What’s up everyone? It’s the end of week 5 and this week was the most fun week yet! This week we continued making modifications to our prosthetic hand and began testing our model. A big modification we began working on was the gauntlet redesign, as we agreed it’d be best to extend the gauntlet further down Eric Jr.’s arm as well as making it thinner and more streamline since the strings no longer need to be attached to the hand. We encountered several challenges while making this modification, as our mold of his hand did not include much of his arm and we were missing measurements to appropriately fit the gauntlet to his size. Despite this, we were able to create and print a first version of our new gauntlet, testing the thickness and size of our new design.
During the middle of the week we also began testing the finger strength of our hand, using multiple different groups to determine which one would resist the most weight before breaking. We tested a 5 different fingers each with different conditions:
- Finger with regular hinges and no strings
- Finger with regular hinges tied using a braided string
- Finger with regular hinges tied using a thick monofilament string
- Finger with regular hinges tied using a thin monofilament string
- Finger with thicker hinges and no strings
From our testing, we realized that the best method to strengthen the fingers is option #4, as this option provides the 2nd most strength and returns the finger to the resting spot. We didn’t choose option #3 because even though it does provide the most strength, the string is simply too thick and it does not return the fingers to the resting spot.
Near the end of the week we began preparing our pitch presentation for showcase and also completing our current model to hand to Eric Jr. We finally printed and assembled our most current prototype with our new modifications, ready to take it to on Saturday. This was by far the best part of the week, maybe even of this whole internship. Our team drove all the way up to the YMCA to go watch and cheer Eric Jr. play with his team. Watching his game was so much fun, clearly he was one of the best players on the court. He got multiple steals, rebounds and even scored! After the game we got to talk to Eric Jr. and his family and got him to test our most current prototype and get feedback on it. He definitely liked it a lot more than our original ones, however it still needed a few modifications to help with comfort. We were also able to get more accurate measurements of his arm to help with our redesign of the gauntlet, and got to play basketball with him 🙂
                      
Overall we are really excited with all the work we’ve done so far and are now finalizing our modifications, documentation, and testing as we reach almost the end of the 7-week internship. We were so glad to go see Eric Jr. at his basketball game and play with him at the end, and are glad to see them recognize all the progress we’ve done these past couple of weeks on our prosthetic hand. We finally got to see all the work we’ve been putting in these past couple of weeks and feel accomplished, however job’s not finished.
See y’all next week!
JJ Tellez