Amy and I started on our project for Community Rowing, which is to improve the fixed seats that they have for the adaptive rowers with limited lower body movement.
So, we started out the day by going through the giant pile of brainstormed ideas that we generated during the last class. We then decided to focus on ways to fix the seat to the erg itself securely, while still making it easier to adjust in the horizontal direction.
We started out looking at draw latches and tension latches (like the ones on jam jars) and the kind of pin locks that they use in weightlifting machines.
But first, we took a physics break and looked at the forces acting on the seat. (I even drew a very bad free body diagram!)
Then, Professor Banzaert directed us to the hardware website McMaster-Carr, where we found this gem:
Anyway, after we recovered from this little dose of awesome, we finally found what we were looking for (sort of...):
Eventually we decided that this might not be the best pin to use, so at this point we just know that we are going to be using a quick-release pin.
For adjusting the seat, we considered using a Telescoping Round-Hole Strut Channel
Then we realized that we would need to attach the channel and the tube to the chair and the erg itself, so that whole idea was out...
So we actually used our brains (whoa) and then we figured out a design that might work... It ended up basically being a combination of the ideas we brainstormed in the first place, we just took a long time to develop them.
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