Victoria Hamilton, a graduate in Product Design Engineering at Strathclyde University, came up with an innovative knee protector as part of her final year project. With this new invention the goal was to reduce the risk of osteoarthritis of the knee for workmen and joiners. As a joiner, Vicky's father was the inspiration for her project.

Vicky approached i4 in 2013 for support with developing her product through to production. 

Although there were knee protectors already on the market, Vicky’s design featured a spring mechanism to absorb some of the energy on impact. For this development we made prototypes, incorporating basic mechanical principles, to test the load and springs of the knee pad. Vicky also enlisted help from test labs at Strathclyde University with the impact testing and together we were able to confirm that having the springs did provide an added benefit compared to other pads. User ergonomics were very important in this project since this is an accessory worn by workers - the pad could not restrict their day to day operations. For more information, see the VH Innovation website. 

The product was launched in 2016 at the National Hardware Show and is currently manufactured in the UK. The kneepads have received excellent feedback so far from Recoil's customer base. Currently the product is being sold online at recoilkneepads.com and we understand Vicky has also received a great deal of interest from from sizeable distributors around the world. We look forward to seeing her company grow with the product sales.