Designing, making and Evaluating an Ergonomic Pen to Increase User Comfort and Improve Posture of Hands, Wrists, and Fingers
Background and aim: Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) are widespread around the world and are the second most common cause of disability in work settings. A number of occupational factors such as forceful exertions, awkward postures, repetitive movements, and local contact stress can lead to the deve...
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Veröffentlicht in: | Salāmat-i kār-i Īrān 2019-09, Vol.16 (3), p.84-95 |
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Zusammenfassung: | Background and aim: Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) are widespread around the world and are the second most common cause of disability in work settings. A number of occupational factors such as forceful exertions, awkward postures, repetitive movements, and local contact stress can lead to the development of musculoskeletal problems. There is an association between the use of hand tools and onset of work-related musculoskeletal symptoms. Working with hand tools exposes users to one or more of these factors. Using hand tools, particularly if the job requires using the tools for a prolonged period of time, may also cause increased discomfort and fatigue which may be due to the existence of high stresses on the anatomical structures of the hand. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) and writer’s cramp are common injuries among writers, which may occur through excessive precise activity with the exertion of hands and fingers during writing, particularly with inappropriate techniques. There is strong evidence of a positive association between exposure to a combination of ergonomic risk factors (e.g., force and repetition, force and posture) and CTS. Writer’s cramp appears to be triggered by writing for long period of time. Ergonomic hand tool design involves optimizing the handle to effectively carry out the intended function of the tool with the least load to muscles, tendons, skin, and joints. One aspect of this process is to optimize hand–tool contact area in order to maximize grip strength, minimize contact stress with special interest to sensitive areas of the palm and wrist, and provide appropriate tactile feedback. The grip strength is determined by the biomechanical advantage created by finger joint angles as well as the physiological advantage associated with the differences in muscle length. The hand posture and the related grip strength are influenced by the shape of the handle and the hand size. Anthropometric data provides information on static dimensions of the human body in standard postures. Anthropometric measurement of human limbs plays an important role in design of workplace, clothes, hand tools, and many products for human use. To design any product for human use, human factors engineers/ergonomists have to rely on anthropometric data, otherwise, the output product may turn out to be a non-ergonomically designed product or the product may turn out to be ergonomically incompatible. The interaction of handle size and shape with the kinematics and anthr |
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ISSN: | 1735-5133 2228-7493 |