7/22/14 Inventor, Fusion 360, Modular Tensioner Problems

We finally got around to installing Inventor today!  I spent the day re-familiarizing myself with the Inventor while Alex continued work on our modular tensioner idea.  After fixing, printing, and refixing, we determined that the prongs are not flexible enough to be used here.  If they were longer, it might work, but that would significantly increase the size of the tensioner housing.  Tomorrow we shall discuss other solutions.

A example of how the prongs continue to break.

Meanwhile, I began work on editing the RIT Derek Arm.  So far I removed material from the Triceps Cuff to make it a bit cheaper (less material = less $$$).  Tomorrow I will probably do the same with the forearm cup.

Today we also published our modular tensioner idea to the e-NABLE community which received a very positive reaction. I (Alex) spent the majority of my day trying to come up with ways of beefing up these clips while maintaining flexibility but in the end I believe we will have to find some other type of clip.

One of several concepts I drew up today to try and beef up the prongs (sadly this didn't work)

The e-NABLE community is pushing hard for all designers to use a single program, Autodesk Fusion 360, so we spent some of our day installing and playing with this program. Fusion 360 is cloud based so it didn't run nearly as smooth as Rhino does. This combined with a more constraining (as opposed to the more free flow Rhino gives you) led to a negative reaction towards Fusion 360. The program appears to be very powerful but I just don't know if we will be able to break our Rhino habits and get into using it.

Well that's all for today!

Alex + Sam