It's certainly been awhile since the last shell update log but the first shell has finally been designed and printed. To give you some background this is what the draft shell looked like:

First Draft Shell:

Prototype Shell:

Now I can present the new shell for our project:

Certainly looks alot different from the draft but I'm very hand with our first of many shells.

How was this Designed:

It all started from a lovely piece of concept art, Namely this one.

We then took this concert and started in Fusion 360 with the Bare Frame. 

Sad to say using the free-form tools in fusion is slow and painful. So we decided to do the shell development in Blender. Which is much better suited to this task and a couple days later we had this:

With that done it's time for some good old real life testing and analysis.

Analysis:

Like most things there is a big difference between looking good on the screen and how it feels. So about after 15 hours of printing from both the FDM and resin printers we have a shell the test.  

For the testing we showed and got friends and family to try the shell (I would of used to bigger pool but due to Covid 19 restrictions the pool was limited) the following areas are reviewed 1) Hand Size, 2) Feel, 3) Look, 4) Number of Parts and finally 5) Price. We come to the following outcome for this shell:

Turns out this shell is a great choice for a person with a large hand. The reason for this is actually because of one piece, namely the thumb frame.

As this part comes away from the core body its actively positions your hand to the left. If you have a large hand this isn't an issue as your hand is large enough to accommodate. But for smaller hands it means the device can't be handled at it's best. This is a great start and with the shell in Blender we can made versions for smaller hands and start our shell community.