FES Assistive Device

Horizontal Support Hinge

For this semester, since we’re focusing only on collecting data on the horizontal plane and stimulating the triceps to move the forearm, we needed to create a device that would stabilize the arm in the position. We tried to create a frictionless hinge that could move across the XY plane that wasn’t too heavy and was able to keep the arm stable.

The first hinge that we created was made of wood, a door hinge, and wheels. The weight of the wood would have added onto the weight of the arm which would have caused us to increase the amount of stimulation placed on the patient.

Our next step was to create a 3D printed hinge, to make it less heavy. But the material of the plastic was also noticed to be heavy plus the printer was having issues therefore we decided not to print. Here’s a rendering of what it would have looked like:

3D hinge

Our final hinge design was to alter a previous senior 2015 senior design groups spasticity hinge and make it frictionless. We took out some the gears to make it easy to move and have no resistance and were able to use it as our one planar hinge for testing and collecting data.
FinalHInge



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