Ergonomic Grip
This project was associated with the DIY Design and Manufacturing class I took as a masters student at Carnegie Mellon. This project is all about exploring one of the most important physical interaction points of any product, the grip. Comfort, safety, leverage, and stye are just a few of the many important features that the grip and touch points of a tool, gadget, or any physical product can have. Often times this interaction point with the user can make or break the products success. In fact, this interaction point is sometimes the biggest point of innovation and differentiation from the competition.
Inspiration
For the vast majority of my life I have been a very serious and competitive tennis player. I have traveled not only around the country but around the world for training and competition. As anyone who plays racket sports knows, when your hands get sweaty it becomes very difficult to grip your racket and apply the desired torque on the ball. There are a handful of solutions to this problem, one of which is the Wilson Progrip Max, shown in the pictures to the left. This is my preferred solution to sweaty hands but there is a major design problem, the cap! The top of this bottle is completely smooth and sloped inward making it impossible to open with sweaty hands.
Design Choice
In order to solve this problem I needed to redesign the cap of the Progrip Max bottle. I decided to go with a flanged top and textured side to insure that even in the most extreme heat and humidity, one would be able to open this bottle to combat the problem of sweaty hands during competition. Here are sketches of my idea.
Buck Choice
When creating a sculpture of some kind it is important to have a starting guide to build off of. This is known as a Buck. A lot of the times you need to create a Buck for your project but in this case it made the most sense to just use the actual Progrip Max cap as my starting point to build off of.
Initial Clay Layering
The first step I took was layering on a bunch of clay all around the existing cap to create a large area for me to sculpt with. I did my best to create a uniform and symmetrical surface to create a good starting point for me to remove material.
Clay Removal
Next I started to scrape away material on the sides of the cap to create the lip at the top as shown above in my design.
Hole Filling
After I had the general shape I was looking for I went back around my sculpture and added in little pieces of clay to fill gaps and holes and also to make the part more symmetric.
Smoothing
Now with the model being complete and symmetric, I went over and over the clay with my fingers, and a damp paper towel to really smooth out all the different surfaces.
Texture
The last step was to add a texture to the cylindrical surface of the model. Most caps that require a good grip to open have some kind of ridges or bumps to help with the opening process. I used the handle of one of my clay tools to imprint a textured pattern to the surface of the model that will help the user get a better grip on the cap for opening.
Final Project Results:
Here are the results of all my hard work!
