We’re Finally Here- Odessa D.

We have finally reached the end of this chapter in our bio-medical DAP project, and so far it has been a great experience through and through. Even though there have been times when I was just completely at a loss on what we were supposed to do, my team and I always managed to get though the rough patches in our prototype development and hopefully we will reach our intended goal of a working prototype that will protect the wrist of a girl in roller derby. We have all come a very long way since the beginning of this project, and I know that we all will have wonderful final prototypes, in which I never thought I would be able to actually make before.

We have a complete materials list and are currently finishing the 3D printing for the brace aspect in our design and after that we will be able to put the entire final product together in time for testing the quality of our product, in which I hope we will receive promising feedback from our tests the following week. Our design materials include (memory) foam for the padding, the 3D printing plastic for the part that would be bracing the impact on the user’s wrist, and a nylon- polyester blend of fabric for the outer and layer of our design to provide both comfort and protection of the inner materials. In our design, we have incorporated what we tend to call the “rollie- pollie effect”, in which the 3D- printed plastic would be layered over one another, creating slight moveability for the hand for comfotability while also providing protection against any impact force upon the brace itself. The reason for this is back in the beginning of this project when we had to each wear our products for a day my team and I all came to the conclusion that we needed to be constantly moving the brace around and adjusting it appropriately because although it was very sturdy and stable, it wasn’t very comfortable.

I feel as if my team is currently not all together, and by that I mean that we are all working on the same project and towards the same goal, but we tend to not collaborate with one another while working and instead we work on separate things without coming in as a group for a discussion on what needs to be done that class period. I know that we are all nearing the end of our project, but I really hope that this will change and that we can collaborate more while working out the last of the kinks in our final prototype design and preparing ourselves for the final presentation, in which I am terrified for.