WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby Williamclark77 » 23 Aug 2019, 05:09

Thank you. That's only about 8 mph. My target was 8 mph. One quick test was 8.1 mph. This one is built to be used hard. The motors and wiring get hot on W1 when worked hard for extended periods (think towing around 450 pounds of mower over rough terrain or dragging a section harrow over fresh plowed ground). I need to design a two speed!

I have no clue what the resonance frequency of it would be. I don't ever expect to get fast enough to find out.

I'm debating hard on a roll bar. I know I can make one to stop the chassis roll. I haven't tested enough yet to know if I want to. It certainly does feel odd as is.
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby stevelawiw » 23 Aug 2019, 10:33

It works really well ironing out the bumps Will. I fitted very limited front suspension which makes my ride better but I had to limit the travel because I couldn't handle the movement, I felt like I was going to fall out :roll:
Do you think having feeling below your break helps at all with this? Are you planning to use this chair indoors? I use mine in and out and indoors I often reverse my back wheel side-on into things if that makes sense! How much sideways stress can those motor mounts take? Is it something your're worried about?
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby Williamclark77 » 23 Aug 2019, 13:44

I use it indoors also. I'm committed to whatever chair I get into in the morning since I can't transfer myself. The chair is only 27" wide and shorter lengthwise than a Permobile C350. It's plenty compact enough for daily use indoors. As much as any rear wheel drive. I can't move much but do have good sensation everywhere. It definitely helps.

I haven't used any chair except my W1 or W2 (99% W2) in four or so years. The last time I got in a standard chair my back hurt so bad after a few hours I realized just how much the fat mushy tires helped. Swapping back to my W2 today feels rough. I think the long rear travel combined with mushy tires will be great once I get it set up just right and used to it.

Those motor mounts are 7/8" diameter 1018 steel pins with the rod ends supporting the end. I don't think I'll bend them without a serious hit. The flat plates the motors are on is the weak point. I think they'll twist first. The tires have a lot of side leverage on them.

I should get a lot of seat time on it in the next few days. I'm going out of town for a few days but when I get back I plan on using it full time for a few days to sort it out.
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby Scooterman » 23 Aug 2019, 17:09

Will - You could teach a bright young guy (or girl) so much, you need an apprentice! Knowledge & skills need to be passed on.
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby Burgerman » 23 Aug 2019, 17:37

One of the problems he will have is that in todays well off, and privelidged society nobody seems to want to learn anything. They have money, everything can be thrown away and replaced cheaply, and is available to buy cheaply in the first place. Many no longer value science, logic, skeptical thinking, and the sort of manual skills that come from growing up before this situation existed. Unless you look to china, india, and the east.

Thats not to say there isnt the odd one, or the likes of musk still around. But they are becoming very hard to find.

I have a carer called tracy. Typical. She is higly stressed out about some debt company harassing her over a DVLA fine. The situation is simple. They fined her because its her duty to inform the DVLA when she is no longer the owner. All I can get from her when trying to explain WHY they are trying to fine her is "the engine blew up, so I gave the car to a freind, who was going to use it for parts. He must have fixed it, and sold it to someone else who hasnt taxed it and now they are chasing me. Etc etc including names of various people etc. And who she bought it from, and how non of this is her fault etc etc.

I explained that NON of that is relevant, and that the problem is that she did not infown DVLA that she was no longer the owner. I have repeated this all morning. She still has no clue, and it endlesseley repeating all the non related garbage about the reasons and so on. So I have given up. She lacks the ability to see the problem, and to remove her feelings from the reality.

She seems to think that how she feels about things has some bearing. And I cannot get through to her that nobody is interested in all that because it is not relevant. She is another that needs to be taught HOW TO THINK. The world if full of people that lack this clarity or ability to learn, or to focus. Its not only this subject. Its EVERY subject. She cannot ever see the wood for the trees. Her Iphone charger isnt working. Its a connector issue. She seems to not to want to understand the problem, and thinks that how she feels about the phone shop, or a number of other things is somhow important. I have tried to explain that the way she ramps the thing in and yanks it out with the cabke is likely the problem. But she feels that its not and she feels that it should work. Now she has 3 phone contracts.

And its not only her. Its almost everyone I speak to.

This is a western desease. Its going to end with a new world order. The rich western countries will not stay at the top.

Anyway will has his daughter. She IS learning.
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby rustyjames » 24 Aug 2019, 02:31

I'm going to start calling Will "Sir." Honestly, that chair is tits! Burgerman is BigDaddySir because he started all this cheers
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby Burgerman » 24 Aug 2019, 08:16

Its nice to see mega builds etc. But in many ways it scares off the vast majority thet dont understand a lot about this stuff. Doesent matter who started or how much they do really. If theres just one tiny issue that is stopping you enjoy or even use your chair, and you learn how to fix that its a win! For e.g. most users have no idea you CAN program a chair... Or what that means to them, even if they do know.

May just be programming. Or figure out how to fix it. Its all just as important. I have had people drive from one end of the country to visit just to fix the programming. A whole day of driving because their local WCS or dealer couldnt fix it.
And users building full chairs that had issues they couldnt figure out. Such as burned brake solenoid coils.

Even if the thousands of lurkers, only read a few of these thousands of pages and figure out which chairs are which, and so what they are looking for when buying. Or why their chair eats batteries, or wont turn. They all still won!
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby Scooterman » 24 Aug 2019, 10:11

Burgerman wrote:Its nice to see mega builds etc. But in many ways it scares off the vast majority thet dont understand a lot about this stuff.

When I first stumbled across WD.com, especially the lithium conversion bit with a squillion headway cells and complex hobby chargers hooked up to computer it was pretty scary.

http://www.wheelchairdriver.com/BM-MK3- ... rchair.htm

Burgerman wrote:She is another that needs to be taught HOW TO THINK. The world if full of people that lack this clarity or ability to learn, or to focus. Its not only this subject. Its EVERY subject. She cannot ever see the wood for the trees.

For me to understand lithium (and it was difficult at first) I had to get my mind into a different mindset and think of a group of individual cells, rather than the pack as a whole like lead acid, obviously with your help BM.
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby Burgerman » 24 Aug 2019, 11:05

My ex gf is a teacher. She teaches degree level maths, and also school kids at 15 and 16. She was forever telling me that the school system is rediculous. She has tried to tell me that the kids she teaches at school, up to GCSE level, are wildly different in abiities. And I mean wildly.

She says that she is supposed to teach them all the same. Which does not work. Some struggle to write their name. Some have concentration spans that last a few seconds and then they are lost. Others are doing complex maths for fun. And bored shitless in the class while she tries to be a jailor to the ones that cannot and never will get it. And to try to teach the average kid something where time allows. As she tells me, the system that tries to pretend that everyone is equal. That tries to pretend that all these kids are capable of learning the same thing within say 30% of each other. The system that thinks that all it takes is more work, more concentration, more practice, is plainly rediculous.

It leave all of them at a disadvantage.
The clever ones are wasting day after day.
The average ones dont get enough time and are not stretched while they wait...
The less than capable ones go to lesson after lesson while the teacher pointlessely wastes the majority of the time trying to teach something that left them behind years ago. As she says, its a pointless excersize. They are literally not able to understand it no matter how many times she shows or explains it all.


Everyone loses. All because its politically correct to pretend all kids are equal or almost so. The reality is vastly different.

In parliment, then later on TV they were trying to explain the gap between high achieving richer kids and the lower achievers from poorer backgrounds. The BBC interviewed around 20 of the kids in the schools. Notably the one thing they absolutely ignored, was that the low achievers were predominantly black too. But we are never allowed to mention that!

Buteven in all 99% white schools around here, the ability or IQ levels are vastly different. But all treated the same because the stupid labour party decided that all kids were equal. Banned the state grammer schools, etc.


I did it again. Dont reply, back to wills thread! :fencing
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby Burgerman » 24 Aug 2019, 11:08

Which is looking pretty damned good!

Yes an anti roll bar on the rear would seem to be needed.

Now he wishes he had done 2 chairs at once... :lol:
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby Scooterman » 24 Aug 2019, 15:04

I know what an anti roll bar is. BUT has anyone ever fitted a roll over bar to a powerchair?
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby Burgerman » 24 Aug 2019, 15:12

No it would get in the way and make the chair wider etc.
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby Williamclark77 » 25 Aug 2019, 19:26

Scooterman wrote:Will - You could teach a bright young guy (or girl) so much, you need an apprentice! Knowledge & skills need to be passed on.


Burgerman wrote:....nobody seems to want to learn anything......


Statement made and answered. I have tried with quite a few. I'm actually quite good at teaching and managing people and have done it for a living for years. I have mountains of patience for those who want to learn. I have zero for those who just try to make a paycheck doing the bare minimum. I have made a grown man cry.

I had a youngish guy, 17 or 18 year old senior in high school, contact me a few months ago about learning CNC. I think I am somehow kin to him. I agreed to, free of charge. He likes to shoot rifles. I gave him a muzzle brake (they're on my website) I made for free when he first got here. That's the type of stuff he wanted to learn to make. I let him operate my $$$ equipment - the fun part. After about two hours he was done. Lost interest. "I didn't know it was so involved." He left and never heard from him again. He never even saw the hard tedious part - designing, writing the toolpaths, making fixtures, etc.

I'm 100% self taught. Fortunately, mechanical things interest me and I grasp it easily. Anything artsy is alien. I wish I had learned computer coding younger. I've made it to my mid 30's and learning it on my own is proving difficult. It's not something you can really see.

Burgerman wrote:Anyway will has his daughter. She IS learning.


She knows more about tools and equipment than 99% of mean. She used to choose to stay home with me in the shop instead of going to town or other woman stuff. I make her time in the shop fun. She's 10 now. Something changed around the time she was 8. I'm about certain it is school. She completely lost interest in doing anything besides staring at a screen watching useless entertainment. Any time I go to make something her response is along the lines of "just buy it" or "order it" and she's lost all interest in making it herself.

The school systems here push them very hard toward liberal ideals. There is no reward for doing better or making things for yourself. It's hard to get her to spend two hours making it herself, even if it is better than what you can buy, when it takes 30 seconds and a few mouse clicks to get a subpar Chinese version.

She did spend half a day in the shop with me last weekend. I had a job to get out that required a lot of stock to be cut off. She had a blast running a hydraulic bandsaw hacking up a $500 bar of aluminum. All by herself too. I'd probably go to jail for child abuse or endangerment if the liberal safety nazis saw such.

rustyjames wrote:I'm going to start calling Will "Sir." Honestly, that chair is tits! Burgerman is BigDaddySir because he started all this cheers


Hey, you are still alive! I found this forum researching controllers when I decided to build W1. I'd probably still be building it if it wasn't for this forum. cheers

Burgerman wrote:Now he wishes he had done 2 chairs at once... :lol:


If I was 100% certain on the design I definitely would! (and had the money). There's several little things I would change. They're small but would be a pain. Or will be if I do.

One being the gearboxes. They're quite loud. They're rated to be 94% efficient, not that I have a way to measure it. They're guaranteed to have less than 20 arcmin of backlash. That's roughly 1/3 of one degree (I think. I'm not getting a calculator out). Basically zero and unnecessary overkill for this application.

I think if I do another I'll use less efficient and cheaper gearboxes. I believe the tradeoff in quality/efficiency would be outweighed by less noise and price. They will quieten down some I know. Hopefully a lot.

I haven't decided on the necessity of an antiroll bar yet. Still getting the suspension dialed in.
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby Williamclark77 » 25 Aug 2019, 19:37

I attempted a video from the side with the chair tilted back a bit. Not enough surface area for my mag base mount. D'oh!

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-vz3mMCv/0/eab12fc3/1280/i-vz3mMCv-1280.mp4

The camera makes the blue look a lot lighter than it is.
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby Williamclark77 » 01 Nov 2020, 03:28

Long time no post. My spare time for stuff like this is almost nonexistent.

I’ve been beating this poor chair like it was a rental for months. Short video of how it gets abused. Turn down your volume. You’re not drunk. This was recorded by an 11 year old.

https://www.willsjunk.com/WillChair-3/n ... -Zh4JDN3/A

The only issues I’ve really had was I managed to twist the motor mounts. Normal use would never do this. Snatching on trees and towing stuff way too heavy twisted them from the torque. So, I completely redid the rear suspension while at it. She had nearly 5 inches of suspension travel. Great for bouncing down rough trails but got annoying in day to day use. It worked perfect but too sensitive. Sitting cocked to one side or the other caused it to favor that side too much.

Shock mounts (ended up not being used). Started as plate welded onto to 1/2" scrap plate to hold it.

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Video

https://www.willsjunk.com/WillChair-3/n ... -9bf46c3/A

Motor mounts. Screwed onto wood to hold it. Forgot to take a pic until one was cut out.

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The right piece will look just like the left in 15ish minutes...

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Main suspension base. Yes, that's 3/8" plate.

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Good tap swarf....

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Most of the pieces before welding.

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Each piece machined to snap together. Easier to ft up and makes the final product much more accurate. The pivot bores aren't finished here. They were done after welding.

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The aluminum piece is to keep the tops from warping together.

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I'm no pro welder and have crap quad hands but this ain't going anywhere.

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These box the gearboxes to distribute the twisting force farther across the rear suspension plates.

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Tappy....

https://www.willsjunk.com/WillChair-3/n ... -qKnQHqC/A

How do you hold multiple parts at a near perfect 12 degree angle so the bolts align and don't bind? 3d print jigs!

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Worked perfect. Yes, I repainted everything.... I think. Not like it'll stay pretty long anyway.

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Custom lock nuts for the rod ends.

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Sawed off then into the lathe to be faced and tapped.

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Note the seats at an angle.

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Upper rear shock mount

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Added notches to clear the shocks.

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I faced it with a fly cutter and overlapped the paths to create a checkerboard pattern. You can only see it from certain angles.

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Video of the first one I made. I slightly redesigned the second one in the above pics. Same process minus the tapping.

https://www.willsjunk.com/WillChair-3/n ... -QbqHrGc/A

The tapping swarf from the above video. Never buy cheap taps.

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Shock pins. 304 stainless.

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Different project but same piece of material and same process. Parting is not for the faint of heart, especially stainless.

https://www.willsjunk.com/WillChair-3/n ... -7RGBCpd/A

Threading that part. I made that die holder because my crap hands can't hold normal ones.

https://www.willsjunk.com/WillChair-3/n ... -nCf4VSz/A

I gave up on the touchscreen. I don't have the patience to get it to work correctly. Pretty sure it would get busted quickly anyway. I made a housing similar to W2 but got it shrunk even smaller, about 75% size. It's much smaller than it looks in these crap pictures. It was almost dark when I took them.

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Yes, I made a joystick knob from 304 stainless. The red/black buttons are master kill. Touch the red and battery is disconnected from the controller for storage or charging. That's the "OH CRAP!!!" as well button. The amber turns the headlights on/off. The blue turns the volt meter on/off. The rear tiny toggle switches are: right - Roboteq on/off. Left - 12v system on/off.

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Rear view. No, I didn't take any pics before getting it filthy. Yes, the tow hitch is already bent.

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Ground clearance

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Video of the updated rear suspension. Not as cushy on huge bumps as before but much better for daily use. It will spoil you. I have to remember W2 has no rear suspension when I get into it before hopping off of curbs or hitting sharp edges, even with the same fat low pressure tires. Turn your volume down.

https://www.willsjunk.com/WillChair-3/n ... -HWVdBXg/A

I let the kids play in it. Fun for them and free durability testing for me.

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I'll try to get good pictures soon. I plan to completely redo the front swingarms as soon as time allows. Already made the parts, just have to weld and mount them. As they are now, empty they're perfect. With me in it and suspension loaded the caster barrels are slightly tilted back, which makes the front end rise as the casters revolve.
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby LROBBINS » 01 Nov 2020, 10:21

As usual - WOW! Welcome back. I was getting worried about you.
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby terry2 » 01 Nov 2020, 10:32

That is just awesome.

Well done dude :)
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby stevelawiw » 01 Nov 2020, 11:54

Very inspiring! What voltage are you using now? And are you on the new Roboteq HBL2360A? I'm still plodding on with the Invacare GB motors but it's slow going.
Anyway as Lenny says, welcome back it's always a bit worrying when someone goes quiet, you do begin to wonder if they're ok.
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby Burgerman » 01 Nov 2020, 14:22

The tapping swarf from the above video. Never buy cheap taps.


Funny you should say that! I was just satying the same thing on another thread...

Excellent work. Real life testing too. I like it.
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby Williamclark77 » 01 Nov 2020, 17:37

Thanks!

stevelawiw wrote:Very inspiring! What voltage are you using now? And are you on the new Roboteq HBL2360A? I'm still plodding on with the Invacare GB motors but it's slow going.
Anyway as Lenny says, welcome back it's always a bit worrying when someone goes quiet, you do begin to wonder if they're ok.


Going silent is usually bad news. I've had my issues.

Yes, HBL2360A. All three of my Willchairs are 14S. 46.5v during use.

I'm having a hard time getting the programming right. This W3 suffers from serious lag. No as bad as I recall stock powerchair programming, but bad enough that I don't go fast in tight areas. Way back in 2012 or 13, BM was saying his had lag with the script. I claimed my W1 (HBL2360) didn't. He called me crazy. Fast forward. Later iterations of Lenny's script had lag in my W2 (also HBL2360), but the very old heavily modified by me version I used didn't. W3 (HBL2360A) has lag in every version I've tried. I literally put the exact script in W2 and W3. W2 is perfect. Crazy responsive and follows the joystick. W3 sucks. It feels soft, spongy, and 1/2 a second behind commands.

I'll fool with the programming more once I get the swingarms redone, probably next weekend.

Burgerman wrote:
The tapping swarf from the above video. Never buy cheap taps.


Funny you should say that! I was just satying the same thing on another thread...

Excellent work. Real life testing too. I like it.


The most expensive tool in the drawer is a cheap tap!
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby Jay_x » 01 Nov 2020, 21:49

Fantastic!

how mucy does that thing weigh by chance?

I love the shocks, they look like they really do what they are supposed to do
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby Williamclark77 » 02 Nov 2020, 05:41

Jay_x wrote:Fantastic!

how mucy does that thing weigh by chance?

I haven't weighed it yet. I need to. W2 was 264 pounds. I expect this one to be about that or a little lighter.
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Re: WillChair Three - Let's Build it!

Postby rollingcowboy » 06 Nov 2020, 04:04

really glad to see you posting again
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