Pooria Sohi
Elevate your design and manufacturing processes with Autodesk Fusion
During 2020’s shelter in place requirements, many companies that could benefit from gym shutdowns thrived, including at-home workout programs like Peloton. One consequence of at-home workouts was that many people managed to injure themselves from working out too much or trying unfamiliar exercises. As a result, a product category that continues to receive a lot of attention is pulsing, gun-shaped massage devices designed to give post-workout massages at home.
Many of these massage guns are difficult to use in hard-to-reach places like backs because you’re forced to reach behind your back to use the product. I don’t know about you, but when I’ve messed up my back, reaching over with my arm while holding a heavy device is just not happening. Enter Vertiball, the only muscle therapy product on the market with the ability to attach to a surface, so you can treat yourself alone.
“Vertiball is a portable, mountable massage device that uses an industrial-grade suction pad system which enables it to mount to walls and other flat surfaces,” explains Curtis Kennedy, CEO of Vertiball. “Users can place Vertiball at specific heights to target and massage tense muscles in hard-to-reach places while having complete control over how much or how little pressure they apply.”
Symbodi Labs, the company behind Vertiball’s design used Formlabs and Fusion 360 to bring the product to life. “After having used a variety of other CAD programs, we found Fusion 360 to be the best fit for our needs,” Kennedy continues. “The user interface is optimized to intuitively make sense, and when comparing it to other 3D modeling programs, we found it to be much simpler to work with. We use Fusion 360 to design new product concepts, and then we use the Formlabs Form 3 printer to prototype and test those designs.”
The Symbodi Labs team uses multiple workspaces in Fusion 360 to ensure product development goes as fast as possible. The simulation space enables idea validation before going to print, minimizing the number of revisions necessary. “Once we have validated the theoretical functionality of a design through simulation, we then go straight to prototyping using the Form 3,” says Kennedy.
Of course, design is just one aspect of product development. Taking advantage of the Formlabs Form 3, Symbodi Labs was able to produce accurate and clean prototypes to help expedite time to market. “The Form 3 is essential in our workflow, as it’s the only 3D printer we own that can print with the dimensional accuracy needed to test new prototypes properly. The resulting prototypes have functionality that can be compared to what plastic injection molding can achieve.”
Learn more about the Formlabs and Fusion 360 partnership here.