As an intern at HelmetHub, I had the opportunity to really make an impact on the business. HelmetHub is a small startup that is developing a helmet vending kiosk that integrates with cities’ bike share programs. Working with HelmetHub was a great experience; the development team was amazing to work with, making cycling more accessible to the general public is something that I am passionate about, and there were some interesting mechanical challenges in the product itself.
During my time at the company, most of the work that I did was redesigning and prototyping the access module. In the time that I wasn’t doing that, I worked on other things that were critical for the release of the product, such as designing the “docking” infrastructure to integrate with bikeshare system. I communicated with our customers to ensure the docking was up to their standards and passed this information along to our manufacturer to see if the bends and welding that we wanted to do were feasible. In addition to this, I developed flaps that would hold our RFID sensors for each of our helmet rods, vacuum formed a plastic insert to hold helmets, improved the structural integrity of the doors, hooked up sensors, created a sheet metal CAD of our chute to pass off to manufacturing, and glued back together anything that broke along the way.
Though the original plan was that Alex, the other mechanical engineering intern, and I were going to redesign the access module for the next revolution, we ended up having to change it for the current kiosk. A few weeks into the summer, we found that the current access module was too low to the base of the machine and helmets were piling up and getting stuck on each other. At this point, we had already redesigned and prototyped the access module, using a spring hinge to tilt a basket back so that it would dump helmets when the module was closing, but not when it was opening. However, since the body panels had already been manufactured, we would have to work within those boundaries to create a new access module. Pressed for time, we went into a team room and came out with two new ideas: an access module with a solenoid back flap and another with a tilting basket. Together, we worked to CAD and prototype these, with the plan of getting a manufacturable product in two weeks.
The prototyped modules could both return 24 helmets, which met the specifications that the company had put out earlier, and also avoided the problem of the costly vacuum formed insert that the last access module used. We did need to choose a design to proceed with, and with some deliberation, all of us agreed that the solenoid flap had the better potential. We did end up pivoting several times with the design decisions that we made, but through this I am certain that we left the company in a good place by uncovering potential problems and solutions.
The prototyped modules could both return 24 helmets, which met the specifications that the company had put out earlier, and also avoided the problem of the costly vacuum formed insert that the last access module used. We did need to choose a design to proceed with, and with some deliberation, all of us agreed that the solenoid flap had the better potential. We did end up pivoting several times with the design decisions that we made, but through this I am certain that we left the company in a good place by uncovering potential problems and solutions.