Project | Design a brake lever adapter

Project Mjolnir is an adaptive mountain bike for wheelchair users, built around one rider and their riding context. A standard brake lever assumes every rider can squeeze it with their fingers — but this rider has a spinal cord injury high in the neck, so they cannot curl their fingers with enough force to stop the bike. What they can do reliably is hold a steady grip on the handle and move their wrist.

In this project, you take the supplied Fusion dataset of the handle, brake lever and connecting rod, and design a mechanism that turns one of those wrist movements into full brake travel, without the rider ever letting go. You keep the supplied brake lever and connecting rod, but everything else can be moved, redesigned or added to. The challenge runs in three units: Noel Joyce's story, the brake lever challenge briefing, and the challenge project itself.

For educators: The project is supported by three versions of the exercise: an individual version published with the challenge unit for learners who want to take it on directly, plus more in-depth secondary/K-12 (CTE, Design & Technology) and post-secondary/university versions in the teaching supplement for classroom delivery. See the teaching supplements and module downloads for more.

Project learning objectives

After completing this project, you’ll be able to:

• Turn a rider's needs and capabilities into a clear set of design requirements.
• Generate several distinct concepts and evaluate them against those requirements to justify your final selection.
• Communicate design ideas through annotated sketches.
• Model a working mechanism in Autodesk Fusion using joints and accurate dimensions and verify its motion through its full range of travel.
• Communicate how a design functions using rendering and animation.
• Build and test a physical prototype of your design.
• Explain and justify your design decisions to the person who will use it.

Download the project dataset. Upload it into Fusion to get started.