The Weary Wrist Rester

Many people nowadays may spend a lot of time on a computer all day—anyone from office workers to video gamers. However, being on a keyboard and mouse for long periods of time can lead to possible complications like carpal tunnel syndrome. Our wrists should ideally be at a flat neutral position, so that there is minimal stress on them.

Introducing the Weary Wrist Rester, which is not too complicated to construct, being composed of only a simple pillow-like padding and stackable supports to allow the user to adjust the height to their needs. The wrist rest is ambidextrous, so it can be used individually on either hand. The stackable sheets make its height adjustable, so that it can be used anywhere regardless of factors like the height of the keyboard. All in all, this wrist rest will be designed for comfortability and practicality for all computer users to maintain a healthy typing posture and comfortable position. 

• 3mm acrylic sheets
• Laser cutter
• Super glue
• Doll stuffing
• Scissors
• Needle and thread

First, you need to create your vectors to laser cut your stackable sheets. The design for this wrist rest will be stackable, so it is crucial to get the design right for the product to function properly. 

This was as simple as creating rectangles in Inkscape and adjusting their sizes. This design works because when you cut out the holes in the middle, it will function as the hole for which you can attach the bottom sheet from using pegs, which will be the scrap material that was cut from the sheet. The lines should be 0.01 in thick and be colored red (or #FF0000) for the laser to cut them properly. For this design, I alternated the red (holes) with the black (where the pegs will be attached) so they can be stacked on top of each other. Attached below is the final design I came up with, which is 15x8 cm.

Try experimenting with different hole and peg positions for further optimization of the sheets, like being able to only have one specific design that may be used over and over, which would make mass production faster and easier.

Cut out the vector file using a laser cutter. The spare pieces cut from the holes in the middle will be used as the pegs for the alternating sheets. It may be useful for you to separate the sheet types on different pages of the exported PDF file so that you can print which one you need instead of printing both at the same time. You may also want to add two more pages, with each sheet rotated 90 degrees so that you can fit it according to the available space on your acrylic sheet. Another tip that may be useful is to add a page of just the pegs, just in case you need more.

At the start, only print two sheets so you can see if your design works. If not, try adjusting your vectors. If it does, go ahead with as many sheets as you want to cut! Be sure to document your tweaked designs so you can look back on your progress.

Super glue the pegs onto the other sheet, so that they can be stacked on top of each other. This can easily be done by stacking the sheets on top of each other, while applying super glue within the hole of the top sheet, then pressing the pegs into the holes and lifting the sheet. 

When gluing the pegs, make sure to align all the sheets properly at 90 degrees for the sheets to stack correctly. When finished, you should be able to change the order of the sheets while still being able to stack them up. A good indicator you did it correctly is when the sheets are all stacked, they don’t lean in any direction and stand at a right angle.

Additionally, printed another sheet, but this time no pegs will be glued onto it. This will be used as the base where we attach our padding.

Now, you have to sew the padding which your wrist will rest on top of. For this, I used an old shirt, but you can use any fabric you find. 

Outline the casing of the padding using one of your cut sheets onto your fabric, tracing with chalk. The design I used can be seen in the second and third pictures.

Make sure there is some excess space around the outline for your thread, enough that the padding will still be a little bigger than your cut sheets. 

Here is a link to a basic ladder stitch if you need some help: https://youtu.be/c2B_fgEGMlM?si=GZcvVievmogXO7Dz

Also don’t forget to put your stuffing into the pouch before sewing everything together! For feedback, maybe you can ask your friends if the padding is comfortable enough for them. 

You’re almost done! You just need to assemble everything together. Super glue your padding onto the flat extra sheet you cut. As a final step, make sure that your sheets all stand at a right angle, and that should be it! Additionally, you may want to add anti-slip feet made out of rubber or a similar material to make sure that the wrist rest will not move. Your wrists will thank me, and I thank you for reading this :)

You can watch video showing how I made this here: https://youtu.be/W58C6WThPso