Bike Trailer Hitch

For my appropriate technology class I had to build a bicycle trailer hitch, however I had some ideas on how to improve on their design so I designed and built my own. The original hitch design (see below) was made from a piece of sheet steel that has a dropout cut into it, a welded on arm to stop it form pivoting, and a brazed on piece that a ball and socket piece would fit into and lock into place using a lock-nut.



My initial design idea was to add a radial spline pattern to the back of the steel sheet to get rid of the awkward and bulky swing arm and to stop the hitch from pivoting however when it came to prototyping I couldn't figure out a way to do that so I instead designed a wedge that fits into the dropout to stop the hitch from pivoting.



My prototype I machined by hand instead of CNCing it, because someone else was using the CNC machine at the time, so it isn't as pretty at my mock-up but as a prototype works well.