For this week we only have an individual assignment, with the aim of clarifying whats our final project about, integrating the range of units covered, :

INCORPORATING:
1. 2D and 3D design.
2. Additive and substractive fabrication processes.
3. Electronics design and production.
4. Embedded microcontrolling interfacing and programming.
5. systemm integration and packaging.
6. Make rather than buy as many parts as possible (when possible).

and also, ANSWERING the following questions (as the key core of this week´s assignment):

As a Healthcare professional and researcher, my aim is to incorporate digital fabrication, trough frugal innovation, into the healthcare environment, to fill the gap that new technologies and real world data are creating. One of these needs is to start measuring objective and clinically significant variables in non-clinical settings, that can help healthcare professionals decision making. And one the most relevant variables, considered a biomarker (a variable that by itself can have a significant impact on health issues) is grip strenght.

So, what my device will do, is to be able to measure in non-clinical environments (at home) grip strenght, with a digital fabrication device, in order to be able to help healthcare professional decision making. But for that being possible, fabrication has to be sustainable. My goal is that this device can be created on demand in any hospital, that means that they should have a small fablab prepared to desing and produce personalized objects for therapeutic purposes, contributing to improve the quality of life of patients.

In relation to who has done something similar before, after exploring in the fabacademy repositories, I haven´t found any past student that has done this before. Actually, there are few studies that explore alternative ways of measuring grip strenght usign frugal innovation, such as:

For this project, my idea is to design and create everything I can form scratch, divided in the following sections:

The only components that I won´t create or design are the Oled module display (128x64) and the bluetooth HC-05.

MATERIALS AND COMPONENTS TO USE:

The 3D printed material will come from recreus and geetech supliers, and the silicone will come from Reschimica and all delivered by amazon. Regarding the electronics, all the materials needed will come from Digikey and Amazon.

As I mentioned before, my itention is to make everything from 0, except the Oled module display and the HC-05 bluetooth.

The processes used for this project will be:

• For the Grip and Display designs: I´ll use Fusion 360.
• For the grip silicone coating, i´ll use it as insert molding using a 3D printed mold of the grip.
• For the electronics schematics and pcb design: I´ll use eagle from Fusion 360. And they will be produced in the Roland Modela MDX-40A to be soldered after.
• To program my boards i´ll use Arduino IDE and will connect both boards wirelesly via Tx-Rx (master-slave). And i´ll use as the interface processing to view in the computer the values .
• I´ll laser cut the methacrylate designed in autocad for the display module.

At this point of the fabacademy, no critical questions need to be answered. I had to wait until input and output assignments in order to understand and have the knowledge about how I could measure grip strenght the most effective way, with digital fabrication, avoiding hysteresis and mapping the initial values.

Now, the question I need to answer (by doing several iterations and tests) is how I have to design the inner structure of my grip device in order to have the optimal measurement regarding materials and the step reponse. To do it, i´ve researched thoroughly everything related to metamaterial designs and 3D printing. So, i´ve learned a lot and managed to design something clinically useful.

Other question that needs to be answered is, how many data do I need to register per second so its future analysis can be clinically useful. To do it, I also had to research the evidence and obtained a minimum of 5 measurements per second, so, we´ve programmed to register 10 measurements per second to be sure we fulfill the standards.

To achieve my aim. I reviewed the literature in order to obtain how many measures per second are needed for an optimal value, and during how much time:

The Gold Standard hand grip measurement protocol, indicates that to measure maximum grip strenght we need between 3 to 5 seconds of time measurement. From that time onwards, the maximum peak force decreases.

To evaluate it with a fist spiral, we need it to give stable data, not overpassing the mapping values with a biofeedback use. For a second spiral, we will test repetitive measures to see if the values are optimal, and will compare them with the gold standard dynamometer used to measure grip strenght in clinical environments. And for a third spiral, we will test it with volunteers of different genders and antropometric characteristics to test it´s utility and making changes regarding their experience and opinions.

• email me
• Fab Academy