Automated Surfboard Waxer
Collaborators: Andy Meyers, James Truitt, Richard Didham, Kelcie Bourne, and Nathan Penn
To perfect wax application and streamline a necessary but time/effort intensive process for surf bums.
OBJECTIVE:
JOURNEY:
Instead of using Design Thinking need finding principles to determine a problem that could be helped with automation, this project was driven by common interest – what is something that all teammates could relate to? The connection to the ocean and to surfing drove this project to inception.
We split into three teams: the frame structure, electrical components, and the wax containment unit.
Designing and developing independently with weekly team meetings, my partner and I iterated a mechanical spring wax holder, modeled in Solidworks and built to test via type A 3D printers.
Mechanical wax holster + Frame attachment iterations
We created a surfboard waxer that evenly applied a wax base coat to a surfboard in a pattern specified via an Arduino. The automated wax application saves substantial time versus an application by hand.
OUTCOME: