Posted on April 7, 2025 by Klesse College Staff
MakeGood is a nonprofit devoted to helping children with disabilities, chronic issues, and special needs by producing various tools and devices through engineering and fabrication. One of its key devices is its accessible pediatric wheelchairs, which it ships to children with ambulatory issues free of charge. What separates the MakeGood wheelchairs from other pediatric wheelchairs is that their chairs are completely customized and tailored to the individuals receiving them. With each wheelchair being designed with a particular child in mind, all the delivered chairs are sure to make an impact and be the perfect fit for the child. Though their efforts have been positively life-changing and impactful in every way, their current design contained some limitations, so MakeGood decided to partner with Klesse College to help find ways to make their wheelchair designs even more user-friendly and accessible.
The current wheelchairs produced by MakeGood can sometimes be heavy, hard to transport, and utilize materials that were harder to obtain and work with for mass manufacturing purposes. Here at Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design, the Good in Progress team decided to pick up this challenge and have been working hard to produce their own updated design for the wheelchair for their senior design project.
The team, consisting of Sophia Cavanaugh, Diana Guzman, Dante De Luna Rodriguez, and Ada Jaramillo developed their redesign of the chair that solved all of these issues while ensuring that the quality and functionality of the original chair remained intact. By researching new materials that could be utilized, not only did the cost of production greatly decrease, but the weight of the chairs plummeted, making them even easier to use. They faced challenges throughout the process but were able to overcome them by taking advantage of the resources available to them in the Makerspace and working closely with their sponsor.
The team plans on perfecting their design before the upcoming Tech Symposium and will be releasing their designs as open source for companies to produce and distribute.
Be sure to check out this team and their inspiring project at the upcoming Spring 2025 Tech Symposium.
— Klesse College Staff
