Cobi Yu, Sean Wharton, Jack Park, Tracy Liang, Nate Croft
The design purpose of the “spring-loaded crutch” is to create a more ergonomically safe and convenient way for recovering patients to ascend and descend a flight of stairs. This is done through the utilization of the “Squeeze Adjustment System” that is the main focus of our project. The SAS allows users to easily and conveniently adjust the length of a mechanism through a squeezing action produced by the user.
For the purposes of our project, the mechanism is to be incorporated into a standard medical crutch to improve usability and convenience. The SAS consists of a re-designed pin/notch system combined with miniature pulleys and a mechanical spring for quick expansion movement. Examples of where the SAS may be useful include chairs, music stands, tent systems, etc. The final purpose of the SAS is to replace mechanisms with the conventional pin and hole system such as the standard crutch where the pin system is clumsy and slow to use for length adjustment.