The Skovel

Compressed

Inspiration

Recently, Hamilton suffered a giant snowstorm that closed the university and many roads. There was a lot of snow on the ground, which made it hard to move around and try to go to campus to get some work done. From this experience, we thought about things that would have made this difficult journey more bearable, which can be seen in our final design for the Skovel.

What it does

A compact multitool that can be fit into a backpack, with each of the parts connected with magnets. Two pieces will fold out into skis, and another two pieces will extend out into ski poles. The collapsed versions of these components can also be fitted together to create a compact snow shovel, with the two skis being able to be attached together using a slot. The handles of the ski poles also work as electric handwarmers, which are waterproof, USB-C chargable and can be squeezed to turn on the heating function.

How we built it

Using Autodesk Inventor and orthographic sketching, we modelled each of the parts and combined them in multiple assembly files. The final product is a miniature 3D model of the finalized design as well as the CAD files created for the design.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge we ran into was a way to keep the ski poles extended, as we felt that many mechanisms would not be able to support at least half of the bodyweight of a person. To solve this, we decided to use a pin design used in many extendable tables, where each of the pieces can be fitted together, with each piece of the pole having one hole for the pin to fit into and one pin. Another challenge we ran into was the limited time we had to create the entire design, finalize it and also print the design. To handle this, we reduced the size of each of the components to make a miniature version of the finalized design while also reducing infill where we could.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One thing that we are very proud of is the compactibility and visibility of the design. The compactibility of such a large design into a footprint that can fit into a backpack is something we struggled with while creating the design, and that we are very proud of, as we were able to find a way around it through the folding of the skis and the collapsibility of the ski poles. With our design's visibility, we designed it so that they would be easy to see from a distance in case the user got stranded while trying to make their way through a tough snowstorm. Though this is a subtle detail, this design idea was something we found to be quite creative and thus explains why we are very fond of it.

What we learned

Through creating this design, we learned how to render different CAD designs in Autodesk Inventor while also creating professional assembly animations for our design in the aforementioned program. We also learned how to create a CAD design as a team by splitting up the design into modular components that could be worked on individually but could be tested together.

What's next for the Skovel

For future iterations of the Skovel, we will find ways to make the bottom of the foldable ski completely flat for easy use and quick transportation without any sort of turbulence. We will also find ways to make it more compact so that it can get to a point where it can fit in someone's coat pocket.