For week 1, we reached out to CRI in order to gain more insight on what kind of product they wanted. The following email was sent:
Dear [relevant CRI Administrator],
As part of Professor Amy Banzaert’s Engineering class at Wellesley College, we are excited to partner with you in designing an oar grip aid. For this project, we are building upon the work of past students with your organization. We will focus on issues of mobility, comfort, and durability. Further, considering the broad needs of CRI’s community, we hope to include as many features of universal use as possible.
In these endeavors, we ask for your help specifying the kinds of modifications you believe would be most useful. We have enclosed photos and summaries of the past prototypes for your consideration. As we approach a more expanded iteration, we would also love to consider what kind of regulations apply to such devices so that we may avoid any potential disqualifiers.
Thank you for your feedback, and please let us know if you have further questions. We look forward to collaborating with you further.
Sincerely,
Esmé Stribling-Hough, Susanna Gianola, and Grace Venner, Wellesley College Class of 2020
Design One
Our final design is a glove that covers from the bottoms of the fingers to the top of the wrist, with the oar connector resting close to the top of the glove. The design can be broken down into two main parts: the fabric glove where the user’s hand resides and the 3D printed oar connector.
Overall, our design met the majority of our design specifications. The glove is comfortable to wear and the riveting resulted in a glove that appeared to be secure. One major success we had was the the elastic made the glove very secure, meaning that it would not slide off of our hands when we pulled on it. One major shortfall of our design is that we did not account for the stress that inserting the rivets would cause on the oar connector, which meant that when we inserted our rivets, fracture lines appeared alongside the holes in the 3D printed plastic. Overtime, those fracture lines could eventually cause the connector to split, rendering the grip aid useless. In the future, this could be addressed by using a stronger material for the oar connector piece or changing the design of the rivet holes so that there is less stress on the connector.
CRI Feedback
CRI liked the usage of different fabrics and the hand comfort we aimed to have during the process of designing the glove. Andy [surname, position?] said that it was easy to wear and hard to come off, which was something that we aimed to do so we were happy about that. Also, he liked the one finger opening idea that we had in order to have more universality for the glove. We need to make the glove more breathable, perhaps finding a different fabric for the top part of the glove so that the hand will be less covered. Additionally adjusting the size of the glove so that it will work for every para-rower is another task that needs to be tackled in the next iteration of the glove. But for this, using elastic and and making glove really flexible helps a lot.
Design Two
What we had envisioned initially–a glove with a two-part 3D printed piece incorporated into the fabric–ended up being dashed due to concerns about the flexibility of the glove and the durability of the 3D printed plastic. Inspired by weight lifting gloves (this glove we found on Amazon), we decided on incorporating an additional strap that covers the entire hand and essentially straps one’s grip to the oar. The biggest change that we’ve incorporated into our glove is the 3D-printed piece. We ended up adding an extension to the blue cylinder that has been a part of the glove for a while, and we’re pleased with how we were able to fit it into the fabric of the glove and have it be comfortable for the wearer.
We had decided on our main materials—neoprene, velcro, and plastic—for the glove early on, so there was not much change. However, we struggled to find an adhesive that would not only bond the neoprene pieces of our glove to one another, but also bond the neoprene to our 3D-printed plastic piece. In the end, a super glue gel made for porous materials worked best.
CRI Feedback
Our modified 3D-printed bit was very well received by Andy and the rest of the team. We hope that this project will help CRI and other engineering students in the future to find a solution to grip strength in rowing.