A Recent 3D Printing Project

Dave R

This is a heel strap for a wheelchair to prevent the user's feet from sliding off the foot plate. It's designed to install easily with no tools required except scissors to trim the strap to length. The clips with snap on covers are 3D printed to fit off the shelf polyurethane toothed belting.

From the SketchUp model.

Partially assembled.

Temporarily installed on a chair. Ignore the dog hair.

Rich O Brien

@Dave-R Are you open sourcing the print files for others or is it a commercial product for the living aids sector?

I knew someone who invented a sock removal aid that ended up licensed to some large US based living aid supplier. It was initially an aid for wetsuit removal that caught the eye of an investor who saw a use in living aids.

Those clips that receive the belt must be pretty unique in the space.

Dave R

@Rich-O-Brien I'm not open sourcing the print files yet but we'll see. This is going to a friend to test to see if it's even going to be useful.

Cool story about the sock remover. Maybe something like that would happen for me.

fransko

can i have the stl file please

Dave R

@fransko what stl file? If you are referring to the one for the clips I showed in my first post, no, I don't give away my model files. Sorry.

Dave R

A few more 3D printed things.

The H-shaped thing fits into the back pocket of a waist pack style camera bag and the C-shaped clips attach to it through the fabric with M6 screws. I printed some temporary ones while waiting for proper metal ones to show up. The 3D printed screws worked fine as long as they weren't torqued too tight.

This is a sort of adaptor for attaching the bag on a new chair. The new chair's cross tube is farther back and larger diameter than on the old chair.

And here's the bag in place on the adapter on the new chair.

This is an auxilliary footplate with side guards to keep feet from falling off the sides. Temporarily installed for the picture. Waiting for screws and lock nuts to come.

Mike Amos

VERY nicely done, SIr.

Rich O Brien

These are great examples of using 3D printing to much needed customised elements to disability aids. In particular personalised elements.

Probably at a fraction of the cost if you asked a supplier to create custom pieces.

Dave R

@Rich-O-Brien thanks Rich. You're right. The bag adapter thing wouldn't be available off the shelf anywhere.

There are alternatives for the footplate thing but as you say, they are much more expensive. A friend had ones made of HDPE installed on her chair.

I think the price was about $250 or $300. My version has less than $3 worth of filament in it and I can't charge for the development time. My version weighs about a third of the one she has.

@Mike-Amos thank you.