Week 10: Wrapping Up
Jack S -
Hello everyone and welcome to the final week of my senior project! I spent my time tweaking some final design details to make my device slightly more comfortable and wearable. First, I decided to add another actuator, meaning three fingers are now controlled by the device. In order to do this, I had to shrink the size of each actuator so that they can comfortably fit right next to each other (on the pointer, middle, and ring fingers). Once I made this adjustment, I also had to add a cover that can easily be screwed off at the tip of the actuator. This was needed so that I can easily spread the glove/balloon throughout the length of the actuator using tweezers, as it was now narrow enough to make spreading difficult from one side. Similarly to when I made the actuators removable, I took apart an old plastic bottle and used the threads and cap.
Another small change I made was using a longer zipper to make the entire device easy to remove. As you may remember, I originally had a zipper on the hand portion of the exoskeleton and it helped immensely with making the glove easy to put on and take off. Replacing this small zipper with a larger one spread this benefit to the device as a whole.
This week, however, was not without challenges. As I mentioned earlier, I needed to attach the pressure sensor to the rest of my design. While soldering the circuit itself was straightforward, It was very difficult to connect the sensor. Since the sensor I am using is so thin and small, I accidentally burned off the end terminals when attempting to solder it. Luckily, the sensors came in a pack of 4, so I was able to take a fresh approach with the next one. Instead of soldering, I used a female dupont wire for each terminal. While this did work, I had to hot glue then tape the connection together so that it does not detach with a movement (as the terminals are so small they barely fit inside the dupont wire).
Thank you to everyone who kept up with my project and I look forward to showing you my final product during my presentation!
Comments:
All viewpoints are welcome but profane, threatening, disrespectful, or harassing comments will not be tolerated and are subject to moderation up to, and including, full deletion.