Hello!
My friends and I have been given a client for our design technology class. The client has patients that have weight bearing precautions on their legs, so they place a lot of upper extremely force on the walkers, quad canes, and other assistive devices they use.
Our project seems simple: Design a product that we can attach to the handles of walkers, quad canes, etc. so that the patients can see how much force they weight they are placing on the walker by their upper body.
We've run into a few preliminary issues and need some guidance. The device should be able to support up to 300 pounds, so finding 200kg load cells seems difficult and expensive. Are button cells the right type of cells to be looking at? These sensors seem promising, but the documentation is a bit weird. Do they really support up to 1000 lbs? https://www.tekscan.com/store/category/force-sensors-flexiforce
Additionally, we would need to use a load cell amplifier, correct? Our device should be able to switch from a quad cane with one handle to a walker with two. Do you think this is a feasible project with a roughly $100 budget and a few weeks to work on it?
Do you guys have any suggestions?
You are seriously underestimating the difficulty of this project.
First, do not confuse force with pressure, which is force per unit area.
Patients exert variable pressures through their hands or other body parts on the surfaces of various walkers, canes, etc., distributed over areas of different sizes, and those pressures change continuously as the patient moves.
In turn, the walker exerts different pressures on the ground, distributed unevenly over various contact points, and this distribution changes continuously as the patient moves.
The total force exerted on the ground by some apparatus, especially if there is more than one contact point, is quite difficult to measure, as you have to accurately measure and add up all individual forces and areas at all the individual contact points.
Personal body weight scales solve this problem by forcing a person to stand on a platform so that the person's weight is supported entirely by (typically) four small sensors. The total contribution of those four sensors is summed to calculate the total force (weight).
A similar approach is probably your only option, and that won't be easy to move between different types of walking aids.
Yes, you could probably take apart a personal weight scale and put the sensors on a four-legged walker. Scales include the required amplifiers.
Google "hack bathroom scale" for lots of ideas. Note that some scales have two load bearing bars with four suspension points, so choose carefully.
I suggest that you use your imagination.
I cannot restore the remaining posts.
The culprit has been permanently banned.
Thread locked.