I may be stretching the openness of the thread a little here, but I have an interesting mechanical engineering hobbyist project, and I have no mechanical aptitude. I figure some people around here might, and this might be interesting to them.
The Avacore CoreControl is a neat little device, based on very simple mechanical principles, that lets you exercise for longer and harder than you otherwise could, by cooling down your blood directly. It pulls a slight vacuum on your hand, and directly applies ice to the palm. The vacuum counteracts the vasocontriction effect of cold and makes the ice effective.
I’m mainly interested in building one because I play a lot of DDR, but anyone who gets annoyed with how quickly they get hot during exercise could use one.
I called the company, and they sell the device for $3000 dollars (and they were very rude to me when I suggested making hobbyist plans available), but given the simplicity of the principles, it should be easy to build one using stuff from a hardware store for under $200. I have a post about it on my blog here.
I may be stretching the openness of the thread a little here, but I have an interesting mechanical engineering hobbyist project, and I have no mechanical aptitude. I figure some people around here might, and this might be interesting to them.
The Avacore CoreControl is a neat little device, based on very simple mechanical principles, that lets you exercise for longer and harder than you otherwise could, by cooling down your blood directly. It pulls a slight vacuum on your hand, and directly applies ice to the palm. The vacuum counteracts the vasocontriction effect of cold and makes the ice effective.
I’m mainly interested in building one because I play a lot of DDR, but anyone who gets annoyed with how quickly they get hot during exercise could use one.
I called the company, and they sell the device for $3000 dollars (and they were very rude to me when I suggested making hobbyist plans available), but given the simplicity of the principles, it should be easy to build one using stuff from a hardware store for under $200. I have a post about it on my blog here.