Why did I invent Uclips?

THE PROBLEM

     During the pandemic, quarantine prevented me from training my sport, tennis. As a D1 university student-athlete, working out from home was imperative. Immediately I thought of building a home gym. My father had weight plates, a barbell, and dumbbell bars in his basement.

 

     The problems with these plates were that they took a lot of space, they were unorganized and expensive. Then, I came across adjustable dumbbells at my university. They solved two of the previous problems: space and organization. Thus, I looked at the prices for these dumbbells, and found a deal for a used set of adjustable dumbbells ranging from 5 to 40kg (10 to 90lbs) for $350. 

THE SOLUTION

     I thought if I can get these dumbbells on a barbell, they would solve the last problem (expenses) and I would not have to worry about dealing with plates anymore. Therefor, I sold some plates and bought the adjustable dumbbells. Then 3D printed the first version of the Uclip with one function: putting dumbbells on barbells.

 

PULLEY SYSTEMS

      From that point on, I looked at what else people did in home gyms with plates that we could not do with dumbbells. I came across the vertical pulley system, so I thought if I attached a rope to one of the holes in the Uclip I could do that too:

     The next step was to make a horizontal pulley system. I took another rope, another pulley and tied a knot around the squat rack to make make it work:

     The issue with the rope going through the main hole of the Uclip was that, I had to take out the rope and tie it back in to switch exercises. This was not ideal so I had to find a way to attach the Uclip to the pulley without using the main hole. The following images represent my experiments in the span of about a year and a half :

 

SAFETY MECHANISM

     You may notice that the last versions have magnets on them. The previous versions had magnets too, but I took them out to put them on the new ones. The idea of the magnets came when I came across collars that could be stored on squat racks using magnets. Then, I thought about how collars worked. Essentially, all collars use the same mechanism: they compress the barbell and use friction to stop the weight plates from sliding off. I tried implementing this in the Uclip:

 

PRODUCTION

     Now that I had functioning prototypes, I found an online manufacturer to make 20 pieces for me. It wasn't until I had the physical pieces with me that I thought "hey, there's got to be magnets I can screw on this". Obviously, there were, haha. So I spent the next 6 hours drilling holes in my parts (I had to catch a flight early next morning).

     It turns out the manufacturer made them in the wrong thickness... I could not afford new ones, so I had to adapt the smaller pieces to fit in my grandfather's tool house.

     Thankfully it worked out, now I had to understand logistics, and that was a whole different beast. I knew plenty about engineering but nothing about supply chains, warehousing, shipping rates... So I worked with a fulfillment center and they helped me out.

 

MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

 

Here's a video of the process to get to this point (I had to dig deep to find this one haha):

[👉 Watch the U Clip conception video 👈]

 

THE FUN PART

     As I was figuring out the logistics, I finally got to the fun part, social media! Showing people how the product can help save money and space for budget gyms like mine :)

  

MARKET FEEDBACK

     When I started showing Uclips to the world, the general feedback was: "They're nice, but too expensive and I'm afraid they would damage my knurling". I got to work and made the design simpler and more efficient. I took out the safety mechanism out which was the main cost for the product. Made the product symmetrical with a D ring on each side. Then designed a soft interior for the interior to protect knurling

 

 

1 year later...