Sweet Wheels

Jensen, 4, can now keep up with the neighborhood kids, thanks to BYU engineers. He cruises
around in possibly the smallest, lightest, and leastexpensive wheelchair ever, with a PVC-pipe frame that
can be adjusted as he grows. And unlike many standard
power chairs, which are wide and heavy, the BYU chair
wont require remodeling a house or
buying a new car. In fact, two of
these wheelchairsthe team
is making a second for Tanners 2-year-old brother,
Skyler, who also has
spinal muscular
anner

atrophycan be folded and tossed, rather than mechanically lifted, into the trunk of the Jensens sedan. This
is definitely an unmet need in the medical community,
says Esther Jensen, the boys mother.
For their mechanical engineering capstone project, A.
Zach Zimmerman (BS 15), Adam H. Bangerter (BS 15),
Ian J. Freeman (BS 15), Daniel N. McRae (BS 15), and
E. Justin Taylor (BS 15) spent two semesters designing and building the wheelchair, beating the $495
budget set by the project sponsor, Tim Gunsay, by a
few bucks. They challenged themselves to build use
standard garage toolsso that anyone could build
one. Find instructions at openwheelchair.org.
Leah Davis (BS 17)

PVC Pipe:
Longer pieces of
pipe can be substituted to expand the
chair for children up
to 50 pounds

Height: 29.75
inches (standard
power chair:
32-plus inches)

Width: 13.5
inches (standard
power chair:
22-plus inches)

Battery Life:
1.52 hours (A
slightly heavier battery would last the
whole school
day.)

Cost: $490.40
(standard power
chair: $2,000
$7,000)

Length: 22.5
inches (standard
power chair:
27-plus inches)

Speed: 4 mph (The

team had the first
prototype going much
even faster, but reined
it in to match the
standard power
chair speed.)

Weight: 20.5
pounds (standard
power chair:
100300-plus
pounds)