In class on Monday, we were still awaiting the arrival of our blender apparatus materials, so we continued to make headway by fleshing out our bike stand ideas along with a locking mechanism to secure the blender to the rear rack.
In terms of the bike stand, we are still deciding about the most useful way to proceed. While we were very excited about our plans for the simplified stand (a modification of Jodie Wu’s stand) that we worked on last week, we talked with Estuardo and he offered a different design to consider. His idea involves using the center of the rear wheel as the site of attachment for the stand. The stand resembles an upside down rear rack, which could swing up when the bike needs to be ridden, and could swing down to the ground in order to elevate the wheel when blending. This stand would be permanently attached to the bike, as opposed to the detachable stand design we had been developing. It would extend wider on one side of the bike in order to clear the gear hub.
There are several pros to Estuardo’s idea. First of all, if the stand is permanently attached, the chance of the user losing a loose stand is eliminated. Secondly, it attaches further back on the bike than ours and Jodie’s designs do, making it less likely that someone will hit their heel on the stand attachment.
However, one con with this approach is that if the stand is connected permanently to the bike, it can obviously only be used with that bike, rather than being able to be used on multiple bikes. Also, we are still a bit unclear of how exactly we could attach the stand to such a small part of the bike (we need to flesh this out a bit more with Estuardo).
We have sent out an email to our community partners in Nicaragua, asking them if they would prefer a bike that is permanently attached or one that is detachable. In the meantime, we will continue to make progress on the blending apparatus, as some of our parts have just arrived!
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