Ataxia Controller

Background and Motivation:

For our design, we created Jeff, a 13-year-old with spinocerebellar ataxia. This means that Jeff has good strength in his hands but tends to overshoot targets [1]. Additionally, since spinocerebellar ataxia is rare, only occurring at a rate of 1 to 5 per 100000 people [2] there are few existing solutions to his specific problem.
Jeff is also a huge fan of Mario games and has found a way to use his controller with Nintendo systems. Our device snaps onto an Xbox x controller and sets up various walls around the buttons preventing Jeff from overshooting.

Design:

Our design consists of two scaffolding parts with walls that snap together around the body of an Xbox X controller. The scaffolding is arranged such that the walls prevent overshooting of buttons in a given cluster while still allowing Jeff to hold the controller with little issue.

Because Jeff like Mario we also decided to several Mario themed sticker designs that can be printed out on vinyl sticker paper. The sticker designs can be seen below.

3D Printing:

Because our project has an irregular shape, we decided to use breakaway supports, so that we could successfully print without errors. We also chose hexagonal infill and four shells because the walls of the ataxia controller would need to survive being hit by a thumb or finger multiple times and at relatively high speeds. Unfortunately, as a result of the use of breakaway supports, hexagonal infill, and more walls, our printing time totaled about 14 hours. Even after moving parts to different positions, we could not reduce the time by very much. The positions seen here are the most time efficient. Unfortunately, we only got to print the bottom part as that takes the least amount of time.
Originally, we thought that three shells would be enough but after finding that the bottom piece of our design failed in the printer, we increased the number of shells by one, and the part printed just fine.

Link to Files (Makerbot 3D print project, stls, Autocad File, stickers):

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15eslSEbuvfYNVcr763g2yIcJc2B-eVKc?usp=sharing

Bill of Materials:

In order to produce this design, you will need the following materials:

References:

  1.  Ataxia. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/ataxia. Accessed October 19, 2022.
  2. (Slide 3) Bhandari J, Thada PK, Samanta D. Spinocerebellar ataxia. In: StatPearls. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2022. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557816/. Accessed October 19, 2022.

Page by: Nicholas Barry, Rudy Alvarado Carrillo