AMBUCS Trike Repair

thingiverse

My wife is a physical therapists that works with kids with special needs and wounded warriors. She supports and volunteers time with an organization called AMBUCS that provides mobility to these special people. In order to fit the user to the bike or trike they need they use demo equipment that gets a lot of use and abuse. One of the trikes had broken and so my wife thought I needed a new "project". I love a challenge so I jumped in to help. I had seen 123D Designer and it looked like a nice design tool so I spent a couple of evenings learning the software and then jumped into the design of the replacement part. It was relatively easy except for some of the dimensioning. It can be a challenge in 123D. I hope they add to it's capabilities because it is a very friendly design tool. I like it! The black piece is the broken part. It holds a 4ft long steel tube with a handle on the end that is used to control the trike during the demo with up to a 40lb child on it so it can have quite a bit of stress. I made the replacement part out of silver PLA. Only time will tell if it is strong enough. I did pick up the trike and move it around and felt flexing in the plastic handle more than the replacement part. If it does break I can have another one made in about 8 hours. You may notice a seam in the part. That was because during the print I touched the frame of my printer and heard the unmistakable sound of a static discharge spark........the print job stopped six hours into the print. I used Cura to cut the original part so that I could print just the upper section. Some careful sanding and CA glue and the parts were joined together. If it fails then I will just print another. The glue joint is not in a high stress area so it should be fine. The last two pictures are of the latest prints. Two more to go to fix more trikes. Latest update: I've made about a dozen of these and they have been sent all over the world! They have held up very well with only one that was a problem. That spool of PLA gave me some print issues so that was most likely the issue. Instructions Designed with 123D. Printed on my modified K8200 using .2mm layers, 50% infill, PLA.