Ambidextrous Inline Ice Fishing Reel

Hello Judges, I am Tyler Heavey, a freshman at Prairie Ridge High School in Crystal Lake, IL. I have always had a passion for engineering and creating things. I was excited to learn about this opportunity last week and wondered what I should make. With only 6 days until the deadline I knew I had to think quickly. My other passion is fishing, so I wanted to make a fishing reel. I wanted to make something unique and not just copy an existing fishing reel, so I came up with the idea of designing an ice fishing reel that can be used by right-handed and left-handed people. I recently purchased an ice fishing rod and reel and went fishing with a left-handed friend. I let him try my new pole and realized how difficult it was for him to use his non-dominate hand to reel. Currently, the preferred inline type of ice fishing reels are made only for right or left-handed people but are not able to accommodate both within the same reel. So, I made an inline ice fishing reel that is ambidextrous allowing the reel to be easily converted from right-handed to left-handed use. All it takes to switch dominant hands is to easily slide out one pin, flip a gear and reassemble. This concept has been tried only once before by Pfluger (fishing reel manufacturer), but their design was flawed in that it was time-consuming and complicated to convert and is no longer produced. With my revolutionary design, the conversion is fast and easy, which is why I believe it will be successful in the rapidly growing fishing industry.

Technical Specifications

2.7:1 gear ratio (the gold standard gear ratio, where 1 rotation of handle = 2.7 rotations of the spool), anti-reverse so the spool will not unwind, and freefall/cast feature to allow you to disengage the anti-reverse to allow the spool to unwind and let out line.

• Fusion 360
• 3D Printer
• 1 pen spring
• Superglue
• Sandpaper/files
• Paint (Optional)
• Toothpicks(In case of pins not printing well)

I wanted to make something that I am passionate about and actually solves a problem. After fishing with a left-handed friend (I am right-handed) and watching his struggles trying to use my ice fishing reel, I had an idea. I wanted to design an inline reel that can be converted from right-handed to left-handed (and back). More specifically, I wanted to design a convertible inline-style reel. Inline reels are advantageous for winter fishing because the large spool of line is directly aligned (or "inline") with the rod, which greatly diminishes line twist allowing for a calmer and more stable lure presentation in the water (helpful for slow and cold fish!).

My General design approach was to envision a part in my head and use reference photos and industry-standard dimensions in order to size the part. After designing the first version in CAD I would test fit parts together in CAD to see how they would mesh/interact after test fitting. I would modify the part if it didn't work and find a way to improve if it did work. An example of a part not working was when I made a mistake in the handle by rotating the handle 90 degrees in the wrong direction and not designing a solid attachment point to the rod. After I noticed the mistake I decided to redesign the handle. Now the rod has an industry-standard rod mount that will fit nearly any ice fishing rod or standard rod. The handle redesign is shown in the video below at the time mark of 2:05-2:20. An example of where I redesigned a part for functional improvement was when I noticed that instead of using a washer to fill the space between the spool and the housing I could fit an ultra-slim anti-reverse mechanism in that space making it highly competitive with modern fishing rods (anti-reverse is so the line cannot be unspooled by a large fish that is fighting). This was shown 3:50-4:00 in the video below. Overall this process of redesigning and improving lead to a well-refined and feature-rich ice fishing reel.

The Time-lapse link to the video below shows me designing all 15 parts by hand.

https://watch.screencastify.com/v/7i9LEjGo2QXbCI1fBVrq

Assembling parts in Fusion 360 was the ultimate way of telling how parts fit and mesh together and how the design looked/functioned as a whole. I would use joints and other methods to see how parts spun and interfaced. To make sure that there were no conflicting dimensions, I measured every piece and saw how they fit together. An example of conflicting dimensions on a test fit was when first installed the anti-reverse gear I noticed that it conflicted with the inside of the handle/2nd gear's pivot. To fix that problem, I designed the pivots endcap to have a smaller diameter in order to give enough clearance for the anti-reverse gear. Overall, this is the best way to test your design and make sure it is ready for printing.

To prepare the design for printing I inserted all of the parts into one design file to fit the exact bed size of the replicator plus and exported it as a .STL file. I sent the file to my teacher and we reviewed it together. We made an adjustment to turn supports on in the design. The print was set to take about 30 hours. Once completes, I reviewed all of the parts and found that all of them look good, except for some of the small pins, which didn't print properly. However, that was an easy fix as these pis can be replaced with toothpicks or skewers.

Before assembly, I prepared the parts by first removing the supports and sanding off the burrs. Next, I dry-fit the parts together and made sure that the moving parts were able to swivel properly and sanded where needed. Also, I made sure the stationary parts were able to connect via a tight interference fit.

I assembled the reel following these steps:

1. Connected the grips to the handle, then the endcap to the handle, then pinned them in place.
2. Connected the actuator to the anti-reverse cog, sandwiching the spool in between.
3. Glued the pivot inside end cap to the pivot, then I inserted the pivot into the housing.
4. Glued a pen spring and anti-reverse pin together, then inserted them into the inside of the housing hole.
5. Inserted the spool followed by the small gear, then pinned it in with a toothpick.
6. Final step was to attach the large gear on the pivot followed by the handle, then pin it in place.