Ski Lock Product Review - Loughborough University Design Engineering Project

A snowHead

Masque,

Time to stop being a bit of an ar$e?

I'm a Chartered Engineer, and coincidentally Loughborough Alumni.
When I look back on what I did as a second or even final year project, I would now consider it as crude and simplistic (but I didn't have 15+ years experience, a big team of engineers, and a $100M budget to work with either!), but that does not mean it was not a good learning process.
As a ski lock maybe this isn't all that appealing to me as I have alluded to above, but have you considered that really designing the worlds best ski lock might not have entirely been the exercise - as you said yourself, is there a need for a better mousetrap?
Have you also considered that this project does not represent the entire focus of studies, as you do actually need to pass the rest of the courses.

Perhaps we should start a design review thread, such that all our perfect engineering marvels can be critiqued publicly*?

[*subject to impending legal/ethical doom for doing so wink

]

A snowHead

stuarth, some people just full of own self importance, or as we like to call them "cocks"

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

stuarth, Why? This is not a benign World . . as you well know. (PS I'm not yet a qualified mechanical engineer . . . yet wink

But I may make it before my prostate kills me Toofy Grin

)

Competition is incrementally growing as we type . . . as is our ability to survive the changing environment. I'm angry not at the quality of the project but at the quality of the minds behind it. They have offered NOTHING!!!! I REPEAT . . . FUСK ALL!!! That represents or acknowledges any materials/manufacturing/mental process in the last 2000 years (ok bronze>iron>steel is a maybe). It's a "Steam Punk" effort. Even at the most base level of concept it only succeeds at being able to lock a ski or a board. As an Alumni of one of the (once) premier design houses in the World do you really think that the minds that arrived at this offering . . . and don't forget, they did put this out for our approbation . . . are worthy of our worship?

I know there is a conflict between learning how to pass a degree and exploiting the opportunities of University and normally we would never see any of it. However when students involve the Real World they have to realise that they are joining it and should not suddenly become demure innocents skipping down the Yellow Brick Road . . . the can is open the worms wriggle free.

Looking at the way we are moving toward a blacksmith or artisan innovation economy where it's possible for a One Man Band with the help of good software and easily accessible on demand fabrication can create not just prototypes for evaluation but full scale distributed manufacturing . . .

Your degree work will have probably reflected the engineering environment of your time . . . LOUGHdesign's coursework barely even acknowledges the Renaissance let alone the Industrial Revolution

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graeme, I live but to serve xxx

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Masque, you probably do

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guessing this is a "Design" course rather than an "Engineering" course?

After all it is free

graeme, If you're going to bite me at least let us know why you think I'm tasty Toofy Grin

As has been said previously, I too will at least give this group credit for reporting back (and laying themselves open to our varied assessment of their efforts). So often we see the start of a project in terms of a survey and never hear from the source again.

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Hopefully, the guys behind the design will be aware that getting feedback and refining the design are a key part of the whole process.

I think there's been a huge amount of valuable feedback given so if they can look at this objectively then it everything in this thread should be quite valuable to them.

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foxtrotzulu,

+1.

philwig, Yup, in some circumstances I'm really not 'user friendly' Twisted Evil

One of the difficulties here is knowing if this is a 'design' or an 'engineering' exercise . . . or perhaps a combined
project? That hasn't been made clear. I agree with you absolutely that 'engineering' is a team sport, but yet 'designing' is frequently not. For one party it is function over form and the the other, form over function. There are Polymaths who seamlessly integrate the two but for the most part it is as you say a "team Sport" . . . though sometimes teamwork can be very stressful when the monkeys at the coalface have to model the internal structures to fit the pretty picture on the outside Evil or Very Mad

What I don't sense in this project is 'teamwork'. They came, they polled, they went away . . . and in their own words dismissed an entire genre of thought or research. Cable locks work / Cable locks are popular / Cable locks are cheap / People buy cable locks.

They dismissed the entire possibility that they might reinvent the cable lock to be more efficient, more convenient, user friendly, cheaper, stronger, more integrated with today's connected World. They show a closed mindset that is indicative of one 'alpha' nerd and I'll bet a bottle of Talisker to the next eosb that it's LOUGHdesign who has been the directing force on this project.

I don't mind that they have produced . . . well actually I do since it is so clearly neither 'pretty', mechanically efficient nor fit for retail, though it does manage to fit some skis and snowboards . . . a lock. I do mind that it demonstrates a retrograde attitude to both design AND engineering . . . they are clearly proud that it is "successful" Do you laud them for this?

olderscot, They don't want to make that effort.

LOUGHdesign made snowHeads part of the 'team' and didn't think that perhaps we should have had more input to the decisions during the design process? That says more about LOUGHdesign's planning and team leader skills than it does about my arsieness(sic?) It could be that this is a First Year project . . . in which case I/we have to offer them a lot of leeway. If not would you employ someone with this skills level?

Addendum: I would genuinely like to see an x-sectional drawing of how the slide/lock system works to this design. There appears to be a huge surface area subject to moisture at sub-zero temps. What is the engineering solution to avoid ice stiction?

You know it makes sense.

Masque, why the shuddering bananas do you feel the need to be such a douche. Who on earth actually thinks anyone at the Uni would give a flying toss what you have to say?

How about getting your silly combined binding-ski-lock-energy-generating-skis into production eh? That's a far more stupid suggestion than the actually materially existing lock the students have designed.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

meh, Not a clue have you Toofy Grin

Though the patent applications cost me a new Triumph Crying or Very sad

A snowHead

The next "design project" should be... design a new concept to replace the US patent office.
If Loughdesing's 1st image on page 1 of this thread was a photo of something actually knocked up from alu and anodised... Amazon could sue them with their latest patent.
(PS instead of all this fancy 3D printing fashion, my mate Colin the Maker, one of the guys that did the Top Gear Reliant Robin etc., could have knocked up a real tangible model for the project in an afternoon)

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Masque, a fool and their money are easily parted. Show me something in production and you'd have some actual clout rather than an expensive piece of paper.

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meh, I do like to think about you and wonder if a 'Teasmaid' is far too newfangled for you to cope with? Do you remember college, the dual challenges of rigid learning and free thought? For one of mine it was the misery of applied mathematics needed to pass my exams and the utter joy of building a 10watt stereo amp that fitted into a matchbox sized heatsink, or trying (and failing) to fabricate a flexible circuit board. The point here is that we were invited into the process and when you do that then all bets are off of who gives a shiote . . . Thoooouggh if the peers you are submitting to are as intellectually flaccid as you've proven to be there little risk in doing that. rolling eyes

andy, The US PO is asinine . . . It's all the lawyers involved that need re-designing . . . preferably with a shotgun and a shovel Evil or Very Mad

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or sent into space on a rocket powered by captured fart

yes that one has been granted

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If the original design could fit a 12v battery in that case I think they might be onto a useful safety feature ....

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12V battery and some electrickery from a cattle prod? I'd buy one Twisted Evil

After all it is free

Pound shop
£1 for 50 cable ties of various size
Take 3 packs with you on holiday and just zap half a dozen around a couple of pairs of skis and poles and there you go

Or, judging by the fact that my guitar cables always take me 10 minutes to untangle, just take a couple of them and wrap them round your skis - no thief will ever get them undone

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Masque, the flaccidity is all your own. None of us have been invited into anything, we've been asked for feedback on someone's design and some has been given in good grace... you have demonstrated what a pompous fool looks like. That does have it's own merit as product feedback is almost always accompanied by a vocal minority demonstrating the Dunning-Kruger effect. These students will at least understand that better now! Toofy Grin

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Masque, You post lots of interesting esoteric and challenging stuff which I greatly enjoy but this isn't about ripping the inventor of the Bulldog board a new one. It's about a student who had the good grace to come back here and show us their final output - not try and hoodwink us into believing it's the best thing since sliced bread and commercially shill it to us.

No one on here is the custodian of academic and intellectual values, and by their nature there are many millions of products in the grown up world that aren't anywhere near as earthshattering as their commercial owners would want the great unwashed to believe or worse are fundamentally flawed or downright dangerous. So if some students didn't tick your boxes it's hardly the crime of the century. Personally they'd already lost me - if it isn't made out of duct tape, zip ties and superglue it doesn't constitute "proper" engineering in my book wink

You know it makes sense.

I've been thinking about other designs. I'm envisaging a circular concept, a very squat metal disk, full of concentric circles that pull out to form a flexible interlocked metal tube which can be fed through the skis and back into itself - kind of snake catching tail, Or some sort of expanding concertina of metal circles that pull out to form a flexible metal tube that can be threaded through the skis.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Dave of the Marmottes, I know what you mean, but if they had just shown it to their mum's they would have thought it was great. Sometimes failing can be as much of a learning curve as winning. I reckon in the long run a bit of harsh criticism will benefit them.

A snowHead

Megamum

Ah yes. Tangled slinkys. That takes me back a few years but you're right. Like the the guitar leads they take ages to untangle and it's much easier for any tealeaf to just move on to the next pair.

Ps. I know your idea is more of a flat pack slinky but I do like the concept ( at least at the emotional, fun level.)

A snowHead

olderscot, Flat pack slinky - I love the description and yes, that sort of describes what I had in mind. I was kind of envisaging what happens with my box of pasty cutters - they stack one inside each other, if I tip them out and from the 'wrong' side pick out the middle one the little ridges on them pull all the cutters out in a tall stack, or a bit like the way rolled up newspapers can be pulled out to make a palm tree (remember doing that as a child?). I can see modern materials being used to make something that could be extended to a length that could be wound around skis to secure them - without it necessarily being a thin cable or perhaps even made of metal. The other thing that occurs is why do we feel the need to have something that completely closes to make it secure. Skis are essentially big things I see no reason why something couldn't be designed to pull out and be secured without the end necessarily being fed back into a mechanism - if something pulled out and then went rigid - or had something added or removed to make it rigid then it could be secured with a small gap in the mechanism or the two ends just touching.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

I like the idea of the form Megamum, but at the end of it you end up with a cable loop. It's really no more secure than a cable lock, a lot of which tend to coil up quite neatly as it is.

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meh, well

I never expected a compliment from you . . . Unless you only read the first postulation of Messrs Dunning and Kruger rolling eyes

You see I have to offer you a huge hug of thanks. If you hadn't been such a huge skidmark on the pants of innovation I would never have been pushed to dig deeply into RFID, Bluetooth & PV developments I would not have two patents pending. I here, in public, let you know that the first $100 I make will be framed and sent to you.

On a phone so more l8r Toofy Grin

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Back in days of old i.e. late 80s / early 90s, I had a pair of Scott poles where one pole had a cable that ran inside the pole from near the bottom and emerged flush (ish) at the top of the grip. To lock the skis and poles, the cable was pulled out to its full length (about 110cm), wrapped around / through the skis / whatever and the free end of the cable was passed through a hole in the other pole grip that had a key lock at the top which when turned locked the cable.

The pros were: it was pretty secure (the cable was 5+ mm thick), there was no need to carry anything else (apart from the key), it could be moved to new standard width poles because all of the gubbins were in the grips and it worked.

The cons were: it could be a bit cumbersome (the poles usually ended up inverted when it was all locked together because they were longer than the distance from where the cable passed through the bindings to the ground), you had to make sure you didn't lose the key but, above all, the poles were heavy compared to the normal aluminium poles of the day.

The latter "con" was what cause me to stop using them but, to be fair, as a locking system, it did work.

After all it is free

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Part of the process (I'm pretty sure) will also be an element of reflection, i.e. this team will self criticise and say where they went wrong, how they would do it better next time etc.

Help!!

Ski Lock Product Review - Loughborough University Design Engineering Project

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