Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Mobility Tricycle Project- Jared

      My name is Jared Landis and I am a mechanical engineering student at Messiah. The project I have been working on with the Collaboratory is a part of the Mobility Tricycle Project. This project works on developing an all-terrain wheelchair that can be built using mostly supplies and tools available in Burkina Faso and other third world countries. What I have been working with specifically has to do with the drive components of the electric tricycle design. The current design contains some gearing components between the motor and the chain which drives the tricycle, and we have seen premature wear in these components that eventually causes the tricycle to become immobile. This semester, two other students and I designed and manufactured two designs that modify the current system by changing bearing types and bearing supports. This January, we will install these designs on two different tricycles and hope to see a longer lasting system.
Along with that, Seth and I will be documenting the dimensions of the tricycles that have been built in Burkina to verify that they are the same as what we have at the college. We will also be taking an inventory of what tools are being used in Burkina Faso, including certain fixtures and jigs that we have provided for them which are made specifically for building these tricycles.
With all the work that we put into these designs this semester, it is my hope that the designs we install during this trip will make the gear components in the tricycle last much longer than the old design and that we will be able to further develop a design to lower costs and eventually become a long-term solution. I am also exited to enter a culture very different from what I have been exposed to my whole life, learning more about the world and God’s people as a whole.

-Jared

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