The Final Countdown! By: Karina M.

As our presentation is slowly approaching, Scarlet has been working very hard and diligently to get the prototype and the presentation done. We have had two team members work on the prototype design on Inventor, a program that is used to design 3D models, for about a week now.

 

The measurements were first taken from a standard wheelchair in order to see what could be reduced or changed to fit a child between the ages of 4 to 7. There were some measurements that were kept like the  height from the seat to the top of the chair (35 inches) and  the overall width (17 inches) of the standard wheelchair. The reason that we decide to keep these measurements was that the child could possibly place toys or other things around them while they sat on the seat, making the child more comfortable, and  the dinosaur support backrest will be incorporated within the 35 inches. On a different note, a frequent question that Scarlet has been getting in regards to our design is “what makes your design differ from a normal wheelchair?”.  To answer this question, the pediatric wheelchair will have some similarities to a standard wheelchair, however  the fine details of each wheelchair are completely different. For example, the pediatric wheelchair that we are making will have a curved backrest that will follow the spine contour and provide it with support, and the axis tilt of the wheelchair being ~70° will allow the child to push themselves easily around.

 

The final prototype can be seen right above this paragraph and was completed last week. Even though, a person might believe that the wheelchair is normal, the fine details that we will incorporate will show the differences. Also, within Inventors, there are details that you can’t really make, like the dinosaur backrest (that is detachable) that we are planning to have. The prototype was going to be printed out, however the design of our wheelchair was too complex for the 3D printer to print out. So, we decided to make the prototype out of popsicle sticks and hot glue.

Savannah and  I started to work on making the prototype; Savannah was in charge of scaling the measurement and making the pieces of wood that we need for the prototype, and what I did was that I looked for the materials that we need, assisted her when  she needed help, cut some pieces of wood, and glued the pieces together. I was very impressed that the model that we were making almost looked like our prototype design. As this was happening, I slowly pieced our presentation together.

There was one day that we were peer- reviewed by another team in order to practice our presentation. We hadn’t practiced our presentation as a group, so I expected it to not go so well, but it went well. We just need to practice more and touch up the model, and then we will be ready for the presentation day.