From Idea to Reality - Palmar Plantar

CAD of final Design

Rapid Prototyping

The first prototype parts printing on my Solidoodle. In total, I spent about 24 hours printing parts for the prototypes. The Solidoodle did a great job honestly, I was really impressed! 

First Parts

These parts comprised our first physical prototype,  and highlighted some issues that were addressed with subsequent revisions, and some were helpful in learning about how my Solidoodle handles PLA. 

Functional Prototype

The pink silicone wrapping is for increased stimulation of the feet during use. Each complete rotation of the drum and attached pink stimulator is sensed via a hall effect sensor.

The foot cup inserts into the white disk, which is coupled to a potentiometer. The voltage change due to the potentiometer's rotation is converted into degrees, and pushed to the mobile and desktops apps, with the hall effect sensor readings, through a teensy 2.0 microcontroller. 

I first met the CEO of PalmarPlantar, Steve, during the senior design showcase; where the senior class gets to show off to the public the fruits of their education. My project was a massive, DIY force plate that could track a user's center of mass as they walked atop the device. Steve was finishing up his masters degree in sports medicine and physical therapy using a similar commercial device, and was pretty impressed at the difference in cost between my device, and his research grade force plate. Several weeks later, He asked me to come aboard as a consultant to help develop some of the intellectual property he's accumulated into a product. 

The project was already underway when I was brought aboard, with rough CAD design done by an industrial designer, and general features decided upon, but a lack of direction and no real engineering team. I brought in an additional employee from my network, and got to work. Within 3 months we had a finalized, semi modular production design, and a functional prototype that easily showcased the capabilities of the product, including wireless integration with both a mobile and desktop application.