Pivotal - a pivoting longboard brake
ME203 Final Project
Fall 2012
The Pivotal longboard brake was a project I worked on for Stanford course ME203 design and manufacturing. The project was super open-ended, basically make whatever you want. There were some rules (no weapons, must have multiple joined parts, etc).
I had a lot of ideas starting out, and was having a tough time honing in on anything. This idea actually wasn't even one of them, it was born out of an incident when I almost killed myself trying to get to class. Normally, to brake on a longboard, one has to scrape their foot on the ground. This gets a bet tricky when trying to navigate Stanford's notorious circle of death, and many times I had to end up jumping off with my board barreling into the grass. It was after one such experience that I had the idea for the pivotal longboard brake, a way of braking on a longboard without having to take my foot off the board. The motion had to be easy and intuitive, and I spent a lot of time looking weird on a longboard trying to figure out the right way to do it. Check out what I came up with by reading on!
I had a lot of ideas starting out, and was having a tough time honing in on anything. This idea actually wasn't even one of them, it was born out of an incident when I almost killed myself trying to get to class. Normally, to brake on a longboard, one has to scrape their foot on the ground. This gets a bet tricky when trying to navigate Stanford's notorious circle of death, and many times I had to end up jumping off with my board barreling into the grass. It was after one such experience that I had the idea for the pivotal longboard brake, a way of braking on a longboard without having to take my foot off the board. The motion had to be easy and intuitive, and I spent a lot of time looking weird on a longboard trying to figure out the right way to do it. Check out what I came up with by reading on!