This group project involved the design, fabrication and assembly of a custom fishing reel handle designed for people with dexterity issues.
Design objectives and constraints:
• Product must enable user to rotate fishing reel without requiring appreciable grip strength.
• User must be able to quickly connect and disconnect their hand from the fishing reel handle.
• Prototype must be fabricated using available manufacturing methods.
Project takeaways:
The final product ended up working as intended and meeting initial design objectives. The custom preloaded ball bearing quick connect mechanism made attachment and detachment of the two mating assemblies easy without requiring finger dexterity.
I manufactured all parts for this project in the Etcheverry Machine Shop at UC Berkeley. This project gave me further practice with setting geometric tolerances and then manufacturing parts to these tolerances.