Taking off from our 3 ideas discussed in the prototype stage to make our bed recline, we zeroed in on either using an electric car jack and/or the water equilibrium/pump idea as our final mechanism.
After making the prototype of our bed out of wood using the mechanism of the car jack as a lever, we encountered certain problems in the functioning of the bed. The wheel at the side of the bed, connected to the jack, still required considerable amount of manual force to be rotated which cannot be utilized by old people. And this was primarily because wood as a material is heavy and far too flexible and flimsy, compared to metal. So the wood could never really hold the jack together and allow it to offer a smooth transition between 0 to an optimal 75\80 degrees of inclination. In order to overcome this hurdle we decided instead to start with a light metal frame, and replaced the manual car jack with an electric one at a slightly higher cost.
So we started work at a workshop in the city with an access to a welder, lots of scrap metal and power-tools. Immediately, we saw many loopholes appear in our water equilibrium design, though it wasn't exactly impossible to achieve, we decided to shelve it until we finished the other mechanism as we were working against the clock. After about 11 hours of deliberation with the metal frame including some unforeseen re-adjustments and last minute hiccups, we at the end managed to complete the basic frame work including a fully functional electronic reclining mechanism.
No comments:
Post a Comment