We plan to design and create a combination wheel lifting and aligning device. The device is meant to help people who are physically unable to lift/align wheels during car maintenance or repair. It should reduce the physical demands of wheel removal and installation by partially or fully assisting in the process. The device shall be able to lift wheels weighing up to 100 lbs, up to an elevation of 12”, and have collapsed dimensions no more than 2’ x 2’ x 2’. The dimensions make it so that the device can fit into a car trunk. Making something so compact while being able to lift 100 lbs wheels is the main challenge of our capstone project. The device will need to be made of a material that is strong to handle lifting the loads from the heavy tires. Designing a part or mechanism that can rotate the wheel will be another challenge. Below is a summary of our physical constraints and further down are pictures that help illustrate our physical challenges.
Parameter | Specification |
Wheel Lifting Capacity | 100 lbs |
Lifting Range | Ground – 12” |
Minimum Wheel Rotation | 90 ⁰ |
Maximum Volume Collapsed | 2’ x 2’ x 2’ |
We will find the typical loads and forces that 100 lb wheels exert on a potential design. The stresses in the design will be calculated from the loads to ensure it can withstand lifting and holding 100 lbs wheels 12” from ground level. As for nonphysical or “soft” challenges, feasibility, in terms of time and team skills/knowledge, will have also be considered in the design. Making an idea that succeeds in addressing the problem will be a challenge in and of itself but making that idea into reality is another challenge. Additionally, there are concerns about testing and validating the prototype because we plan to use strain gauges to help measure the stresses in the device and compare them to our calculated stresses. We have used strain gauges in lab coursework but not in real life. Measuring the device’s success will be relatively simple because our physical constraints are straightforward: can the device lift a 100 lb wheels 12”? One of the more pressing “soft” decisions relates to how extensive we would like this device to ultimately be. There are ideas to add mechanical advantages using a drill to actuate the device, which would likely add complexity and cost related to the fabrication. Ultimately, this decision would be directly affected by how successful a preliminary prototype serves to be. If, during the building phase we see success with a mechanically simpler device, we could then elect to add these complexities to the device in subsequent iterations.
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