Model Knee Coming Along -Isabella A.

Overall I feel like our group, “ReJoint” has made significant progress in not only finishing the knee joint model but also thinking of questions to ask our potential customers along with ideas on how to improve already existing products for our problem. Like I mentioned first, our group has just finished making some final touches to our model.

This photo was our model after the first work day. It clearly needed some work, but our foundations were solid and we were heading in the right direction. For our model we used PVC pipes to represent the femur and the tibia bones in the upper and lower leg. To the left of the “tibia” you can see a small wooden dowel, which represented the smaller bone, fibula. Connecting the tibia and fibula were two rubber bands which represented ligaments. The ligament in our model goes through a small cube which represents the patella or knee cap as most people call it. There are also ligaments on the side of femur connected to the fibula and tibia, so we drilled small wholes in the side (to about the size of a rubber band) put a rubber band through, and connected the two, securing it with tape.

 

After day two our model was complete with the addition of rubber bike tires to serve as tendons, white clay to represent muscle, and green felt to represent fat. This model was a work in progress though. Previously we had used string as tendons, but that material was not stretchy enough for our model to work. In addition to that the bike tires serves as muscle but was not secured tightly enough for an effective demonstration.

This day turned out to be a big one for our group because we had also received our knee brace! The product we received is called the “Win.Max”. This product was made to relieve pressure on the knee cap, and provide support for sprains and strains in the knee. In addition, this product is top of the line so we figured it would be a good one to base our product on and eventually build off on with improvements and innovations.

I was first in our group to get to wear the knee brace. Overall I did not find this product very comfortable. In my opinion, it was too small and the material inside was itchy not very breathable. Even though I didn’t like this product, one of my group members, Ally did find it very comfortable. Ally said that when playing soccer with it she didn’t have very many problems. It was: a good fit, and wicked away sweat to dry quickly. Her one complaint was that it did slip down every once in a while. These notes are important to help us build off this general idea for a model and make improvements to create a better product.

 

For this project my official role is the shaper. As “the shaper” it is my responsibility to keep people on task and look at deadlines to make sure we are doing everything in a timely manner. I think in any group project there should always be a “shaper” to keep people on task to make sure we are getting the job done and creating the best product possible.

Overall I feel like this team is doing extremely well! We have all worked with each other before, so knowing each other’s strengths and weaknesses really helps us to maximize our work efforts and time. I’m really happy to be working with them again because I feel our last project came out really well and we started this project out on the right foot. I’m confident we will create an amazing outcome and I’m excited to see where this leads us.