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Jaws of Life Float Arm

Using an Iso-Elastic arm to change the load path of SES crews working with mechanical spreaders and cutters when dealing with car accidents

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SES (State Emergency Service) crews use mechanical spreaders and cutters, such as the Jaws of Life, to open up cars and cut them apart so they can access the people inside. These pieces of equipment can be extremely heavy (10kg upwards), The load path of holding and using this machinery runs from the hands, up the arms, around the shoulders, down back and through the legs. This project will design an mechanical arm that attaches to the hips/waist and changes the load path to just the legs. The user will still require arm movements to position the equipment but the weight of the object will not need to be supported by the upper body. This will decrease the fatigue of the user and reduce the risk of injuries occured from prolonged use.

I got the idea from researching steadicams. This is something that i havent seen anywhere else, so i thought where else could it be used?

Previously at the Wonthaggi Show, the local SES was there looking for volunteers. They had all their equipment on display and i was able to hold the mechanical spreaders and cutters. They were extremely heavy and it became tiring to hold it after a short amount of time. I imagine that there is a team of 2 who use it and swap positions holding it.

Combining the two should be helpful to the users within the SES

The project will need 3 parts.

The equipment attachment piece - this will be the link between the iso-elastic arm and the mechanical spreader. It will need to be able to quickly mount to new equipment with ease.

The iso-elastic arm - this will need to provide the weight holding force between the waist mount and the equipment mount. The aim is to make it cheap and simple to repair so that the SES crew can maintain them with minimal knowledge, and also to design it with easily available and cheap components so that the SES can afford it for their stations

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Dylan wrote 09/11/2016 at 09:17 point

na, i haven't seen it. Thanks for that, its pretty much what I want to do. I might be able contribute something new with the mount between the arm and the equipment, specific to jaws of life or something

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