Outcome

Initial Design

My initial ideas for this project came from thinking about the worst designed handles that I use regularly. The best example that I could think of was this small electric drill. The handle is not only too small, but the trigger is too big so that it is impossible to have a firm grip on it while using it. I even broke it once from trying to grip it too hard that I crushed part of the handle.  I thought I would make the handle longer, as well as add contoured grips so that I would fit easily in my hand.

Building Process

I ended up building the frame myself instead of using slicer. I spent a little bit of time trying to model the grip itself in CAD. I eventually decided that this was more trouble than it was worth and ended up making a simple extruded ellipse shape for the frame and shaped the grip using the clay.

I began by packing clay onto the frame in the general shape of the grip. The image above shows the model after the clay was packed onto it. Because I did this by hand, the surface is very uneven. I smoothed out the surface by using the rake.

I then traced the outline of my hand onto the grip and cut this out using the small rake. This step required a couple attempts. The initial finger grooves were not quite parallel, causing a sloppy look. They were also too short, causing my fingers to get stuck in the ends of the grooves. This was fixed by re-packing some of the material onto the grip and re-shaping it. Smoothing of the grooves was achieved using the small rake. I had to be careful not to accidentally dig into the sides of the grooves.

I made the trigger after the rest of the grip by packing on some extra clay.

I made a rough trigger shape at first and then refined it.

The trigger also required multiple attempts, since it was very non-symmetrical at first. Fixing this required removing material from some areas and packing it on elsewhere.

After sculpting the trigger, I used the rakes to clean up the grip, making sure the edges were neat, and removing any surface imperfections

Final Prototype