Lost & Found

About one year after receiving the Quantum Edge power wheelchair, I can say that I'm quite pleased with the model.  It is certainly a vast improvement over the disastrous Permobil M300 which was in-operational more often than not.

Plastic!  I am no fan of plastic.  Oh, it's a fine product but is used in the wrong place--as a wrong material, perhaps 90% of the time.  Why?  Because it is cheap--yet the savings are not pass onto the consumer but are hoarded by the manufacturer and/or vendor.  Overall, plastic is less durable over time, immediately more fragile and subject to ultra-violet (sunlight) deterioration than comparable light-weight metals--just to name a few properties.

Wheelchair manufacturers use plastic over light-weight metals now more than ever citing cost and weight as justification.  I believe profit is the only motivating factor.

Several months ago, I pulled up to my bedside with the intent to transfer.  As the power-chair approached, the left front caster arm grazed the metal bed frame which just happened to be at the appropriate height to pop the plastic cap to the caster pillar like a bottle-opener to a bottle cap.  Off it flew.  I could hear it pop but I could not tell to where it flew.

So I retrieve a mop and sweep under the bed.  Nothing.  I check the other side of the room--perhaps it rolled in the opposite direction.  Nope.  Under the book case?  Nada.  Ah-ha! I won't get fooled.  It had to have flung back into the wheelchair itself.  I retrieve a flashlight and prod all the nooks and crannies with a narrow ruler.  I can't pick the power-chair up and shake it out.  It doesn't appear to be on the chair or foot rest.  I'm perplexed!

That plastic cap had been attached to the caster pillar or post by friction.  The cap is manufactured with a lip, perhaps one-sixty-fourth of an inch smaller than the diameter of the pillar or post onto which it fits.  The assembler places the cap onto the pillar and with a slap of a closed fist or rubber mallet, drives the cap home.  The trouble is that an equal and opposite force just as easily removes the cap as there are no threads or set-screws to secure it to where it has been placed.

After weeks of scratching my head and wondering where the plastic cap had  gone, I gave up.  Perhaps it now resides with Jimmy Hoffa as the concrete foundation of a high-rise or with Amelia Earhart someplace off the coast of the Howland Islands.  Maybe its with the Amber Room and other lost Nazi plunder.  A black hole may have momentarily opened up in my bedroom and drawn the cap into its singularity, never to be seen again.  But life goes on as house-dust, saw-dust, garden leaves and other life's refuse gathers in the cup to keep the caster's retaining nut company the same as the lint which must accumulate in a vagrant's navel.  The "spontaneous breaking of symmetry" as a quantum physicist may note.  I hate that the left side looks different than the right even more than having use forceps, a vacuum or whatever, to keep the dust and detritus from accumulating.

Now this 2-inch diameter plastic cap might have been manufactured with a thimble-full of molten recycled plastic costing one-one hundredth of a penny for material and labour -- plus shipping and handling, for of course we all know from endless commercials that shipping and handling are extra.  Yet I'm certain should I order a replacement, I would be charged perhaps $25.00 for the opportunity to lose it a second time.

So what happened to that cap?  Over the next few months I would find a curious and unidentifiable dark gray-coloured piece of plastic here or there in my travels.  On four largely separate times, the chair suddenly jolted to a stop with a chair icon flashing on my controller--twice forward twice backward.  I still didn't clue in.  Then I found the major segment which comprised the top of the cap--well chewed as if a salivating puppy had found a new play-toy.

The cap had in fact flown back into some dark crevice in the chair and resided there for some time until through bumps and jostles it worked its was down to some hidden [from me] but exposed drive-gear mechanism where it would be periodically fed to the grinding teeth.

So now the chair grins back at me like some boxer who has lost a tooth.  It mocks me in knowing I was outsmarted by a wheelchair...

Just a few of the pieces of the cap left like bread-crumbs leading me to the answer of what happened to my caster cap.

One can see that the cap which covers the top of the caster is missing on the caster pillar seen at the right of this photo.  It covers a large retaining nut which holds the post around which the caster swivels.  Not just for aesthetics, the cap keeps foreign materials and moisture from the nut so the swiveling action is not impeded.

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