Second full day of work

Today we were able to have another full day of work on yet another beautiful day in Nepal. The three teams had the opportunity to spend a productive day working on each of their projects and tasks for the week. As always each team was properly fueled by traditional Nepali tea. If you continue reading below you will be able to see what each team worked on during Tuesday’s workday

Wheelchair team:

Today the wheelchair team made some measurements on wheelchairs at the hospital to inform some decisions about dimensions for our design. We made some updates to the design based on these measurements and things that we learned yesterday in talking with our client. We also got to watch the technicians here fit a wheelchair to a patient. That process is important to us so that we can mimic that process ourselves when fitting the wheelchair in the future. In the afternoon we ventured out to downtown Pokhara looking for local parts. We ended up finding some viable caster wheels and purchasing some bike parts to bring back home to use to start prototyping. Tomorrow we will be traveling to a local village to see the terrain and home life of some patients that use the hospital’s wheelchairs. Overall it was a very productive day!

-Carlie

Electrical team:

Today the electrical team continued our work on checking over the solar systems in use at the hospital and talked through with Thomas Meier again to make sure we were on the correct track. Over the hours we worked, we checked out each of the rooms that we're used to store the batteries and tested them. As we went, most of the systems seemed correct but we found some questions for Thomas. We also found hot spots on many of the solar panels which is an area that has likelihood to stop working and make the whole system break. We made a good start on what we'll be doing the rest of the week.

-TJ

Prosthetics team:

Today the prosthetics team began to move from observing the prosthetics workshop in action to being able to begin working on our own tasks. For this week one of our goals was to prepare a presentation about 3D printing. Specifically the hospital wants to know more about 3D printing, how they could potentially use it, and weighing the pros and cons of 3D printing versus their current method of creating prosthetics. Today we were able to finish creating this presentation to hopefully show advantages and disadvantages of using 3D printing. Another task that we are excited to begin working on is trying to design a standing desk the patients use for exercises for the Occupational Therapy department of the hospital that they can manufacture locally. Today we began the initial design by talking about different features the stand should have and viewing the stands they currently use that do not properly work. Moving forward we will begin making a CAD model of a stand to then show to the therapists for feedback. We are excited to have a busy week ahead of us!

-Ryan