Auto Belay

Team: Ross Hamilton

Problem and Proposal

A belayer is required to pursue rock climbing safely, meaning you are reliant on other’s schedules.
A lack of a belayer leaves very few options for pursuing the hobby:
- Bouldering: Climbing very short walls
- Free Soloing: Climbing high walls without gear
No current products allow an individual to safely climb alone on tall walls.
A new product needs to be created that allows people to fully pursue the hobby without dependency on another climber.

Original Block Diagram

Resulting Block Diagram

The original design included a mechanical brake that would completely stop a large fall.
Complications with machining the parts resulted in the mechanical brake being scrapped from the design.

The objective of this project is to create a prototype for a personal automatic belay device.
Step 1: Simple automatic belay devices already exist and are in use in commercial spaces. The design of these were analyzed and heavily impacted the design decisions for this project.
Step 2: Using SOLIDWORKS modeling software, a custom design was created to maintain the benefits of existing products while implementing additional functionality.
Step 3: Custom models were machined and assembled into a functioning prototype. Complications with the machining process resulted in modifications to the design.

The resulting prototype successfully implements a slowing brake using eddy currents, however; it does not implement any form of mechanical brake that will stop a fall.
Future step will include a redesign that drastically reduces the size of the product. Additionally, the redesign embrace simplicity, so users do not have issue using the device.
The following list outlines the most important takeaways from this project:
1. Machining tolerances and limitations are far more restricting than previously believed.
2. Managing and sticking to a timeline for a project must be done. Many setbacks took place throughout this project that were not properly managed.
3. Mechanical engineering is far more difficult than the team previously gave it credit for.