Wheelchair Storage

video

Bobby DeMarco

final

Bobby DeMarco

Our wheel pocket is designed to help people in wheelchairs carry any number of things from throughout their day. Everyone takes for granted the value of inventions like backpacks, which help us carry many more things easily and well organized. But when in a wheelchair, it becomes more challenging and even dangerous to carry things. As both hands are in use when operating a wheelchair, it becomes difficult to carry anything for an at all extended period of time without it being strapped to your back or your front, which makes it very difficult to reach.

So, faced with this problem, our solution seemed simple. If we could add some form of storage device to the easily accessible sides, we would have our solution. This idea inspired the wheel pocket.

The wheel pocket comes equipped with four different pockets, all designed to serve different functions: the large pocket, meant for laptops and books, the iPhone pocket, meant to hold an iPhone, the wallet pocket, meant to hold a wallet or other small parcels, and the umbrella pocket, meant to carry, an umbrella, and in some cases, a baguette. All of the pockets are flexible in their use, so as to better fit the situation.

 

Not only are all of the pockets useful in concept, but in practicality as well. The pockets are all made from durable felt, sewn with hemp based thread on a strong wood backboard, keeping all of the users things safe.

 

Now, I'm sure a a potential user would be wondering, why would I want all of my stuff spinning around all day, but the good news is, it won't be. Using a Bearing we are able to keep the wheel pocket stationary while being right in the center of the wheel. And with a 3D printed device of our own design, installation is quick and easy

 

process

Bobby DeMarco

From the beginning, are plan to add storage space to the wheelchair. We thought about a variety of ways to do this, including attaching bags to the back and the front and the bottom, but realized that similar products all seemed to exist on the market, and also they were difficult to use. We noticed that the easiest place to access from sitting in a wheelchair with the side, but unfortunately, there were already wheels there, which spun and made it almost impossible to safely attach something. We brought all of these ideas to Andrew, and he informed us of something called the bearing which would allow us to attach our device to the wheel without having it spin. We sketched a bunch of different possible ideas of how to make our wheel pocket. And then started on rhino designing our first draft. On the first Friday we were at NuVu we printed a cardboard version of our design. The first draft work relatively well, although it's very difficult to install, and spined resolve the installation problem with a 3-D printed device in which one side attached to the wheel and the other attached to the backboard of our pockets. We changed the wheels the fabric, and made the backboard wood. We made frames for the pocket out of wood which we could drill on to the backboard and so the pockets too. We printed out the materials for the final and began to sew, a task which none of us had very much experience in. We are met with some pitfalls regarding the tabs that we used to connect the backboard to the frames, but they were solved with relatively no incident. After taking pictures of everything we had, we were finished.

 

Process

Fritz Stammen