CRI Day 6

Update: we will be working on both the issue of the fixed seat and the issue of transfer from wheelchair to shell.
Amy was still sick today and I didn't feel comfortable starting a new project regarding transfer without talking to her, so I worked on the erg chair project that we decided on when we visited CRI last week.
Basically, the rowers at CRI have this set-up for their ergs:

But they found that this sets the seat too high up for rowers to get the best draw angle--the height makes it so that they have to use a completely different set of muscles. The seat needed to be lower, which is why they had it upside down when we first visited them:

So the goal for today was to figure out how to adapt their existing hardware to be lower. CRI lent us a set of the connective parts of the erg and I started out the day by disconnecting the spacer 

from the connective plates, screws, and bolts. 

This is what I ended up with.

At this point, I was a little bit confused about how the connective pieces actually attached to the seat itself and thought that I would have to build a spacer between the connective plate and the seat to allow room for the bolts. 

I wasn't quite sure how to do this, however, so I decided to take some measurements and look more closely at pictures of the entire adaptive seat and connectors. I saw that the seat connects to the connective plate by having bolts or screws go through another plate.

So I figured that we will be able to just put the bolts through both plates, an idea that I will be testing when we go to CRI again on Friday.

Prototype #1

Things we should think about next (erg chair):

• Does this design function correctly and solve the height problem?
• Using this design, how quickly can an erg be changed from sliding to fixed?
• How can this transformation process be speeded up?
• Is there a different way of connecting the seat to the erg that does not include screw clamps, which take a relatively long time to screw in? Is this new way sufficiently strong to hold the seat securely onto the erg while taking the abuse of the rowers rowing?

Things to ask rowers/coaches at CRI:

• Have them try to set it up. - see if they can figure it out, if they use it in an unexpected way, etc. - VIDEO them (do a time study)
• Do you have any initial impressions or ideas about the prototype?
• What works well about this device?
• What does not work well about this device?
• For transfer project: What type of shells do you use? (so we can find out what they are made of, their strengths, etc.)

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CRI Day 5

Note: I missed a few blog posts, as Amy and I have mostly been posting on her blog (http://extd111-afeldman.blogspot.com/). We will be setting up a joint blog soon.

Anyway, Amy was sick today, so I started out the day working on our dock model. I was figuring out how to make the sides of the "tub" part of our "water elevator" model connect to each other. We were thinking about using magnets, just for our model, because it wouldn't work very well for the final dock. So I started by considering embedding a piece of metal in one piece of foamcore while having the magnet on the outside of the opposing piece of foamcore, but the magnets weren't strong enough for this to be a viable option. So I quickly moved on to embedding the magnet in the opposing piece of foamcore, which would put the magnets closer together.

The magnets and metal bars.

 

At this point, however, Professor Banzaert came over and suggested that I spend some time calculating the dimensions of the "tub" and the weight of the water we would be lifting in our elevator. It took me over an hour to find all of the measurements I needed, but I finally found them and did the calculations....

Just in case you can't read that: we would need to lift approximately 14.375 metric TONS. Even if we could figure out a way to do this, it would most likely not be at all affordable, so that idea was out...

Next up, working on our second semi-finalist: The Launching Pad

The Launching Pad idea was modeled after the EZ launch. The EZ launch was built for the far sturdier kayaks and canoes, so we will have to make some modifications for the more fragile rowing shells.

EZ Launch