Do You Love Seeing the Details?: Two Years of Morphing Handcycle Photos and Videos Examine Every Moment, Every Measurement

CONFUSION ALERT! What looks like image galleries below are really SCREEN GRABS of the Picasa Web Albums galleries! So no, you can't click on the little images to see it bigger. Instead, you need to click on the ORANGE links to see Picasa Web Album it is associated with (and alas doesn't go to if you click on the photo itself!

Note: When you play a video, you can choose "View HQ Video" on the upper right of the screen. This will make all subsequent videos at the higher (much better!) resolution. The original videos were shot at 800x600 with a Panasonic TZ1 camera, and later videos are shot at 1200x800 with a Panasonic TZ5 camera. Find this video to learn why popcorn is so important to the Morphing Handcycle project.

Morphing Handcycle Gets Closer to a Build Version - Narrower Frame

Side view - low rider mode.  (The "front" designation from Solidworks isn't true...I avoided capturing it in the following screen images.

Had an online session today with Alan Ball, Rory McCarthy, and Bill Warner. The Morph is Rory's invention, Alan is providing industrial design, and Bill is providing project management and design input.

Side view - high rider mode.

Top view - low rider mode.

Front View - Low rider mode. Not how very low this vehicle goes.

Front View - High rider mode - and in high mode (like all our designs) the bike goes to a seating height above the rear wheels, which are 27"

Iso View - High rider mode. Note the twin tubes for the upper and lower link arms. This lets the purple frame nestle between them in the low mode.

Low Rider Iso. Seat is still in the works.

The red area shows the single gas shock in this design. It is compressed here, at a length of 9.7 inches.

High Rider Mode - Gas spring is at 14.1 inches. We are planning on a single gas spring in this design. Morph II had two gas springs.

Still some interference between the shock and the main tube. Will fix this.

Alan is working on the tube paths. The version we currently have, with 12" radius curve, puts the tube too close to the seat supports, and too close to the seat back. We working on this issue a bit today.

The blue tube should really go through the center of the grey seat support.

The orange circle represents the seat support. The purple tube needs to come back further and then rise at a steeper angle.

Can a 10" radius do it. No.

Can a 6" radius get the tube in the right position? No. And 6" is the very smallest radius that could be considered in a 2" tube. (and that's not a great idea.)

Here we remove the radius, but we still have interference.

Now we move the tube back further and angle up.

This is basically an angle-cut weld. (Not shown exactly that way.) High rider mode.

Angle-tube in low rider mode.

Still some interference of the top seat support. 

Alan is going to work some more on the frame design and resolving the interferences. Then our plan is to make a new wood model which we'll use to nail down the final frame design. Its much easier to discuss ideas when you have an actual model in your hands.

New Frame Design for the Morph: Back to a Single Tube. The Bike Look is Back, But We Kept all the Good Stuff.

Just received this concept model from Alan Ball. Rory, Bill and Alan will have an online design meeting tomorrow to discuss this new approach. We have moved back to a more "planar" and more bike-like frame with single tubes. One wheel is hidden to reveal the frame.

Here you can see the "fork" apprach to what we used to call "twin flanking members." These forks let the frame overlap, and allow the morphing to go lower, for good distance riding stability and cornering.

Low rider mode. Not sure about the curved sections. They could be hard to fabricate. But this is just a concept model.

Wheel and seat removed, and you can see how the fork allows the main tube to morph lower without interference.

Here's a look at the previous design, which spead the frame members out to the sides. Better for strength, but many more parts, more metal, and it loses the bike look. That's way we went to this design, that combines the single tube look with the forks that give us our flanking members.

Click here: http://www.edrawingsviewer.com/ to download the viewer for Mac or PC. You'll need it to see the files below: Note that this concept design doesn't show the handcranks or any of the front end.

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Just Like Your Teacher Told You, Geometry is Important -- A Detailed Look at the Geometry of the Next Morph

This Powerpoint presentation reviews today's online design session with Alan Ball, Rory McCarthy, and Bill Warner. The goal is to nail down the geometry of the morphing mechanism in stick figure, and then proceed with some basic frame design.
 
Now that we've got two morphing vehicles on the road, the benefits of the Morph II design are easy to see. It has excellent steering geometry in low rider and high rider modes. Mainly, we need to fix the issue that we can't adjust the seat angle, and the struts provided on Morph II turned out to be an unworkable solution due to the high forces that travel through those struts while you are sitting, and even higher forces while you are riding.
 
This presentation compares Morph II, the Bobby Hall, and a proposed new design, which essentially keeps the Morph II morphing frame, but allows it to morph through its full travel. Next will the the challenge of designing a seat that allows the proper adjustments.