Last summer we bought new furniture for the Atomic Object Technology Showcase. It was a great opportunity to take inventory, reflect, refresh, and start new as I took the helm from Eric Kunnen on leading this space. During this transition we bought these incredible height adjustable tables where the feet are not casters but still wheels.
Being that we are in such a small space, this furniture allows us to quickly transform the showcase into whatever we need it to be. With that being said, much of the time we spend in the space requires being set up in our standard format which allows us to quickly collaborate but also leaves a lot of room in the center for people to use our various extended reality headsets. Something we have learned in our 8 months with this furniture is the need to be able to lock the wheels: while it’s nice to quickly transform a space, having folks gather around a table that moves can often lead to shaky and shifting workspaces. Because of this, I tasked one of my student workers Joey Shotts to craft a solution.
I told him our problem: we really need these tables to stay static when we are all around them. We considered there might be a solution we could design and 3D print. He went to task designing a solution in Tinkercad, a simple but powerful free online 3D modeling program. “The great thing about technology these days is that the tools have gotten simpler but maintained their capabilities. Anyone can solve problems using innovative processes like this. I realized I needed to change the idea of a traditional wedge to more of a socket because of the non-traditional style of the wheels so I developed this stopper to solve our problem,” said Joey.
After Joey designed this stopper we 3D printed it. The prototype worked so well we printed 3 more for each table in the Showcase. These wedges fit great under a single foot of a table and provide all the stabilization we need.
If you’re interested in printing your own the file is available on Thingiverse.
GVSU Innovate 