Seth Arseneau is a handcycle racer, a machinist, and a handcycle builder. Seth is joining with Graham Butler and Intrepid Cycles to work on the morphing handcycles. We welcome Seth to the team!
While I was putting together information for Seth to review, I figured I'd put it all in a blog post for posterity.
So here, Seth, and anyone else, is an overview of the Morphing Handcycle Project, with links to key blog posts, and a screen image from each one.
Our Website: www.movewithfreedom.org
Need to update that 2009 on the upper right!
For posts dating from May 11, 2005 to February 28, 2008, we used the Apple Blog tool for our blog posts.
What follows are key postings from that first archive:
First post 2005 Email from Rory
Original Morph - combination of Morphing Handcycle and Morphing Wheelchair:
This Intention document served as the design input for Morph II
Rory's original side view of the Morph that started the whole design sequence.
See the original post here.
See the original post here.
See the original post here.
See the original post here.
See the original post here.
Bill riding the first Morph II prototype in April, 2007
See the original post here.
See the original post here.
Morph can go from low rider to high rider instantly....
...for very important reasons!
See the original post here.
Figuring out how to do seat correction was a long standing issue. The above link is a Powerpoint that explains the issues. We eventually made it all automatic (Thanks Alan Ball)
See the original post here.
The goal of Morph III was to get much lower in low rider mode -- to more closely match the Bobby Hall handcycle upon which the low rider mode is modeled. See the original post here.
Morph III high rider mode. See the original post here.
Note that the original Morph II had 5.1 inches of trail. Ouch, that was bad, and had to be fixed. .
We struggled with how to make the seat tilt work. Doing a manual adjuster wasn't even easy to do, and you would have had to fix it on each morph up/down. See the original post here
A look at the Morph III frame. Click the link above and then play the animation. See the original post here
We had major issues with Morph III regarding steering and seat tilt. We did radical surgery in the shop. Don't try this at home. It partially worked. View the original post here.
View the original post here.
As we struggled to get the Morph to ride lower, Alan came up with the idea of having the main tube nestle between the rear frame. He called it "Twin Flanking Members." It worked, and we are using this approach in the final design. http://morphhc.posterous.com/twin-flanking-members
View the original post here.
This was a breakthrough from Alan Ball - a way to make the seat adjustment automatic. We're using this on the finished design. View the original post here.
View the original post here.
Detailed discussion about trail in high and low modes.
View the original post here: http://morphhc.posterous.com/april-2-2009-morph-iii-first-road-test-in-der
View the original post here: http://morphhc.posterous.com/april-3-2009-morph-iii-meeting-at-baron-engin
View the original post here: http://morphhc.posterous.com/april-14-2009-morph-ii-and-morph-iii-measurem
View the original post here: http://morphhc.posterous.com/morph-ii-vs-morph-iii-side-view-orthographic
View the original post here: http://morphhc.posterous.com/the-morphing-handcycle-in-action-rory-morphs
View the original post here: http://morphhc.posterous.com/comparing-the-morph-ii-to-the-bobby-hall-hand
View the original post here: http://morphhc.posterous.com/solidworks-as-built-models-of-morph-ii-you-ca-0
The Morph II did not turn well in low rider mode.
By dropping the front fork, we were able to get the steering geometry we wanted.
It had almost 8" of trail. Very bad. See the post for the whole story:
This post provides dowloadable as-built models of Morph II. These are .EASM files from Solidworks. The post also has a link to download a free viewer to see these files. View the original post here: (and download the files from here also) http://morphhc.posterous.com/solidworks-as-built-models-of-morph-ii-you-ca-0
We decided that a knee joint wasn't a good idea. But it's still interesting because this joint tracks what your knee wants to do in morphing from low to high. See the full post here: http://morphhc.posterous.com/powerpoint-animations-exploring-a-morphing-jo
The post also includes three nice photos of Bill Warner riding his Bobby Hall bike, with his dog, Jake: http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/morphhc/SvyXzHLkRyNI0UbQAd7b...
