Week 25

This week I spent a lot of time looking for materials for my wheel stand project. I finished up the CAD by the end of last week and thought that I was happy with it. I started searching for all of the PVC that i was going to need. I found everything which included 90 degree elbows, t-shape pieces and some straight sections. I also started to look for some wood. I am going to need wood to lasercut the top and bottom pieces of the stand for the wheel and pedals to sit on.

The wood I plan on using

Making sure that the wood will fit both pieces I need to cut

Around the middle of the week I realized that the stand seemed like it may be a little too unsteady. At first I thought that the pedals would be able to balance out the weight of the wheel but at home I realized how heavy the wheel was compared to the pedals. This made me rethink my original idea and look for ways to balance them out. I started with a design where the supports coming up from the base would be angled so that the wheel would be better balanced with the pedals. I thought that this would be a good design, but I could not find any PVC with the right angle to allow this to work. All I could find were 45 degree angled pieces which would not work in my situation. This caused me to take a much simpler route and turn the top where the wheel sits 180 degrees. This meant that the wheel would sit right on top of the pedals. I am happy with this as it will allow the stand to balance. While I was at home I also checked and realized that the clamps on the wheel are able to clamp all the way down. This helps me significantly because last week I thought that they were only able to close a certain amount and I was looking for a way to fix this.

The first updated design that would not work

The New design I will use