This week, I was stuck at home during class time due to a stomach bug. Despite this setback, I am much happier with the current position my team is in given the challenges we have faced. Our original idea of a solar-powered drink warmer was not feasible because the power generated from the solar panel would not be adequate. If we wanted to have adequate power, we would need to wire the circuit with a nine-volt battery. However, adding a battery to the project reduced the novelty of the project. Upon consulting with the experts at the UIUC FabLab, we decided to bring our project into a different direction. My groupmate Ria, from Team Synergy, had a great idea to solve a common problem. Currently, the Apple Air Pods rest on the lower inner ear and are connected via Bluetooth to the iPhone. However, when consumers try to use the Apple Air Pods while working out, running, or any other strenuous activity, the Air Pods are prone to falling out of the ear. To prevent this, our project aims to stabilize the Air Pods by printing an attachment to keep the Air Pods in the ears.
The design will feature an attachment clip to the base of the Air Pod. This will wrap around the Air Pod and secure the stabilizing mechanism. The stabilizing mechanism is a 3D printed tube that wraps around the outside of the ear. Although we were not having great success with 3D scanning someone’s head and isolating the ears, we were able to come up with a makeshift solution. We would like to make three different sizes of Air Pod holders, small, medium, and large. This will allow us to quickly make the Air Pod holders from a set of premade molds, rather than scanning someone’s head every time we want to print the holders. We visited the UIUC FabLab to talk to Clinton about our idea and he gave us a lot of great feedback. Clinton showed us how to make a spline, an arc made of multiple non-colinear points. Once we made a spline, we used the sweep feature to give depth to our arc. When the stabilizing mechanism design was finished, we attached it to our attachment clip to finish the design. We did not get a chance to print out our prototype, so we will be visiting the MakerLab on Monday to print out a beginning prototype. More to come from Team Synergy!