Dovetail Latch

Inspiration

This project was based on Freeman employee observations that the existing latch system was tedious and required that tooling be carried around with them in order to

We understood requirements to be: 1) Must hold units together tightly (very little visible gap) and reliably (high safety factor) 2) Ideally, remove the tightening hole so that the units can be assembled and disassembled without separate tooling and without the need to hide it after assembly

What it does

The latch utilizes a dovetail on the x axis to lock the latch into place and generate friction so that the two sides of the latch are able to stay together. We later added a second dovetail latch along the z-axis to ensure that applied force was evenly distributed along the latch.

How we built it

Fusion 360. Tanner Reid (a wonderful person from AutoDesk who clearly deserves a raise) helped us learn the software to be able to use it to model and simulate the design

Challenges we ran into

Our initial ideas revolved around Spring Assisted systems, but that would still require some degree of tooling on the product that would have to be covered or hidden later. We changed to this idea after considering how flooring is held together

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Making a pretty darn nice latch

What we learned

3D Printing, Fusion 360, Physical Modeling & Simulation

What's next for Dovetail Latch

If we have time, we would like to elaborate on this design by a) swapping the single large tooth for multiple, smaller teeth, ideally with bi-directional connections that allow sliding up or down while remaining connected, so that if a problem occurs and the latch slips, it will be likely to slip back into the opposite part of the latch rather than out of the latch completely b) if the product should ever be manufactured, we would want to make it either steel or a composite material with a wiremesh frame to increase strength while minimizing material costs c)