Oiling the big wheels that keep the Paralympics moving

The Olympic Games: just saying it conjures up images of top athletes straining for the finishing line, the crowd roaring during the 100 metres final, the heartbreak of a relay team dropping their baton, the sudden spurt in public expertise on sports such as shooting or three-day eventing as the medal tally highlights their …

[Anonymous Coward]

> All th£ focus is on th£ athl£t£s, th£ comp£tition and th£ m£dals. That is what th£ Gam£s ar£ about.

Fixed that for you.

[LinkOfHyrule]

£££ th€ £o¢u$ is on th€ £th£€t€$, th£ ¢omp€tition and th€ m€dal$. Th£t is what th€ G£m€$ £r£ £bout

Fixed it a bit more - I don't know why I am getting involved I normally think its pretty lame when people write M$ instead of Microsoft.

[Glen 1]

re: Funds

Imagine if we had the same attention/budget to spend on our office chairs?

Physio included?

[Neil Barnes]

"The movement of the knees is very harmonious"

Just wanted to see that quote again.

[Don Jefe]

This Was Fun

This was a fun article. It is nice to see so much technology going into helping people with disabilities. I especially liked the charity bit where they built the guy a new foot/leg for free because his was so outdated.

You know what else would be fun? If they mixed wheelchair players with regular rugby players in the same match. All the broken toes during the scrum would be great to watch!

[Anonymous Coward]

"the chair is baked slowly at a low temperature to purify it"

Eh? Low temperature heat treatment of welded alloys is to artificially "age" the weld material to improve hardness, nothing about removing impurities.

[Thecowking]

Re: "the chair is baked slowly at a low temperature to purify it"

And relieve stress in the heat affected zone too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "the chair is baked slowly at a low temperature to purify it"

Does this work for Bankers too? ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "And relieve stress"

That requires higher temperature. Actually to stress relieve heat treated aluminium alloy such as the 6000 series typically used for sport wheelchair construction you have to heat it enough that it adversely affects the heat treatment, so it's not usually done.

[Thecowking]

Re: "And relieve stress"

Ah I missed the alu bit.

Spend too long working with steel pipes and look where it gets you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "the chair is baked slowly at a low temperature to purify it"

Yeah that's weird, it sounded like they were stick-welding it messily or something horrendous like that, instead of proper Alu welding methods like TIG, do I get my nerd wannabe prize now, I don't even weld ;)

[ukgnome]

Fully support any site that runs articles like this

See above

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, was there an article there?

Just got a little side tracked by the lovely Jessica in the side pane.

Sorry went back into adolescent mode for a minute then.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sorry, was there an article there?

Funny, not getting any Jessica on mine. Maybe I need to adjust the settings for that ;)

[Sean Timarco Baggaley]

Not every day you get to read...

... an article about socket scientists.

(What? Was it something I said?)

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they considered alternative alloys like Reynolds 953 / maraging (stainless)steel ....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maraging_steel OK maybe overkill .....

[steve444]

re: Reynolds 953

Wouldn't be surprised if at least some are made from this. Reynolds 953 (or similar) tubing is probably the favourite material of custom frame bike welders, noone welds their own aluminium frames. The same must be true for wheelchairs, especially in sports where they need re-welding, bending back into shape, repairing, brazing etc. Aluminium alloys would just be too hard to work with. Nightmare to weld, nightmare to repair, third of the weight but third of the stiffness/strength of steel = no benefits.

[Fred Flintstone]

Thank you - too short :)

Lucy, this was a very interesting read. I kinda felt sorry the article already ended where it did :)