Hi everyone! We’re just wrapping up with our 3rd week and it’s really exciting to see the progress our team is making. This week went by really quick, especially since we had Monday off which was nice. Despite being a shorter week, our team still got a lot of work done and finalized our Design Context Review, documenting all of our progress including our background research, problem statement, and design criteria. Documenting our progress took a while, however it was well worth it as it helps us and our client keep track of everything we’ve done so far.

Besides the documentation, our team also did some more hands on work to improve our current hand prosthetic. We first began researching into different materials to make silicone finger tips, looking into grip, shock absorbance, and general feel of each material. We chose two types of silicone materials and used the 3D printed molds to create two sets of finger tips to compare both of them. After both sets dried, we added them to our previous hand models to see which material worked best and would help Eric Jr. the most while playing basketball. Our team also worked on modifying our current hand prosthetic to better suit our needs, and decided to rotate the thumb position to simulate palming the basketball. Since the prototype we started with is meant for daily usage, there are several modifications our team has been brainstorming to optimize our prosthetic to play basketball. Besides the thumb reorientation, our team has began thinking of using different materials to help with the overall mechanics and comfort for the user while playing basketball, ideas which we will make more concrete and test throughout the next few weeks. We plan on having multiple prototypes sent out to Eric Jr. for him to give us feedback and refine our final product.

This week we ran into a few more challenges than we originally expected, mainly dealing with making modifications to our current prototype. Since our team does not have much experience with CAD (computer-aided designs) and 3D modeling softwares, we struggled to find the best software to edit our file and then learn how to use all the tools of this software. After looking into different softwares and talking to more experienced staff members, we decided to use Fusion360 to make our modifications. We then began to watch videos and use google to learn more about the features in Fusion360 to help us. This entire process took an entire day to figure out, and was by far the biggest challenge we encountered this week. Another challenge for us is the lengthy time period we wait between each iteration of our hand model, as printing each hand takes many hours and we make one change at a time to test the effect of each modification.

We are excited to continue working on our project next week and are planning on brainstorming more ideas to improve our current hand prototype! Even though we didn’t get to see Eric Jr. this week and play basketball with him, we still had a lot of fun and learned valuable skills and knowledge about CAD softwares and the plethora of materials available at the OEDK to 3D print future prototypes. We are also planning on going to see one of Eric Jr.’s basketball games later down the road, cheering him on and gaining more insight on his current basketball skill!

See y’all next week!

JJ Tellez