A gripping project

July 22, 2011

Greg Schipper, an industrial design student at Cincinnati State, explains details of his design for a gripper bar clamp.

His was among the projects prepared as part of a “capstone class’’ in the industrial design program, designed to pull together a variety of skills in a real-world setting.

In this instance, Schipper designed a modification to a type of clamp often used by woodworkers and home hobbyists to hold two pieces of wood or other material together – typically so that they can be glue or permanently fastened in some way. Greg’s breakthrough was to design a round opening at the business end of the clamp to allow a drill to be inserted and used while the clamp was in place.

The project required Greg to not only come up with the idea, but to design working drawings for it, test it and then prepare full-size prototypes.