Re: Automatic Wheelchair Turntable

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Dave Houston" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in > "Robert Green"

<stuff snipped>

> >> Or...
> >>
> >>      http://www.manufacturingcenter.com/med/archives/0500/0500wlch.asp
> >
> >Well, I'd buy that one!  Nice find.  Too bad it's a prototype.  It's
obvious
> >that it a device that's both needed and practical.  The problem is that
> >there's not a mass market for it.
>
> You might contact the university to see whether anybody is manufacturing
it.
>
> In the machine tool industry, transfer balls are used to support heavy
loads
> while allowing free lateral movement. You could use these at the perimeter
> of your turntable but you still have the problem of securing both the
> turntable and the chair in the event of an accident.

Yes - accidents!  We acquired yet another Ebay special - a mid-wheel power
chair that managed to get stuck tight going off-ramp (my fault) with the
forward caster on the outside of the ramp edge and the main wheel on the
inside.

If it had happened to my Dad, he would have been stuck.  The frequency of
these off-ramp excursions, both forward and back, leads me to believe my
best efforts as a die-hard technogeek would be to work on wheelchair ILR.
Some sorting of guidance system that would show which way to steer.

>
http://www.axminster.co.uk/product.asp?pricing=INC&pf_id=21223&recno=8&cid=B
QUODMLYB1ASXS25HOGMXLQLDVQPEHM9
>
>
> Is the 400+ lbs with or without the chair's occupant?

With a "lighter than me" occupant!

--
Bobby G.