Week 5: (In-Lab) Designing Phase

When initially designing the side frames of the walker, our team was going to use Aluminum pipes and rivet the pieces together. However, after going to the Drexel Machine Shop, we were advised it would be best to use Steel piping and weld the pieces together instead. Although we were unable to work on the physical construction of the frame, we were able to further design the minor details of the walker.

Next, we discussed the finer details of the walker, including the braking system and the wheels that would be attached to the legs. Essentially we decided we would use a brake line, as seen in Figure 1, from a disassembled bike that when pulled, would press the stopper against the wheel and allowing the walker to stop moving forward. The design of the wheel was originally supposed to be built with a thick plastic caster and spherical wheel, but it was decided to use wheels that were previously assembled. Then, the stopper was designed so that when it will be attached to braking line system, a metal stopper will press against the rubber wheel, with the use of a small spring.

Figure 1: This displays an example of the braking like we would like to disassemble from an old bike. <http://www.aliexpress.com/bike-brake-set_price.html>

After the realization of having to add the sensor for proper placement, our team decided it was best to not include this because it would be quite bulky when connected to the side arms. The trouble of compacting the walker was already a difficulty so adding this feature would have significantly impacted the minor goal of easy storage.

This In-Lab meeting helped the team to discuss finer details of the walker prior to construction. Although we were unable to begin building the basic frame, the brainstorming helped the team to see future goals that we would like to achieve in the few weeks ahead of us.