Tender-Link by Team Fillet Mignon

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  All the processes in OnShape D:

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Inspiration: Current adaptive fishing gear relies on heavy, stationary boat mounts that completely remove the fun of holding the rod and feeling a fish bite. We wanted to build a wearable device that bypasses the hand entirely, allowing people with limited grip strength to enjoy casting and reeling one-handed.

What it does: The Tender-Link is a forearm-mounted sleeve and linkage system that lets the user cast naturally but instantly locks when a fish strikes. It redirects up to 450 Nm of torque away from the hand and into a contoured metal spine, keeping the rod secure without requiring any grip strength.

How we built it: We modeled the entire mechanical assembly in OnShape and learned from scratch how to design and assemble parts. We optimized the forearm sleeve for budget-friendly printing and the hardware for simple CNC aluminum cutting to ensure it won't rust.

Challenges we ran into: Learning cloud-based CAD from scratch during rainstorms meant constant internet dropouts kept deleting our unsaved progress. We also completely broke our construction for the most invested part, the sleeve, by using messy transforms for the forearm cutouts, which made us do a seven-hour rebuild.

Accomplishments that we're proud of: We engineered a highly functional, manufacturable mechanical device while learning a brand-new CAD software entirely through YouTube and Reddit in a single weekend. We are especially proud of recovering from a big failure and successfully rebuilding our model just in time to hit the submission deadline.

What we learned We learned the fundamentals of cloud-based CAD assemblies, particularly how to create and join parts and test motion using Mate Connectors and assemblies. We also learned that the "Wrap" tool is the only clean way to cut geometric patterns into curved surfaces. More importantly, we learned how to use CAD!

What's next for Tender-Link by Team Fillet Mignon Hopefully get more knowledge of CAD designing and overall try to make a bigger impact on our community at home. Also this was our first CAD Challenge/Hackathon type event and very interested in doing more.

Built With

• onshape