Carbon Black Wheelchair - a call for help

We featured the amazing Carbon Black wheelchair back in July and many of you may have seen the inspiring documentary about inventor Andrew Slorance's journey to try and get his 'perfect wheelchair' into production. In the documentary Andrew, declares: 'I wanted to do something really different, something that was going to make a difference to other people and a difference to me in my own life.'

For anyone that missed the documentary is is being screened again on Sunday 9th September at 5:15pm on BBC2.

Andrew has asked the bespoken members to help as he 'looks to implement all the different configurations that our customers may want. I hope the survey asks the questions that are important to you but if you want to add anything comments or suggestions there is room for you to do so.

Thank you for your time and for supporting us revolutionising the wheelchair, exciting times are ahead.'

Andrew Slorance

The link below will take you to the survey.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HT5BSL6

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Permalink Reply by Linda Jane McLean on September 14, 2012 at 17:49

The original wheelchair was a dining room chair on castors : no muss, no fuss.

Equally, slightly limiting.

Andrew's vision requires a lot of work, and the end result can also be limiting,

Account needs to be taken of the very different kinds of seating that are required through a wide range of disabilities. Also, the higher up the spinal cord the lesion, the less balance, and the higher the "tipping point" is. So the seat would not suit everyone.

Suspension is something that could be added without too much difficulty. Gyroscopic suspension would be extremely cool and helpful: they are used in ride on lawn mowers to keep the seat level. Why not wheelchairs, when you hit that slope, or difficult camber?

Unable to access such a device in the market, we used a standard wheelchair frame, and added a Recaro seat base, which has suspension. It is also tilted back slightly, as a car seat is, thus causing less pressure on the sacral area. It was absolute comfort, and far better than anything the NHS had to offer, even when they were willing to spend thousands of pounds more!

We designed our own chair, to a certain extent, but the elements that were important to us were:
That it had a reclining mechanism:

That we could fly in an aeroplane with it easily.

That it had a certain amount of suspension.

That it would take a ventilator

That there were pouches for keys and wallets, which could be hidden.

Starting with the frame, there is a great deal of potential to work with others to build up, layer upon layer, something that may be quite revolutionary. It will take time, and I suggest that it is only the frame that is designed. I heard Andrew say on the programme that he would change his chair every few years. We bought our first and last wheelchair in 1991, and kept it going through spare parts, including computer boards, for thirteen years. (The frame is unlikely to give way unless badly designed. ) The wheelchair was used daily, and I estimate that it covered not less than 20,000 miles over the years. 3,000 miles a year would be an approximation, which I think is probably heavy use by most wheelchair users standards.

So, if a "one off" wheelchair could be designed, for which parts were always available, it may also be a market winner. Cost of replacement is always uppermost.