Getting to and from the train is not an enjoyable experience. Train stops are not always conveniently located, scooters are not a practical transporter as it is hard to fit a scooter in your bag, and bikes are not allowed on trains forcing riders to risk having their bike be stolen. So, we set out to create an enhancement to the T riding experience that was fast, compactable, and lighter than the existing ways of getting to and from the train. From the beginning, we intended to create a device to enhance the T, what we believe is an already existing and functioning mode of transportation. We had no intentions of creating a device to replace the T riding experience. With this in mind, we set out to design the Transit-Wheel.

Lock

To make the lock mechanism we first started by sketching multiple ideas and designs. The first one that we looked at used something that stuck out from the wheel side and held the wing down. We decided that that would take up too much space in the wheel. The next design that we looked at was a piece inside of the wheel that hooked onto the wing and prevented it from moving. The next design involved a piece sliding down into slots in the hinge. This would prevent the wing from moving by locking the barrels in place. The final design works very similarly to this except it locks from the inside of the wheel side.

Handel

We decided to redesign the handle because all of our previous ones didn't work as well as we wanted them to. The new design is built into the wing and the wing and the handle are one piece. The Wing now sticks out from the wheel side and bends up. When the two wings are folded up the wings meet. There is a hole at the tip of the wing creating a handle. When we first made the handle design there was a lot of wasted space. The hole was moved down and the flat part was majorly shortened.

Motor

We spent a lot of time trying to find a motor that met the specifications we need. We looked at  high torque low rpm pancake motors. We found two companies that make them Kollmorgen and Printed Motor Works. We originally contacted Printed Motor Works in a previous studio and the quote they gave us was too high at the time. We contacted them again and asking for a motor with a gear box. And they quoted us 700 usd we then realised that putting their gearbox on it didn’t make sense because we would need our own gears on top of that. We were about to contact them again and then realised that they were advertising their motors as a drop in replacement for Kollmorgen motors, so we started looking at those motors. We spent days pouring over datasheets and found the ideal motor for us. We called a distributor and found called them they got back to us and said the motor would cost 1400 usd and would have 12 weeks leed time. So we will from Printed Motor Works. All that work was for nothing.

Pressure pads

When we started to find ways of controlling the speed of the transit wheel we looked at two forms. The first was an exeloromater and the second were pressure pads. We decided that pressure pads were a better way to go. The problem was that all the pressure pads now are all too small and not precise enough. To fix this we used velostat and custom PCB The velostat would be sandwiched between the wing and a custom flexible PCB. We would have strips of velostat that would act as pressure areas. There are going to be eight pressure areas arranged in along the foot.  This would be able to sense when there is a change in pressure on your foot and where the change is so it will move.

In the future, we will actually order the motor because we need to design the inner wheel around that motor and that is a lot of work we haven’t even started on. We wanted to work on that this week but there were complications with the shipping and we don’t know if the motor has been actually ordered yet. We need to finish the pcb design for the pressure pads and the main controlling pcb. We need to figure out how we are going to manufacture the wings because creating complex curves like that is not easy. We need to decide what buttons transit wheel will have and where they will be.