Lacrosse Head Spacer Maintaining Sidewall Width Compliance
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Solution Overview
Problem
Lacrosse heads often become misshapen or distorted during gameplay, particularly during face-offs, leading to non-compliance with regulatory dimensions, resulting in penalties for teams with non-compliant sticks.
Innovation Solution
A lacrosse head spacer with a generally cubic structure and curved surfaces that maintains the sidewalls of the lacrosse head at specified widths, ensuring compliance with NCAA regulations when inserted between the sidewalls, and optionally serving as a display device.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If pressure is applied to clamp the lacrosse ball during face-offs, then the player can gain possession and control of the ball, but the lacrosse head becomes distorted and falls out of compliance with dimensional regulations
Solution Approach 1:
The spacer is inserted into the lacrosse head before gameplay to pre-establish the correct dimensional configuration. This preliminary action ensures that when pressure is applied during face-offs, the head maintains its compliant shape because the spacer has already set the proper geometry, preventing distortion before it occurs.
Solution Approach 2:
The spacer acts as an intermediary element between the opposing forces applied during face-offs. By being positioned within the head structure, it mediates the stress distribution and prevents the sidewalls from collapsing inward, thereby maintaining dimensional compliance while allowing the necessary force to be applied for ball control.
2Reliability
If the lacrosse head is made more rigid to maintain shape under pressure, then dimensional compliance is improved, but the head becomes more susceptible to breaking or cracking
Solution Approach 1:
The invention changes the parameter of dimensional stability by introducing the spacer, which internally maintains the correct geometry without requiring the entire head structure to be made more rigid. This allows the head to remain flexible and resistant to breaking while still achieving dimensional compliance through the spacer's geometric constraints.
3Duration of action of stationary object
If the lacrosse head is designed to be flexible to absorb impact forces, then durability is improved, but the head becomes more prone to distortion and non-compliance
Solution Approach 1:
The spacer serves as an internal intermediary that maintains dimensional compliance while allowing the outer head structure to remain flexible for durability. The spacer's rigid geometric form contrasts with the flexible head material, creating a composite system where the flexible head absorbs impact forces while the spacer ensures dimensional compliance is maintained throughout the object's service life.
Data Source
AI summary
A lacrosse head spacer includes a front surface, left and right side surfaces attached at a left and right edges of the front surface, and a curved back surface extending between the left and right side surfaces. A width of the lacrosse head spacer measured perpendicularly from the left side surface to the right side surface is larger than a minimum width dimension specified by NCAA rules for lacrosse heads such that when the lacrosse head spacer is inserted between sidewalls of a lacrosse head, the lacrosse head spacer maintains the sidewalls apart from each other at a distance larger than the minimum width dimension specified by NCAA rules for lacrosse heads.