BACKGROUND

I worked in a rehabilitation lab at UT Austin, Rewire Labs. I was tasked with fixing and improving upon an existing 3D printed interface to hold electrodes against the scalp. The sensors would often pop out of the interface and the interface itself was too rigid to mold around a human head. Sensor ridges were easy to add into the model, and we built a framework in SOLIDWORKS to generate other interfaces to probe different areas of the brain. To fit the interface around the head snugly, we tried flexible materials and silicon molding, but Guassian curvature of a flat plane prevented anything from working well. Eventually we found that with a specific configuration, melting the interface ribs around a plaster head to force conformity worked the best. We tested our new cap and found that it works just as well as the expensive interface provided by the brain imaging sensor vendors. In conclusion, I learned about different flexible materials and how to work thru problems when they pop up, along with the everpresent SOLIDWORKS experience.