GFU - ADAPTIVE MOUSE FOR FOREARM AMPUTEES

As a project at George Fox University, the College of Engineering tasks first-years with creating a prototype as a desgin project in nearly 2 weeks. The aim was to rapidly prototype and create a working model with a team of 4 that could solve problems for people with disabilities. 

Since there are about 2.3 million Americans with limb loss and around 70% of those people have below-the-elbow limb loss. Myself and 3 others worked together to prototype an adaptive computer mouse that allows these amputees to achieve basic mouse functions that include: movement, scrolling, and clicking. Over the course of 2 weeks, my role was to organize the team meetings, keep a progress tracker on our 3D prints, brainstorm ideas, 3D Model using SolidWorks, and 3D animate our product using SolidWorks.

In the pictures below you will see our final product, 3D models, prototyping progress, SolidWorks animation, and a test of our mouse.

Some design issues we ran into were distances hole spacings with our motherboard, we needed to print small holes for our pillars to connect to the mouse buttons, but the prints kept failing. We fixed this by adding extra PLA supports during the prints and enlarging our holes so we had more surface area to click. Another issue was the gear system for our scroll wheel. We wanted to flip something that was vertical into something horizontal. Printing gears of this scale did not work out for us in our time frame, but with better materials and tools it would be achievable.