Grip that zip!-Zipping made easy for arthritis sufferers

by samfish74

A-Level Student Wanna Be Robotics Engineer Keen 3D printing enthusiast (Sadly don't have one thou...

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4 Comments

Category: Home Living

License: custom

Files Included:

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Description

I designed this little gadget to help my grandma who i noticed had a lot of trouble with her zips. Namely because she has bad arthritis it means that her hands shake a lot. Due to this she finds it increasingly difficult to slot the zips together. I designed this aid which allows her to grab both sides of the zip and it uses a notch to guide the zip into place meaning that she doesn't have to try aim to get it in because the alignment is already there. The design allows her to put the zip in and then because the notch guiding it will come out the other side of one of the zip grips when it is in, it allows her to use a fluid motion and the same gripping device to fully do up her coat. I do not have a 3D printer, so if anyone wants to use my design please could you upload a photo of the print please. It will need high quality printing due to the living hinge. Come September I want to print this at my school on their basic printer so i can give it to my grandma and then hopefully be able to evolve it further so that it will be a cheaper, easy to print alternative to help the thousands of arthritis sufferers all over the world. The aim is to develop it so it can be printed on a very low cost, low accuracy printer. I hope this will help you or your friend/family to be able to zip up their coat, whilst it may seem a small and trivial matter, there is no defining how much self confidence and self sustainability can bring someone happiness!

I have a video of it (polymorph prototype) in use for anyone to see it But seen as I don't have a YouTube channel just post comment asking and I'll email it! If you're unsure of the design just ask the video will clarify

Thank You for looking my design

Comments (4)

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samfish74 about 8 years ago

Thank you in advance :-)

samfish74 about 8 years ago

If anybody has downloaded and printed and tested this, any tips for its improvement would be greatly appreciated. I want to work out the bugs so it can actually be useful for people with limited manual dexterity.

samfish74 about 8 years ago

Hi, I realise when I managed to print this out myself on a schools 3D printer, that it has a few issues. Ive been trying to work to resolve these because despite its flaws my grandma who it was designed for has found it useful sometimes with the physical modifications I made eg sanding so wider slot and adding a little magnet