I have ot unplugged mine for months. Not too worried about a spark. Might not be the right way but it's my way.
I have ot unplugged mine for months. Not too worried about a spark. Might not be the right way but it's my way.
Originally Posted by gjnl
My old M300 has a charger with an off/on switch. It is the charger that came with the chair. That is why it is an issue with me.
You will find a guide to preserving shoulder function @
http://www.rstce.pitt.edu/RSTCE_Reso...imb_Injury.pdf
See my personal webpage @
http://cccforum55.freehostia.com/
I have 2 of them with the switch on them. They are real heavy also. 1 made by Invacare the other by Lestor. They both look the same so Invacare probably made by Lestor. I know the lestor was my first charger.
Art
Google search Lester 24 volt battery charger. EBAY has one for sale. Looks kinda rough. They are dual modes which mean 1 setting for acid batteries and another setting for gel cell charging. Which I was told it didn't matter which way you charged your batteries it was more of a sale thing to cost you more. I have used both setting with acid or gel and never did notice nothing. Every once in awhile I charge my batteries on my chair and it takes a lot longer with old lester heavy type battery charger. I think it does a better job then the new light weight ones do though. Maybe why I get most the time 2 years or more. I never get rid of anything......lol
Art
How do you always get that seat. Do you fly 1st class? Most the planes I've been on I have to go thru 1st class to get to my seat. Are there certain models of plans that you choose?
I've had an M300 since Feb 2014 and received it the week before my son was born. I've been a bit under the weather for a while but having done over 6000 miles in mine, time to give some longer answers to questions asked a long time ago, mostly - or at least to try to! This site massively helped me understand what I needed in a chair back when I was stuck on the couch for a year (I missed Spinal Injury Rehab because my Neurosurgeon discharged me home saying it was a reversible injury rather than incomplete paraplegia + conus/cauda equina damage/syndrome. Having finally got a F5 VS funded in Oz I'm going to spend some time trying to give back!
If your provider or local Permobil rep can be bothered to work it out you can fit almost any back to the Corpus 3G seat base. If the Corpus back mounting plate doesn't fit adaptors they can either build something up out of the Unitrack system or put mounting canes on the back and go from there. While there are 3 standard aftermarket backs available on one of the order forms, the Roho backs are beginning to get listed as well and often as priority or instead.
I went C500 > M300 > F5 VS (on order). I think if I hadn't wanted/needed the VS kit I'd have been happy with the M5, but the M300 had been overheating with the standard motors in it (10,000km in <4 years would do it) so the F5 seemed to be a natural evolution when my C500 had been bulletproof.
As others have said, MK 7-8 years ago used to be excellent and bulletproof seemingly, often lasting 2 years or 2000km. Nowadays I'm seeing reports of one or both batteries failing and far more batteries dying on delivery, but I think it's because suppliers aren't equalising them before delivery and then wondering why battery drain gets worse and worse til one of them flips. The very best Gr 34 batteries are equal to the best Gr 24 batteries for a few reasons, but often more expensive - and if you're going more expensive you could just run a set of Lithium batteries of some kind and use the Gels for plane trips etc.
I love it. For a lot of paraplegics I think the 45 degree anterior tilt is really, honestly, a better option than the VS package, as it's faster to get into position, will allow lots of people to sit in anterior tilt with a chest strap and knee blocks for a few hours, and the functional reach really does work. Having to have all the actuators move in sync in the VS packaged chairs really does cause a lot of issues in terms of absolute speed of re-positioning, even if you have to be a Roadrunner type like me to get irritated by it.
gjnl said the M300 was better than the TDX-SP. The C300 has always had some issues with suspension and fishtailing - namely that it has basically none and does lots. The TDX also felt like....well, just plain painful when compared with the M300, and the M3 is another jump better. Basically C300 < TDX-SP < M300/C500 < M3 < F3 < M5 < F5 for suspension, for most people. Early M300's had caster flutter issues that were mitigated by the anti-flutter kits (O-Rings, metal plates, expensive lubricant etc) but if these are badly maintained they're trash, and they often need replacing or rebuilding with any change of castors.
Anterior tilt even without going full standing improves my bladder, bowels and vertigo issues, as well as pain levels, circulation, comfort and pressure area issues. Cannot speak highly enough of it and have pushed stupidly hard to get it funded. In Australia, EnableNSW will fund for standing transfers but NOT for functional reach, bladder, bowel, pain or anything else it's actually useful for. If my next chair doesn't have it, I'll sell it and live in my F5 for another 5 years.
IIRC memory functions can be enabled in software when the chair is set up on your premises, assuming they brought the dongle with them. If they didn't, slap them. Otherwise ask for it FOC on delivery or at cost (say $65)
The Corpus 2 back in Leather definitely anatomically stank, however Sweden wanted good occupational therapists to use aftermarket backs for people with bad injuries and for more easily helped people to have their backs topped up with foam wedges etc when needed. Obviously this isn't how a lot of them turned out, and after 5 years of the same back on a C300 or C500, many of us with bony spines could feel the screws rubbing on us through the now completely flat cushion. While you have every right to hate the Corpus 2 back, the Corpus 3G back isn't anything like it - it's far better anatomically and by far the best 'standard' back on the market - in fact most OT's I speak to praise the Corpus seating system (basically, back and armrests) for allowing people who aren't eligible for custom seating without a huge fight to generally be very comfortable very easily (at least with the right sizing, laterals and cushion), while on other manufacturers chairs they'd be reaching for Jay or Varilite etc.
This bears repeating - by the way RollPositive was your chair a custom colour or did they just change the Galatic Green colour from that fairly recently? I noticed you specced a full custom shroud kit and drive wheel rings (sparkling forest green) for your friend - who did you speak to at Permobil about this?). I negotiated a heap of smaller stuff for my chair that wasn't part of the quote - if you have two suppliers I wouldn't encourage you to waste time playing them off against each other, but given the margins they can look at absorbing things like a seat elevator or lights and an essentials box on a $35k order if it means they get the order instead of Levo/Karma/Pride/TA-IQ/Otto Bock etc. They are often happy to sell anything not covered by insurance at close to cost - for instance on my M300 I got my lights package at half price, free spare hubcaps (red for going to the soccer, green for rest of the time, black shroud), free memory functions and suchlike. This time I did better, but quote was AU$47.Xk instead of AU$23.8k
In Australian summer heat the Permobil armrests don't crack unless I sweat directly on them. Wearing long sleeves is a habit a lot of the time because of nerve damage and pain issues (CRPS, MPS etc) but it definitely helps. Unfortunately we have a cat who likes clawing them - once she's started they'll harden and degrade quickly so it's best to avoid anything. There are lots of (basically, shoe cleaning) products that will help keep it soft and supple - the armrest middles are usually damaged by sweat rather than just 'drying out' per se. Having said that, I've cracked a plastic armrest surround a few times when carers move the chair and drive it into walls/doorways etc.
There are 3 basic ways of mounting the joystick and about a thousand different positions it can end up in. swapping the stick type, the position and possibly the controller mount, alongside armrest rake (what I suspect is causing most of your problems and removing most of the 'padding' on the armrest so you just have a sheepskin or memory foam/gel cushion under the contact point (or stack of both) and trying to keep the contact point off the elbow (possibly by mounting a shorter rest forward and leaving your elbow Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space) can all help, as can raising or lowering the armrest, and these can all be done in soft settings on the chair. Not sure if armrests raise/lower individually from the backrest though.
Given that you're the only person I've seen who's reported this issue and a google search doesn't bring up anyone else across ALL Permobil chairs (so far anyhow), I'd venture that you need to push hard to get the medical side of things looked at -a normal armrest should not be causing you that much pain and the funding body would normally let your OT address that kind of thing with top priority if it's painful, impacting all aspects of ADL AND causing you to be potentially unable to use the chair or need further surgery.
I believe that like the C500 and M300 independent footplates there are still a pair of screws and a locking nut to allow you to change footplate dump. You can also raise the footplaces on the mounting part and then drop the whole assembly 1" or less so you get softer contact with the ground if you do screw up and drive into something.
The BodyPoint strap isn't the only option that can be funded through Medicare (or EnableNSW where I am) and you could've had a 2" black strap, padded and joined in the middle with a pinch buckle if your DME/OT had bothered to tell you or you'd worked it out and communicated with them. They're pretty inexpensive though in the grand scheme of things so you may be able to switch it across.
I believe there's a newer option that is better than a rectangular box. Individual heel supports aren't considered (generally) preferable as they force people's legs to act like they're both the same length and want the same angle, which may or may not be true, but the one piece footplate is designed so heel cups and suchlike can be welded or glued in if wanted, and a third party strap is available for positioning. I prefer the 2 piece heavy duty ones as I've got size 11.5 feet and they overhang the standard M300 flip ones.
As you found out, the cover is designed to sit like that (a shame). It contains the main 'brain box' for the unit, from memory, a R-Net Control Module. I believe it can alternatively contain the ISM (Intelligent Seating Module)
Then you're not doing too many k's or repositioning much. Batteries die about every 1000km in terms of 'optimum use' if not both excellent quality and paired before use. Most people are too lazy to do that when fitting these days, so we get random results.
If you use jacks you can literally discharge the battery by lifting it up then wedging something against the joystick to discharge the batteries to about 3-4 bars, then charge fully overnight. For wheels with flat spots, I'd just rotate them 2/5th of a turn or something every 5 days. you can use a chalk mark on one side to help balance it. Having said that, the tyres are fantastic and hooking the batteries up to a battery conditioner every couple of weeks and leaving the chair down is better for the batteries and the tyres are cheap enough that they won't care.
Thanks for thanks! My local companies reckon that most backs DO take 1-2" of depth and most closer to 2", becuase they have to either use canes or mount the support mount adaptors off the Permobil backplate anyhow. If you're taller or heavier I'd speak to someone at Permobil directly - but there are MANY options and some are only 2cm of depth, though I don't know which ones.
Yep, that back is unusually low. Most backrests are meant to finish where the contact point of the shoulders finishes - that's really unusual. I'm 6'5" pre injury and needed a custom 30" Corpus backrest to be comfortable.
The Link hardware is now standard on the M3/M5/F3/F5 and on the M300 as Permobil own the IP. Older ones like mine are much more likely to use a Stealth headrest.
Likewise I've got a stupidly long torso - and long sit bones, short thighs and long calves. Needed a 20"x22" Otto Bock Cloud and that's replacing a larger Jay 2 Deep Contour.
While backs are obviously very personal things, it seems some prescribers are going far too long then. Backrest usually comes up to the shoulder blades somewhere, but the standard Corpus 3G ones are quite narrow and intended for people who have both some upper body sensation and the ability to reposition - and are also deemed best for 'active users' - at least by Australia, Benelux and Sweden Permobil people I've spoken to. I'm in a 28" and have to slouch to get enough contact, but my new chair is ordered with a 30" and I had the option of a 32", and I'm 6'5", but my OT and the Aidacare rep/OT (Ben) were both against it so we went 30". Obviously too short AND too long are both terrible as is having a supportive scoop back when you are happy with a flatter back and vice versa.
I showed a picture of that to an OT here who said that the Link system she had seen didn't seem to support the repeated use of the long plate to add extension, and that she'd seen the result of something that length shearing - apparently there is a case before the Supreme Court in Australia arguing over liability for trauma (not sure if fatal) caused by that kind of setup, albeit not with the Link system. Do you have any documentation to say Permobil are okay with it being used that way or that it's an intended use of the system? I'm open to changing my mind but it looks dangerous to me - if only because of sheer forces usually increasing by (approx) the square of the length.
Permobil Australia sell whole wheel assemblies and tyre only. For the cost of the assembly my wheelchair technicians say buying the whole assembly works out cheaper unless the assembly is pretty much brand new. If the tyres are going every 500 miles or so, it's often best to rebuild or replace the anti-flutter setup, however it's horribly expensive so it should be done CORRECTLY with a torque wrench and empirical flutter testing, blue locktite and the black/yellow Kluber Lubrication Syntheso Pro AA 2 'special grease', available in 25g tubes. For a well ridden M300 I keep a tube of this, a caster+tyre, a spare 'rebuild' kit (cleaned up old one with new O-rings) and loctite blue, plus a 3/8" torque wrench with long socket (12mm?) in my toolkit.
Permobil make the tyre using a tyre partner and buy exclusively - if you find any third party sellers of the caster tyres then I'm be almost certain that they're either B-grade stock or from a dead cheap etc. The drive tyres are one thing, but the caster tyres another. Unlike Invacare, who built the TDX in a 'Meccano' style 'buy everything you can for it' manner, Permobil have invested tens of millions in fabrication plants and design and development and they're bringing everything they can tweak in-house (for instance, these tyres are rounder and engineered to a 'wheelchair specific' size and rolling resistance to match tread wear with the mains).
This happens a lot to wheelchairs, because being transported by road can cause a resonant frequency issue between the bolts and wheel, even with loctite. They can't over-tighten these as you'd never get the wheel off again in an emergency or puncture situation, so they rely on technicians not to be lazy/stupid and actually check these - in the service manual it's pretty clear IIRC.
It's mostly in software, and the $130 charge is to turn it on in profile settings and pre-program 3 factory settings. Ask for it at no charge to be configured by the setup tech. It usually works by using a single button for footrest (once for up, again for down, pause level) and the other button/toggle position of that pair to go into memory mode (button 8, bottom right). Hold for 3 seconds and it'll flash. Hold button 4 (top right) for 2 seconds and it'll go green. Hold 5,6 or 7 (bottom row) for 3 seconds to store that position. If it's not set up, it can normally be set by getting a different 'ICS box sticker sheet' and changing setting mode to one that allows button 8 to access that instead of bringing the footplate down. Obviously this can change if you have height adjustable legrests on your chair or full standing etc.
If you have the retractable mount (long plastic with an internal chain) then you can mount it to the end of the armrest using an M6 screw and standard M6 square nut. If you have another joystick mount, you're probably SOL.
NEVER, never never never remove the O-rings. The guy is an idiot and should be shot - leaving metal on metal is stupid. The O-rings work with the plastic dome that sits on top of the hex nut to work as a 'friction brake' and are called 'friction brake kits' in technical parlance rather than anti-flutter kits. The problem with these is that they're often done wrongly, as they're meant to be finished off by a tech. Permobil mount the bottom threaded nut thing and then the rest of it loosely, and the tech is meant to tighten it to reflect the customer's terrain and usage speed, flutter risk vs tyre wear vs aggression style etc. A quarter turn with a torque wrench clockwise to tighten, an eighth-turn to loosen, is my basic guide, and once it's at the level I want it'll all have been loctited in and greased properly. Do not replace with non-genuine lubricant (as above) or non-genuine parts - a company called Chemtronics here in Sydney gave me a who year of grief by cheaping out and rebuilding them wrongly, and I had all the problems listed below.
Daily charging isn't specifically recommended - it's more that you should charge whenever the battery is drained to 50% capacity or more and not charge it every night for the sake of it, or leave it on the charger when they were full. But also that you shouldn't do long runs without it fully charged - difficult! Other people make useful comments about battery balancing and suchlike, but the reality is that people are being lazy not balancing them and then the most power you'll ever get is from the worse battery, and it'll always get more imbalanced unless you have a balancing off-chair charging setup, which is expensive and difficult to use unless you've got the kind of SCI where you can still lift a 20kg battery with one arm. Which isn't most of us.
Nope! It's done with an external charger with pretty complex circuitry, or the way Rustyjames suggests below in a pinch. Because it's not just about how much they can store but about how well they work as a pair, MK used to hand-select pairs for Permobil chairs and I believe now they just throw them at Permobil in big palettes and leave Permobil to suffer.
Could you PM me his contact details? I'm seriously frustrated that after a decade of the original R-Net controller, Curtiss-Wright haven't built a controller for Permobil that doesn't have a layer to stop polarizing sunglasses or glasses making the screen impossible to read (due to oil-like crazing effect) in bright sunlight. Keen to talk to someone who can effect change, and it can be done with a new plastics coating, a film layer or a different selection of cover material very easily.
I'm not saying it's impossible, because it isn't but a flappy castor is very unlikely to trigger a new funding approval. If you're suffering back pain, headaches and bad shoulder pain, are you saying that's from the seating? If the M300 won't fit, the F5 is unlikely to be better (longer footprint, better at 90 degree turns, worse at turning on the spot - I live in a unit w/ 2 x 9' x 10' bedrooms and nothing much bigger and the M300 has been ok with an 18" back but both can be narrower with a 16" back, and the F5 is narrower than the F3. You can bring your armrests in an inch or so if you need to as the clearance given against the backplate is often far wider than it needs to be. The castor issues.
1) If it's not hitting the ground correctly, check if the fork is fitting properly. Then check if the fork is bent. Then check if the anti-flutter/friction brake kit is fitted correctly. Buy a replacement, and a torque wrench, loctite and socket set, and do it yourself. Is it still hitting differently? Flutter is usually having a friction brake that is too lose. Bad techs rebuild rather than replacing to save money, but it's a fake saving when it ruins your quality of life. Have you thought about using solid/gel tyres to improve ride stability and reduce castor reliance? Have you learnt your friction brakes inside out? Are they being replaced every 500-650 miles or so - at the same time as the castor tyres AND plastic castors. Have you checked the plastic castors aren't damaged or warped? If the fork fell off at home, the friction brake can't have been correctly installed and I'd ask for a change of repairer and a new vist to evaluate previous repair work. I'd also ask if you've looked at the Implied Warranty laws in your state - if it's not got 6 working wheels it's not merchantable as a Mid-Wheel Drive wheelchair and you should ask for redress under your State laws and with the help of consumer protection office if you can do that in your state and if the law deems warranty between you and the chair seller or Medicare and the seller.
If most people go to their funding body after 3 years with those complaints, and say the chair barely fits in their house but want to go from a chair with a base cost of ~$23k to $35k, and from a Group 3 to a Group 5 chair, most funding bodies will laugh you down the street and tell you - especially if you got a Permobil with Corpus seating, that if you don't like the most expensive option you can wait another couple of years and then choose ANY single cheaper option. If you can work with a specialist prescriber to find out exactly what is causing your comfort issues and fix that, Medicare may fund that as an extenuating circumstance variation (e.g. significantly different needs or was mis-prescribed). Unfortunately that's unlikely to fly. As far as oversteers, that's not possible with a Mid-wheel drive chair, but if you mean it turns too fast at speed OR the joystick isn't responding to a lack of input quickly enough, that can and should all be fixed in programming. It sounds like you got a really bad, poor, terrible tech and you've been suffering - can you change service agents?
Is this Corpus 2 seating or Corpus 3G? it's important not to conflate the two for other potential purchasers imo, as Corpus 2 was rubbish, generic and useless and you're otherwise comparing Corpus 3G which is decent rehab seating for a lot of people (backrest at least, cushions may be another matter) with full custom rehab backs which are a seperate funding category in many areas AND your prescriber could potentially be sued for refusing to apply for funding for a different back if you can document that these issues are a result of her pushing the wrong seating system at you. I'd suspect that'd be hard though.
The click is the magnetic brakes locking into place - they lock with a lot more force than the other brands but should lock at the same time and not sequentially - refer to Permobil under your warranty imo. If you're heavy enough you can hurt actuators - especially if you're pushing >110kg and didn't go for the M400 (HD) or similar, or if you had a combination of actuators working and flexed it. If you leave it off for 10 mins and turn it on again, or trip the main fuse, reset and turn it on, a full reset cycle can bring them back. This is why the new chairs (especially the F5 VS) do an actuator health check when booting up from cold. Actuators have to be so exact that even 1mm is a problem, and it looks like we're both big bloke in an upper body sense.
This was with the original friction brakes, but the new ones are meant to fix this issue (actually that the castors didn't have enough friction on them) - the drive wheels steer on wheelchairs like this so the casters don't overturn if the friction brake has the right degree of friction - both art and science.
One 34 second video done by their PR company and with a demo chair, focusing on the emotional experience of a chair rather than features and setup, and you've binned it? Easy to please much?
Like gjnl I reckon you're a little (a lot) prone to hyperbole. So they should've started selling a different M300 where they adressed all the same problems? But they're not allowed to call it the M3 to make more sense (Group 3, Mid wheel drive chair). They fixed the suspension comfort issues, added a half-decent seating cushion, improved the joystick, improved the seat elevator speed, improved the chair's ride and ride at speed, castors, responsiveness and suchlike. While I have issues with the M300, a lot of them are simply that I really could've done with a M400 or uprated motors and actuators. Everything Roll says about the improvements between the M300 and M3/F3 etc is true.
It tells you to unplug the toaster and the kettle too. Do you do that? It's exactly the same principle - until you plug it in the circuit isn't closed and it doesn't take anything other than a bit of standby power. Given the expected life of the chair a charger will be fine for that long - individual capacitors etc will be rated for 10,000 hours plus.
In that I see this is your first post, "WheelchairDad," I would normally send you a welcome message, but nah, not this time, I don't suffer fools gladly. And I see you haven't taken the time or effort to flesh out your profile. A completed profile lets all of us know why you are posting here. Just ask the SCI nurses.
Last edited by gjnl; 06-22-2017 at 12:35 AM.
@gjnl, are you always this aggressive? For clarity, there should've been a comma after 'gjnl', or perhaps the word 'opines' - or you could've just not presumed I was an asshole.
If you can point to something that's factually incorrect above, I'm happy to change my post and apologise for any misinformation. However, I've done an average of 7.5km per day since Feb 25th 2014 in my M300 and I've had more to do with those bleeding friction brakes than I'd like, as well as the rest of the chair. I'm fairly sure once Jim links my old account to this one (and once I ask him to) my profile will flesh itself out anyway, but just for you I'll add a bit more. SCI-Nurses and Jim are more than capable of policing trolls and fake accounts without your insinuations though... and that was to be my next step after replying here, but have you considered that I might've posted last night @ 2.38am my time, gone to bed, looked after my kid, done some advocacy work, arranged some medical stuff for some other folks and then visited a friend in hospital, collected dinner for my wife, waited for an hour because a bus driver wouldn't open his bus doors to let my wheelchair on and then taken another bus home, but not before visiting my father-in-law in his nursing home or talking to his mother for an hour about power of attorney issues.....and then settled the sick kid, spent 10 mins with my sick wife and chased up a few emails, then popped on here at...2.23am again.
I'm not sorry there wasn't time to jump through your suggested hoops before you choose whether to think about according me the same courtesy you make it clear that you accord everyone else, so to apologise would be hypocritical - but I am sorry we've gotten off on the wrong foot.
Hopefully my on-order F5 VS will keep me out of this thread if everyone else responds the way you have :/.
This may help.
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