II. Design Process - Concentric Exercise Device

Our design process began by deciding what device we wanted to create in the first place. We very quickly decided on creating something that would allow for concentric-only exercises, and again very quickly decided on building off of the concepts used in typical rowing machines. As you can see in figure 2, our initial design was very general and only noted major aspects of the product we planned on creating–namely, a fan connected to a rope and spring mechanism (to offset and reset the device, respectively). 

Figure 1: First Iteration of the Design

The designing and building process went by exceptionally quickly, and hence, began to blend together. More information on the design process can be found in the “Manufacturing and Assembly” section. The basic function that we were striving for throughout the design process was for the mechanism to provide resistance when performing a bicep curl or dead lift. An example of this is displayed in figure 2.

Figure 2: Sketch showing how the mechanism functions