Not to be cliche or anything, but you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men. I had organized a solid plan of what work Ben and I would be doing today. We started out by fixing the right armrest of the chair so that it would not drag on the slot that it slides through. Unfortunately, we only made things worse. And every time after that, whenever we tried to make it better, the fold only got worse and worse. It was another morning full of walking away from the work to compose ourselves from the frustration.
Finally, I had enough and decided that we would just exchange the new locking mechanism I had designed for Tish’s folding mechanism for the front wheel on the prototype we made in M-Lab. After accomplishing this, we attached the brakes onto the chair, and began working on the mud guards, seat, and footrest. It was another long day, but by the end we finished everything that requires power. So tomorrow, we plan on putting the finishing touches for usability. We still need to paint it, but can always do that later.
After work I continued working out things in my head. I think the next step for us is to build a jig which will set up the armrest positions 100% correctly everytime. Though im not certain of which position that is yet, once the jig is built, I can spend a day researching this through trial and error (and having modeled it on Solidworks first as a headstart).
I continue to question the oder of my actions when I arrived here. I think that I should have started out by doing what I had done today, so that I could get back immediate feedback from a user. But the reason I went about things the way I did is to find out if I could repeat the manufacturing of the chair in the shop here. I know now that it is very difficult to do so, and may even be impossible. I don’t really believe it is impossible, but I do know that a jig is required to make the chair manufacturing repeatable.
When we made the chair in Boston, we had the use of a hydraulic bender, and we also bent a very large piece of steel. So when you measure from the pivot point to the armrest, the radius only changes by .5cm, whereas with the cold bender I used here, the radius changes by approximately 1.5cm, so it is very difficult to avoid contact between the armrest and slot which it slides through. Ben and I discussed the possibilities of different ways to bend the armrest while getting minimal kickback. We will continue thinking of the best way to do this in the next few days.
In addition, I have added some Solidwork photos on “Project Info” that I had from the last semester for a visual of the chair’s fold.
