When someone thinks of a hockey puck, a black rubber disk likely comes to mind. They glide across the ice, chased down by players only to be slapped into a net. But for Clara Carpenter (12), a regular hockey puck was an opportunity to design and create something more.

Carpenter spent her summer engineering a hockey puck specifically designed for the visually impaired. In the future, she wants to design medical devices or prosthetics, so she volunteered with Disabled Athlete Sport Association as a way to dip her toes into the world of engineering. She took interest in adaptive devices and after some searching, eventually found herself at the Collaborative Haptics and Mechatronics Lab at Saint Louis University.

“I thought it’d be cool if maybe I tried to do something like [the adaptive devices at DASA],” Carpenter said. “I was looking for labs that had [those things], and then I came across the CHROME Lab at SLU, which had the adaptive hockey puck.”

The lab had already come up with the idea for the puck, but wanted the students to finesse and remodel the initial design.

“We started off by just designing what we wanted to do,” Carpenter said. “After that, we put that design on a 3D model website before we could print it. Then, we printed it in three different parts. That way we could change them out if we needed. After that, we worked more on [the] electronics.”

The puck was designed with those who are visually impaired in mind, so it had to be loud as it skated across the ice in order for the athletes to find it. To accomplish this, the original design had ball bearings placed in the puck so that when it moved accross the ice, it made noise. However, this design meant the puck got damaged easily, so changes had to be made.

“We created this outside ring of 3D printed material, and sectioned it into six parts,” Carpenter said. “Four of the parts have small coin motors that hit against the puck really quickly. The other two parts have a battery and a circuit board to make the motors work.”

A lot of the design process was new for Carpenter. New computer programs and complicated technology required her to learn throughout the entire process.

“I didn’t really go in with a ton of experience with electronics,” Carpenter said. “That was really hard, trying to figure out what each piece was and stuff like that.”

For now, the puck will stay in the CHROME Lab for graduate students attending Saint Louis University to work on.

“For our purposes, we completed everything that our goal was to complete,” Carpenter said.

For Carpenter, this project wasn’t just practice or a gateway to a career. It was a stepping stone in creating something larger with a community impact.

“Knowing that the project that I was working on was going to make a difference and was going to help people who would have otherwise not have been able to play sports [is the most rewarding],” Carpenter said.