Wheelchair footplate - ideas?

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I have a REMAP task to make a wheelchair fooplate wider, with up-folding extensions each side.
Looking for ideas/warnings.
The user is a 10 yr old lass with MD.

Wheelchair footplate, needs to be wider about 80mmm each side on a central 240mm and with an edge ridge so her feet don’t slip off the sides. (Or she'll grow crooked.)

Looking for ideas for sheet material and hinges. First will use 4mm mdf pattern, then full thickness ply prototype.


Underside of current footplate. Flat black part to be replaced, with side flaps. Currently ~250mm wide at centre, needs to be ~80mm wider each side. Tube steel to remain. NB this is not supposed to be stood on. Kid’s a lightweight 10yo.

Top to bottom as shown, plate is ~300mm. Round section steel ~25mm dia tube is a rectangular loop.

FP2r.jpg

Pink line is proposed line of hinge/join.

Original material is a nice hard solid plastic, with a “routered” edge. Not sure what this is. Polyprop, HDPE, Nylon6 – dunno.

The footplate flips up as shown (in plane of paper/screen) so can’t be more than 12mm thick centrally.

The flaps have to hinge up out of the way so the user can get her legs round the sides, to fold the whole footplate up. The flaps would then be under the seat part of the chair - plenty of space. Flaps will have a ~19mm upstand at the edges.

12mm isn't much to work with, even if I fix an extra strip of 12mm. I've had a dozen+ ideas developing from plywood doing this:
basically1.jpg



First thought was to make it 24mm at the edge, (and put the piano hinge on top), but the steel tube gets in the way. I could only reiniforce to maybe 25mm.
But as I then thought, some fat geezer could still break it because there's no support under the flaps.
The flaps have to hinge up out of the way so the user can get her legs round the sides, to fold the footplate up. The flaps would then be under the seat part of the chair - plenty of space.

I priced a nice 3D printed footplate with clever strong hinges, at around £500. The wheelchair cost about £4k, (NHS pays) so that may be OK, but not if it's breakable.

So I'm thinking, put the flaps on sprung hinges, so they just go down if a large force is applied. Something sort of like this, where the spring is strong, enough to hold the flap up for normal use: (The spring would have to be magic, as drawn, to be strong & extensible enough, but it's doable.)

Dbl_hinge1.jpg

The side flap as a whole folds up at hinge A which is piano hinge (could be mounted flat, on top) . "Stick" is something I put in to enable the safety, anti-fat-bloke hinges as at B. Idea being the flap would bend down out of the way without over-straining hinge A. As shown it's magined made from 12mm ply glues together to make 24mm - the squares are 4mm.

I've thought about many kinds of hinges - soss, pin, counter-flap, cupboard catches.... Even 24mm isn't much. The steel tube gets in the way, I don't want great big gaps where the joins are, and have to consider what's going to be presented when the plate is folded up - many ideas have sharp bits which poke out. The whole thing shouldn't get too heavy or she won't be able to lift it.

The spring & its fixings shown could be inside the thickness of the plywood.
I've had a number of ideas with special bits of sliding metal plates and pins with springs on - which I don't have any way to manufacture.

Sheets of nice plastics like Nylon6 are available (~£30) but glueing, fixing screws strongly etc, are a bit of an unknown for me.

Comments? Ideas?


(Sorry I don't have any smart drawing software - this is done in Word)
 
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Occupational Therapist says she needs a wider footplate.
She hasn't lost use of her legs (yet) so I guess it's important she's free to move them about.

It's a sad condition to see. This is "Duchenne MD type". Patients get worse with age, so she watches her older brother who is more advanced. In the mornings they can walk, later in the day their legs don't work much.
 
cheap piano hinges will not hold the two halves flat you will get a perhaps 2 or 3 degree dip before the hinge tightens up if used on the thin edge
you can off course place them on the surface and rely on the carpet or rubber covering the screwheads and hinge apart from the nuckle
assuming thats the bottom of the seat have you got a picture off it in the down position
 
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Big-All - I'm a bit better with a router than with Word Drawings, so I'd rebate them, & I take your point. They appear to be 8mm here. Probably as you say, better (let in to) the top surface. I could always put a row of screws with their heads hitting each other to control the gap.

The picture is looking at the bottom of the footplate when it's folded UP. See the wheels - greyed out a bit.

I've run some numbers assuming a 120kg person stands on the front corner. It does need the extra sprung flap! (I'm also doing a 3D printed design where the flap is springy, but I'll have to get samples produced. The printed thing isn't like a solid material. I can do calculations for solids, but...)

Back at plywood, I'd like a better arrangement of hinges to flip and flop. Any bright ideas?
I've got more pictures, some are actually a different chair, identical model, I worked on for someone else. .....
.P1120240.JPG P1120244.JPG P1120245.JPG
 
ahhh its the foot rest that folded up
to be honest my natural reaction is make it funky and bright as well as practical they need to be happy and hopefully excited with what you do
only just functional is in my eyes missing a trick with there well being
i know its difficult but at that age they are very self consciouse so giving a great focal point can help help there path forward
 
Well she did ask for it to be motorised - visions of Thunderbirds?
Thsi pic makes it looks kinda funny. I didn't take it. the footplate is edge-on.
Know what you mean about wanting funky. The other pic is an extending hook I made for a lad to lift his footplate. So I started with a magnetic pick-up tool with a light on it. So he pokes the light into things, picks up things...


LHS.jpg Resized_20180807_164438.jpg
 
just wondering if it needs a rethink where a "clip on" section that can be stored secured perhaps to the side back or base will work perhaps using checkered plate or brightly coloured fiberglass around a tubular metal or wooden frame :D
 
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Weeell, to get out of her chair, she'd need to remove the extensions to hinge it up. Otherwise it'd be too wide to go between her legs. The other lad needed the hook to lift it else he'd topple out of the chair. So I'd expect she wouldn't be able to bend forwards enough to manipulate them. Kick up and down only, I think.

The checker plate could work. I could have TIG welded some hinges on sometime last century...
 
They don't suit the client, is the short answer! She's a kid so needs it small - easy to get in and out, etc. With the flaps fixed down, she couldn't get her knees out of the way to fold the plate up.
 
From what I have read the footplates should come in a variety of replacement sizes.
 
From what I have read the footplates should come in a variety of replacement sizes.

We have looked. Show me? It has to fit the wheelchair, be <=12mm thick... and the edges have to fold up.
 
in my humble opinion you are doomed to failure as i said on the other thread
as i say the strongest hinge you can use on 12mm ply is a piano hinge and thats lacking enough strength for your purpose
 

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