Measuring hand force!

In many areas of research and industry a need exists for hand forces to be measured to assess mechanical loads and stresses on the body; in the ergonomics sector, recording and testing the operating forces at human-machine interfaces and for a range of technical design tasks. Typically, these forces are exerted during activities such as pushing, pulling, lifting or carrying loads.

The new hand force measuring system from Kistler Instruments has been developed to meet the need to evaluate Repetitive Strain Injury (RPI) and other occupational health risks. In addition, the new system may be used to identify and quantify potential risks from handling loads over the course of a working life and for ergonomic and biomechanical load analyses as the basis for solving design, construction or relevant health & safety issues associated with new equipment an or working practices. The versatile system is ideal for measuring forces at the man-machine interface in the R&D laboratory to evaluate the forces required for specific activities for health and safety protection and for designing and testing machines and systems in the production environment.

The unique Kistler Type 9809A hand force measuring system consists of two piezoelectric 5 component measuring handles, a USB interface, all cables and data acquisition, data logger and evaluation software for running on a PC which records force data directly via the USB interface or imports files that have been recorded by the data logger. From the individual force curves, the overall 3D forces and the centre of pressure are calculated for different coordinate systems (handle, object and spatial). The measurement files can then be exported in ASCII CSV format. The 3D force vector and the vector position for different coordinate systems allow the calculation of the moments with reference to the point of interest in the coordinate system.

The Type 9809A hand force measuring system is a precision tool for a wide variety of ergonomic, biomechanics and health and safety applications in both the laboratory and field.