Some background information on the devices intended user…
Sukke Min’s father is in his late 30’s suffered from a spine injury and has had to go to surgery multiple times. Before his third surgery he had numbness in his big toe which made it difficult for him to walk. Sukkee wanted to make something that would alleviate some of the pressure that is put onto the toe and rest of the foot when walking.
Initial Design
The initial idea was to have two air cylinders connected to ball and joint sockets on the bottom that would take the pressure off when walking
- We also removed the ball joint system because we weren’t sure it could take all that weight and it was difficult to find a way for it to lock when the person didn’t want it to
Final Design
In the end, we chose to eliminate the ball and joint sockets as the air cylinders do a sufficient job of reducing the weight on their own. Additionally, to make the part more comfortable for the user, we came up with the idea of using a sort of sock that a person could slip their whole foot through
Depicted above are our two 3D pieces for the project. On the left are the sleeves for the air cylinders which include threaded holes on the inside for the cylinders to screw into as well as holes in the side for RGB lights and a battery pack. We implemented these so that we could have a functioning circuit in the device creating light making it easier to see when walking in dark places. On the right is our ring piece which has hooks all around for the sock to hook onto and on either side theres and cubes on either side with M5 threaded hole to screw the other end of the cylinders into. The size for the ring was made based on the average male ankle size, it was made slightly larger than the average to be more comfortable when walking
Final Product
This was our final product, unfortunately there were printing errors and we weren’t able to print the cane bottom part on the air cylinder pockets. To fix this we designed little sleeves for them to slide into to provide a flat bottom for the user to use for walking. Some future considerations might be to find an alternative to the cane bottom and strengthen the ring by altering the print settings. During the process of mkaing the ring piece, we struggled most to;
- Create a Weight Bearing system
- The whole point of our project was to make sure it could support the weight of its user so throughout the whole process of designing it we had to keep it in mind the pressure that it would be in
- For that reason we have no hollow parts and everything was designed in a way that the air cylinders would take most if not all of the weight when stepping.
- Make the piece Universal
- We wanted to make the device universal because we know that people have different sized ankles so we are still thinking about a way to make it fit to all sizes
- We already took a step towards making this device accessible but involving a sort of sock so that any person could wear it with any shoe they wanted and sizing it so it fits the average mans ankle with a little extra space.
Walking Device combined with sculpture made by art student Sukke Min:
