“goal!”
“That’s not fair!”
“How come?”
“You see, one of my goalies have leg being broken.”
“So as some of my players.”
As I first get to know how foosball is such a “competitive” sport for the student of 5th, 6th, 7th and even some friend of mine in 8th grade. I also noticed that on the three foosball tables that the school gets to offer, the plastique players have been by each other’s side for their life time. And yet those aged players or still there, but lots of them have very poor medical condition, by that I mean have missing legs. I think this is caused by the enthusiasm of all the students that have tried their best to hit the ball. In order to preserve that enthusiasm, and also to challenge the skill of my selves, I decided to fix it.
As I first get to know how foosball is such a “competitive” sport for the student of 5th, 6th, 7th and even some friend of mine in 8th grade. I also noticed that on the three foosball tables that the school gets to offer, the plastique players have been by each other’s side for their life time. And yet those aged players or still there, but lots of them have very poor medical condition, by that I mean have missing legs. I think this is caused by the enthusiasm of all the students that have tried their best to hit the ball. In order to preserve that enthusiasm, and also to challenge the skill of my selves, I decided to fix it.
I immediately came up with my first idea. Which is to replace all of the broken ones. I would use the 3d printed plastic to from some foosball player of my own and replace all the broken ones. But as I took tools from the iLab, which is the amazing work space where innovation and tools come from, and go to the table with my teacher Mr. Perry. I got to know that the foosball players all almost impossible to be unmounted due to that they will be on a tub along with others. Every single of them are stapled in to the tube by metal. As I realized that my initial plan will not work, I also got to know that the existence of the vocab “doable” in the context of “not doable”.
The second plan is the plan that finally worked out. It comes from the idea of an artificial body part. That is, I will be designing the leg of the foosball player along with a locking upper “vest” to attach the leg to the upper body that have remained on the tube.
“Wow this is harder than I thought.”
The first step of designing such a thing is to measure the foosball player. Not on the height or on the weigh, but every length of the diameter of a circle or a segment of a polygon that make up the 3-dimensional shape of the foosball player. I would be a lot easer if I have a laser scanner that will trace out 3d objects easily or if it is online. But all I have is a ruler a pencil and a piece of paper. My friend, robin, did came to help once so I could read out the number and let him to write it on the paper. Mr. Perry also suggested clippers to me in replacement of my rulers which may cause lots of errors on the reading. I got the necessary numbers on to the paper after three days I first worked on it. I soon filled out all the other numbers using some math.
As I tried to start on designing the vest thing on my laptop. Mr. Perry stopped me and told me how imported it is to get a basic idea of what I am building by making it out of card board. Card boards, as they are named after card are made out of paper. Paper is more intuitive to work with and also are more expendable in terms of wasting them due to the mistake in work. The waste of material is also one of the aspects of working. I now have that in mind. With the skill of doing great paper work, I made the first vest for the fools plays. The leg of the thing is reinforced with three layers of cardboard since the leg is the part that the ball will hit. On the next day, I tried the vest one for one of the foosball players and found I fitting.
At that night, I was glad of see that other students are curious about my gift to the foosball players. I was also excited to see that the broken foosball player can once again influence the game, even is its paper leg is quite soft. Then I realize that normal plastic will not with stand the impacts of a hitting ball. That resulted to the wooden leg design in the finally product.
Then is comes the most part of the project that took me the most time and effort. That is to design the 3D modal of the finally vest. I learned how to design in 3D, I also learned how to work with a 3D printer and also the laser cuter. For any spare time, I have. I will work on the 3D modeling and then print it on the printer. I than take the finish prototype and test it on the foosball players. Problem comes everywhere, the first five or more models does not fit at all. I will also to make all kinds of big and small changes every day and then test it. The wooden leg part also requires a tremendous amount of design. The wooden part is made out of two pieces of 5mm wood board cut on the laser cuter and stick together with a hole on the top so it can be attached to the plastic part. The size of the hole and the shape of the boards are all things to test out to fit.
Just like that two weeks have pass for me to reiterate the design and test it out. And it was one day that I finally test out and got the confidence that this design might work well. And on that day, me taking robin went to do the first experiment on the vest. We took hot glue, the two piece of 3D printed vest part and that one-piece wooden leg along with some rubber band to held the thing in place after glued. And in the first time in forever, a foosball player that used to be unable to hit the ball is working again.
“Who made that!”
“Wow, its awesome!”
“Yeah, but who made that?”
“Did you make that!”
I was so happy to see it work so well, and most importantly, people like it. The design was soon duplicated and made every of the foosball people able to hit the ball again. I also added the iLab logo on to the one side of the vest, and a reminder “do not spin fast” on the other side. I also got my name and Robin’s name on under them.
“Make sure you put my name on it too since I helped you that much.”
