Daily Journal: Work with Atrium Health
This is the journal of almost every day I spent working on projects for the Atrium Health this year. My Senior year, an opportunity was offered to me to work with Atrium Health’s inpatient rehab center, a part of the new Pearl center in uptown Charlotte. I worked with them by making and developing assistive devices for patients that increase independence and ease in their everyday lives. This will be my Senior Capstone Project and I will work heavily on this internship during designated days in class. I will also visit the rehab center multiple times throughout the year. I am working on these projects with three other girls in my class, Caroline Uys, Marisol Wickham, and Scarlett Black. We will communicate and collaborate on these projects.
September 26, 2025: I had my first visit to the Atrium Carolina’s Rehabilitation Center in uptown Charlotte. I went with Caroline, Marisol, and Scarlett, the girls who are also working on the projects for Atrium. We toured their assistive technology lab and were able to see a lot of the current devices they are using. Then we took a tour of their gym on the first floor and met one of their patients “Jordan,” a 23 year old male who has issues walking and tremors due to a stroke, and we were able to see him practice walking across the gym with a walker. We then toured the gym on the spinal and brain trauma floor and met a 21 year old we call “Shaq” whose spinal cord was severed after he was shot in the back. We discussed with the nurses what kinds of devices they were already using and what needed to be improved.
October 6th, 2025: While visiting Atrium’s rehabilitation center, I had been personally asked to create more mouthpieces for the hospital’s “sip and puff” controller techonology called the “Quadstick”. The OTs and PTs were forced to use the same mouthpieces as the patients just becuase there were so little available. On this day, I found a file for the quadstick mouthpieces to begin printing it out.
October 7th, 2025: I was able to find a narrow and a wide model of the moutpieces with 3 holes, as well as a narrow and a wide model with 4 holes. I create a file with all four varaitions and can now mass produce these mouthpieces, and the rehab center can as well once they have their own 3D printers with this file.
October 8th, 2025: I printed two sets of all four mouthpieces. One I tested by seeing how all four holes were connected to holes at the bottom of the mouthpiece that would connect to the technology of the Quadstick itself.
October 10th, 2025: I started researching methods on how to attach a water bottle holder to a wheelchair. I discovered that using a holster similar to a bike water bottle holder would work best. I then moved on to designing and researching the best waterbottle and straw attachment.
October 30th, 2025: I organized a meeting, with my partners, with the underclassmen who are also interested in the intership with the Pearl. We will lead them and train them to be able to take over these projects once we graduate. The four of us will rotate every two months through the following leadership positions: Project Coordinator (Communicates with hospital staff, manage overall project timelines), Operations Lead (Organizes the larger group of students, creates the working schedule, manages workspace), Technical and Design Lead (Researches and approves all projects, creates build plans, prototypes new ideas), Quality Assurance and Safety Lead (Creates a safety and quality checklist, manages safety protocols, conducts final testing). For roughly the next two months I will be serving as the Technical and Design Lead.
November 5th, 2025: I created the shared GitHub repository and portfolio for the FABLab Rehab projects. You can find this portfolio here and you can find the repository here.
December 8th, 2025: I started building the screws and connectors into the Quadstick mouthpiece.
December 10th, 2025: We visited the rehab center again. I looked at the set up of their QuadStick and got tips on how to continue adding the screws to the mouthpiece itself.
January 5th-6th, 2026: I created a task analysis for what was left to complete for the QuadStick project before March 5th: Task Analysis. I also helped edit our team’s Ganntt chart: FabLab Rehab Ganntt Chart.
January 7th, 2026: I sized up the mouthpieces in Fusion360.
January 8th-12th, 2026: I installed the screws and connectors into the sized-up model of the mouthpieces.
January 13th, 2026: Cleaned and tested connections of the new QuadStick with the screws and connectors installed through a test print.
January 15th, 2026: Documentation.
January 20th, 2026: I did some research on creating a water bottle holder. This would be an attachment that would connect to Caroline and Scarlett’s mount project.
January 21st, 2026: I created a list of questions to ask Mrs. Smith the next time we went into the hospital to know how to contiue the water bottle holder’s construction.
January 22nd, 2026: I did some more research and documentation while I waited for the next in-person meeting. We scheduled it for January 29th.
January 23rd, 2026: Scarlett sent me the attachment piece file in Fusion 360. I adapted it to fit my project.
January 29th, 2026: The suggested date for the meeting did not work for Mrs. Smith, so I spent this day proposing and scheduling another meeting.
February 4th, 2026: I colleted my second variant of the screw section from the printer and tested it on the mount.
February 5th, 2026: I made the water bottle holder coming off of the screw section, attached to the bottom of the holder.
February 6th, 2026: I moved the screw setion to the side of the water bottle holder across from the hole for the handle.
February 18th, 2026: I printed out a water bottle holder with the screw section on the side.
February 23rd, 2026: Documentation, evaluated next steps. I printed another set of mouthpieces and typed up some information on my projects to give to the staff at Atrium. We were unable to do an in-person meeting, so this was the easiet way to recieve feedback on my projects.
February 24th, 2026: I figured out how to have all of the Mouthpieces flush against the print plate. I printed a new set, yet encountered the issue with the drooping connector sections.
February 25th, 2026: I added manual supports to the connectors on the QuadStick Mouthpieces file. I then reprinted a set of them for Atrium.
February 27th, 2026: Preparation of QuadSticks and water bottle holder for Atrium. Scheduled a Zoom meeting.
March 3rd, 2026: Print another set of mouthpieces - adjusted supports.
March 4th, 2026: Zoom meeting with Mrs. Smith
March 5th-7th, 2026: I presented my project.
March 9th, 2026: I printed out the file for the holder screw.
March 10th, 2026: I reprinted the holder screw after rotating and taking away supports. I created a Gantt chart for what work I had left to complete before April 15th which is the Innovation and Design Showcase.
March 12th, 2026: I printed 4 trials of screw scales. I did a 100%, 98%, 96%, 94% scale on the same print file.
March 23rd, 2026: My print either did not finish, or someone accidentally took it off of the printer. I had to re-assemble the print and then re-print it.
March 24th, 2026: I did another set of screws at 92%, 91%, 90%, 89%, and 88%. I found that the 88% version fit very well into the mouthpiece. I started another print with 4 of the 88% screws to make sure that it fit into all 4 versions of the mouthpiece.
March 30th, 2026: I made a file with the 4 mouthpieces and the 4 screws. I had to figure out how I could share the file with the supports painted on, as I did not want to make the Atrium employees have to paint on supports before every print. It would not export the support painting as an STL file, so I asked ChatGPT and it said that a 3mf file would export the painting.