Carbon Fiber Wheelchair

General Composites Discussions Showcase
#1

This is the most recent of several I’ve built over the years. For those who are familiar with wheelchair specs, this one is for a 16"x16" cushion size; uses a single piece, angle adjustable 15" tall backrest assembly; a solid surface cushion base and footplate; 4" casters with suspension forks and 25" rear wheels. The headline number for a lightweight wheelchair is the “transfer weight” or the weight of everything except the rear wheels and cushion. This chair came in at just under 11lbs. The caster/fork assemblies are 1.5lb heavier than I normally use, but these do soften the ride quite a bit.

Ben

#2

That’s wonderful work. Without asking any trade secrets, how do you do the tubing elements?

#3

I use bladder molding for the tubular components. I detailed the process in a thread on this forum a while back.

#4

I’ll search around. Again, great work indeed.

#5

Nice man, thanks for sharing!

#6

Found your thread about the tubes. Detailed the process you did indeed! Thanks for that thread and showing your work, brilliant.

#7

Really nice work. Thanks!

#8

Nice work, looks really good.

#9

Nice work.

#10

super nice!

#11

Thanks for the compliments!

This chair is performing flawlessly, even under pretty harsh use.

#12

That’s a wonderful work! I’m going to read the whole process :wink:

#13

What an excellent idea and great execution. It not only looks like great work but the use of cf will obviously be of benefit to the user.

There is a lady who lives on my street with an amazing cf prosthetic leg. It’s so well designed, light and strong that I had no idea it wasn’t a real leg until I saw her walking her dog wearing shorts one day.

Great work!

#14

That’s great, how much does it weigh?

#15

Just under 11lb. (excluding rear wheels and cushion). aka “transfer weight”.