Kid Crank was a project I worked on while a student at Georgia Tech. For this project we were tasked to redesign a simple mechanism.
During my summer breaks, I worked at an outdoor day camp and taught a woodworking class. We taught all campers how to use classic woodworking tools including the classic "eggbeater" style drill pictured to the right. Most of my campers struggled to use this style drill due to the gearing and there were also some injuries due to the exposed gears. Many campers were also left handed making it harder to use these drills.
Taking these initial problems, I wanted to redesign this classic drill to make it more kid friendly.
Fiskars at the time of the project was the only other company making a hand drill with an updated design and an enclosed gearing system. This drill was designed for light home improvement project and due to its plastic gear it did not work well for the our camps wood working class.
After looking at the Fiskars drill I knew I wanted to keep metal gears as part of the redesign, but also discovered planetary gears. These are used inside of most modern day electric drills and allow for for various gear ratios and torque settings. From here I began sketching and testing different ideas / different hand positioning for the drill and crank.
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The first concept I tested had a handle at the top for leverage and allowed for easy downward force to be placed on a piece of wood. The design was ambidextrous as well. I quickly realized this extra force caused bits to break easier and the design was a little more unfamiliar for the campers.
The second concept was based off of the existing power drill shape, which was a more familiar design for the campers. I designed around this idea for the final design.
A 3D printed model was made based on the second concept including a gear set to mesh up with the existing planetary gears. For the final concept, I designed the finish to be clear so kids could understand how the mechanism works.
