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Here are the first results of the wheelchair's body, that I've built out of vinyl. I've disassembled the cardboard body and taken the pieces as templates for the vinyl sheets.

 

I fixed the vinyl sheets with countersunk hexagon screws on a chassis, which I've also built out of vinyl. Even if the screws itself look quite good, I didn't like the fact that there were so many of them - and where they were located.

 

I turned my workshop into a big mess, when I was cutting all the vinyl. I tried every saw to cut the material. First I tried to do it with the circular saw, but the one that I have, is not very good and the result wasn't precise enough. Next, I tried to saw it with the mechanical fret saw. But this was too uncomfortable. So I used my stitch saw with a metal blade at the end, and that worked quite well.

 

As I mentioned above, I was not happy with the amount and the allocation of the screws, so I decided to build the piece once more. For the second try, I already marked the position of the screws at the beginning.

 

After I've built the second version of the back part, I started to build the side parts. I've thought out a new technique, where I didn't have to screw so much. I started with bending vinyl pieces, which I glued behind the visible parts. To bend the vinyl, I used an industrial heat gun. When the plastic was flexible, I've put it in that wood construction, which I prepared before. With the help of that construction, I could bend it to any required angle.

 

This is the first bended vinyl part.

 

The next step was to glue this part with tangit at an invisible position of the cover.

 

The same part, seen from the other side. Later, this side will be visible.

 

This is how the side part looks like. On this picture, it is not yet fixed on the chassis.

 

And here, you can see the mess in my workshop again.

 

To get the side parts fixed at the chassis, I had to remove the batteries and their cases from the wheelchair.

 

I filed three small mounts, which hold the side parts at the chassis. They were screwed onto the chassis from inside. Onto them, I screwed the side parts from outside with three of the countersunk hexagonal screws.

 

At the end, I decided to rebuild the back part for a third time. Because I was still unhappy with the amount of screws, that I had to use. And because I wanted to glue the third version, I already had to cut the logo into the back directly at the beginning. So. I've printed out the design, stuck it onto the vinyl and used a needle to assign the logo onto the vinyl.

 

Here, you can see the marks, which I made with the needle.

 

Then, I connected the needle marks with lines. Voilà, that's the logo on the vinyl.

 

After that, I drilled holes into the letters, in order to saw them out, later.

 

This is the back plate with the sawn out logo. At this stage, I was filing the cutting edges.

 

And at the end, I glued a blue plexiglas behind it and I adhered a cold cathode tube onto it. You remember, I've already used this kind of tube for the line detection unit.

 

The backlit logo looks quite alright!

 

Gluing the parts together was not easy, because they all weren't flat anymore. I had to invent strange constructions to get pressure on the surface.

 

Here, you can see already quite well, how it will look later.

 

Now, that's the finished back piece. I would say, that it was really worth to build that thing so many times.

 

From this perspective, you can see the bevels at the logo a bit.

 

Another nice view.

 

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