Dogs in wheelchairs like to hike trails too!
We love projects like these! We were approached by a customer who was having a hard time finding a solution for her dog who loved hiking on trails but unfortunately needed a wheelchair for support. The factory wheels on her Walkin Pets wheelchair worked great on pavement but were so small that they really struggled to roll over rough trails.
Thanks to the power of 3d printing, we were able to find a solution for her without it costing too much other than some trial and error getting things to work the way we hoped.
The rear wheels were easy enough, we were able to simply bolt strider wheels in place of the rear wheels.
The front wheels were a bit trickier though. The stock wheels were about the size of roller blade wheels and held in a caster that limited the size of wheel you could put into them. Because of this we had to 3d model a much larger caster to hold bigger wheels before we could even think about the wheel itself.
For our first version of the design (the photo above), we came up with a somewhat convoluted, yet function set up with using the old rear wheels on the front. This was a bit tricky as the factory wheels did not use bearings so we had to use multiple locknuts to hold the wheels in place without actually clamping on them. This worked for a while but they were always a bit loose and eventually wore out where the axle went through as this dog would put a ton of miles on the chair.
We ultimately modeled our own custom wheel for her in CAD so the wheels would not only have proper bearings but also be MUCH easier to remove and install as you did not have to deal with multiple locknuts in tight spaces.
We ultimately modeled our own custom wheel for her in CAD so the wheels would not only have proper bearings but also be MUCH easier to remove and install as you did not have to deal with multiple locknuts in tight spaces.
The really cool part to us was being able to actually 3d print the wheel and tire separately using PETG for the wheel to make it durable yet affordable and then print the tire separately in TPU which is a flexible, almost rubbery filament so the tire actually acts like a pneumatic tire supporting the dogs weight while still having some give for shock absorption. We can even modify how solid the tire is to adjust for different weight dogs.
Check out our final version below. We are getting more and more requests for stuff like this and LOVE taking on projects to help with mobility as we feel that industry is quite underserved. If you have any project similar to this or need help with equipment for mobility, human or animal, please reach out from our Contact page and we would love to see if we can help.
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