Michael G
1st October 2012, 07:53 PM
As some of you know, I do volunteer work for a group called "Technical Aid to the Disabled" (TAD), where we make up gadgets for people with needs that can not be filled commercially.
The last few weekends have been taken up with a project that is a little unusual. A guy in a wheelchair that I believe has been in an accident and suffered some form of brain injury is a smoker and at the assisted living place that he lives at they were complaining that he was burning his clothes etc with the by-products when smoking in his chair - could we help?
This is the result -
235226235227235228
It attaches to the arm of his wheelchair and a plastic tube attaches to a spigot on the main barrel so that he will smoke via tube. It had to be enclosed as he 'fiddles with things', so it has a perforated metal cover and a brass screw down knob to hold the cover closed. The holder itself has an eject mechanism on it so that when the butt has burnt out, it can be removed from the holder. It can also tilt up around 15 degrees for ease of insertion and lighting. Every so often a carer will have to remove the ashtray and empty it, but it should hold ash from several cigarettes between empties.
(I'm a non-smoker, so trying to work out what features a smoker needs was interesting in itself.)
Materials are all things I had lying around - this work is great for convincing the other half that all that equipment gets used and that stuff that was scrounged from various places will get used.
Most states have TAD offices, so if you have some spare time and fancy the occasional challenge consider signing up(we also have guys that do clever things with electronics too).
Michael
The last few weekends have been taken up with a project that is a little unusual. A guy in a wheelchair that I believe has been in an accident and suffered some form of brain injury is a smoker and at the assisted living place that he lives at they were complaining that he was burning his clothes etc with the by-products when smoking in his chair - could we help?
This is the result -
235226235227235228
It attaches to the arm of his wheelchair and a plastic tube attaches to a spigot on the main barrel so that he will smoke via tube. It had to be enclosed as he 'fiddles with things', so it has a perforated metal cover and a brass screw down knob to hold the cover closed. The holder itself has an eject mechanism on it so that when the butt has burnt out, it can be removed from the holder. It can also tilt up around 15 degrees for ease of insertion and lighting. Every so often a carer will have to remove the ashtray and empty it, but it should hold ash from several cigarettes between empties.
(I'm a non-smoker, so trying to work out what features a smoker needs was interesting in itself.)
Materials are all things I had lying around - this work is great for convincing the other half that all that equipment gets used and that stuff that was scrounged from various places will get used.
Most states have TAD offices, so if you have some spare time and fancy the occasional challenge consider signing up(we also have guys that do clever things with electronics too).
Michael