This was project was my major project that I developed over my entire third year of university.
I was given no guidance when initially starting the project. Collaborating with the lecturers I had to find a subject/topic that I could base my project on. After many hours of research and discussions with my lecturers I settled on the, age old problem, of bicycle theft.
I found many articles talking about different types of thieves and concluded that there are 3 different types:
- The first type of thief is an ‘opportunist’ thief, this is someone that didn’t necessarily have any intention of steeling something but if the opportunity if presented to them then they will just steal it.
- The second type of thief is a ‘determined’ theif, this is someone that has gone out to steal something in particular and will spend a bit of effort and time to get it.
- The third type of thief is a ‘dedicated’ thief, this is someone that will go to any length to get what they are after, destroying things just to get it.
After all the research that I did into thieves I came to the conclusion that I should design a bicycle lock that deters a ‘determined thief. A simple lock would deter an opportunist thief and if a ‘dedicated’ thief really want to get a bike they will at any cost so unless the consumer is willing to buy a lock that costs hundreds of pounds to keep their bike safe it’s almost a pointless endeavour.
I went through many different designs before settling for a design that I was happy with. After coming up with some concepts I made a few of the more favourable concept ideas into physical 1:1 scale prototypes using a mixture of ‘Styrofoam’, ‘Cardboard’ and ‘Card’. Once made they were placed into situation to see how they looked. After some more collaboration with my lectures a final design was approved and a physical and CAD model was made.
There are several design features of the final design of the lock and they were; a large thick ABS casing that looked from a distance like cast steel, ribs that strengthened any impact points that the lock presented, a figure print scanner for quick and easy access by the owner to unlock the bike, two spring wound auto retractable locking cables, tamper proof bolts that meant that the lock was securely fixed to the bicycle, an alarm system comprising of a piezo buzzer and flashing LED lights to signal that someone was tampering with the lock which ran through both locking cables and was activated when the cables were locked into position.
