Rise

MIT Undergraduate Student - August to December 2019

I worked in a group of 18 students in the class, Product Engineering Processes, to design Rise. Rise aims to eliminate barriers to oven use due to limited strength and mobility. This product is integrated into an oven design and would be licensed to a manufacturing company.

A motor drives a tensioned cable system to slide the rack holder out horizontally and then lift it by rotating upward. Using a speed controller, the system can maintain a constant lifting speed. Rise has a maximum load of 20 pounds, which is about the weight of an average turkey.

A seven-bar linkage system was used in the preliminary design. The mechanism was activated by opening the oven door. User research collaborating with the MIT Age Lab revealed that users did not want to activate the mechanism every time they opened the door. Additionally, the linkage system was considered too complicated to pursue.

The next design utilized a counterweight system to decrease the force that a user would need to input to lift a rack out of the oven. However, this mechanism was not able to account for differing weights of baked items.

Our final design was modeled in SolidWorks.

Rise utilizes a dual-stage mechanical system, composed of sliders, linkages, and a rack holder. It is actuated by a motor that sits behind the insulated oven interior.

Rise can be activated with a wireless remote that magnetically attaches to the oven. It can also be actuated by a

directly integrated button.

I performed an on-stage demonstration for the final presentation that was held in a theater filled with approximately 110 guests. Additionally, 70,000 unique IPs watched an online live stream of the presentation.

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