hopefully some pictures if I got them scanned already.

Yeah, here it is:

Ok, so, now let me explain.  At the beginning of your shift, you husk 30 fresh garlic cloves and dump them into the front of the machine and replace the cap.  I've actually changed this design a little already.  I want to make it circular, so I can snap the cap on securely, AND, so I can have a second thin layer of metal on the extrusion plate that will rotate to slice of the garlic that was pressed.  Ok, so the power design here is the over engineered part.  I thought to myself, getting garlic out of the machine should take nearly no effort, just point and shoot as it were.  To make this hand-powered, I had to figure out how to put the effort into one step at the beginning of the process, and then 'reap' the power when needed.  So, in essence, it's a battery for mechanical energy.  My battery is a spring.  To begin, pull out the plunger, which compresses the spring.  Now, as you pull, you need to pull the trigger to allow movement of the plunger.  Let go of the trigger and plunger when your spring is compressed enough to fit the garlic you need.  The above picture is the garlic loaded and spring compressed.  Now let me show you the trickiest part.  I think it's on notebook paper.

Ok, this is the back view of the object, the center circle is the plunger-rod that sticks out the back of the press.  3 large bearings are held in place against the plunger rod, and each of these are encircled with a steel band that at resting state is pulled taught against the bearings, and thus holds the rod in place.  This idea is to control the release of garlic with infinite rate of flow control.  The outside lever actuates a bike cable (that's probably not the most efficient way, but it's my mechanical language) the cable pulls the steel band away from the spring holding it in place, thus loosening the whole mechanism.  Oh, it's a clutch of sorts I guess.

Anyway, as you can see, this is probably the mechanical engineer side of me getting a little too into the design.  It's difficultly to explain will probably mean we're going with someone else's idea to prototype.  I'm still pretty proud of it though.

GeorgeP