This was cheaper than 20 Elephants.
Chapters10
Overview of building hundreds or thousands of off-road wheelchairs using new automation and a mass production approach.
A 100-ton CNC brake press and a laser-cutting workflow power JerryRigEverything's affordable, mass-produced off-road wheelchairs (Rig 2.0) with a funny nod to elephants.
Summary
JerryRigEverything’s video takes viewers behind the scenes of building affordable off-road wheelchairs. Ben walks us through the core fabrication line: a 5-by-10-foot sheet of metal goes into a high-power laser to create 2D parts, which then feed a Trump TruBend 2100 brake press to form 3D components. He affectionately notes the press weighs 12,000 lbs, and the system can bend metal beyond 90 degrees thanks to countermeasures like hollowed lower jaws and hydraulic reinforcement. The goal is mass production of Rig 2.0 wheelchairs to serve the roughly 5.5 million Americans who rely on a wheelchair for mobility. The video also highlights a collaboration with HBADA, which offsets part of the brake press cost with heated and cooled massaging chairs, specifically the HBADA X7 Smart Ergonomic Chair. Throughout, JerryRigEverything emphasizes safety features, like laser sensors that stop the press if hands intrude, and discusses the economics of building seats in-house to save money. He notes that a single 5x10 sheet can yield multiple parts and that the entire process could deliver parts for a wheelchair in about 20 minutes per unit, illustrating how the factory could scale up production while driving costs down. The narrative ties together craftsmanship, practical engineering, and social impact, promising pre-orders and links in the description.
Key Takeaways
- A Trump TruBend 2100 is a 100-ton CNC press brake used to turn 2D sheet metal into 3D wheelchair components.
- Laser-cut 5x10 sheets feed the brake press with parts like the base and lid for the Rig 2.0, enabling rapid parts production.
- The system includes safety laser sensors that halt operation if fingers or objects intrude, reducing the risk of injury.
- The lower jaw is reinforced with hydraulics to compensate bed deflection when bending heavy metal, ensuring precise angles.
- JerryRigEverything bought the brake press used for about $100,000 and secured a partial offset from HBADA through chair sponsorship.
- In-house seat manufacturing saves hundreds of dollars per seat, contributing to lower overall production costs.
- The HBADA X7 Smart Ergonomic Chair is showcased as a lengthy aside to illustrate tech-rich office chairs while the real project is mass-producing wheelchairs.
Who Is This For?
Essential viewing for makers and hardware enthusiasts curious about how industrial sheet-metal workflows translate into affordable assistive devices. It’s especially insightful for DIY manufacturers exploring CNC brakes, laser cutting, and in-house tooling to reduce costs.
Notable Quotes
"The TruBend 2100 is a 100-ton CNC press brake, and we can use it to turn 2D sheets of metal into three-dimensional objects."
—Ben explains what the TruBend 2100 does and why it’s central to the project.
"It basically has the crushing force of 20 full-size elephants; but since we don't have the resources to feed that many elephants, we bought the brake press instead."
—Humorous analogy to emphasize the press’s power.
"There’s a level of safety with a laser sensor to keep that from happening on accident."
—Highlights safety feature that stops the press if the laser beam is disrupted.
"We could basically reconstruct society from scratch or build really cool, inexpensive off-road wheelchairs."
—Closing line that underscores the project’s impact and scope.
Questions This Video Answers
- How does a 100-ton CNC brake press enable mass production of wheelchairs?
- What safety features prevent accidents in industrial laser-cutting and bending machines?
- Why is in-house seat manufacturing cost-effective for wheelchair production?
- What role does laser cutting play in turning flat metal into 3D wheelchair components?
- How does a hydraulic reinforcement in a brake press compensate for bed deflection?
Trump TruBend 2100CNC brake presslaser cuttingsheet metal fabricationoff-road wheelchairRig 2.0HBADA X7 Chairin-house manufacturingmanufacturing economicssafety sensors
Full Transcript
Fun fact: it only takes about 1,000 lbs worth of pressure to completely shear off a human finger. This tidbit of information will come in handy later. Here at my wheelchair factory, we are getting ready to build hundreds, if not thousands, of off-road wheelchairs this summer as we relaunch our redesigned Rig 2.0. And this machine, secretively wrapped up in white, is going to help us do it. The brake press weighs about 12,000 lbs. So, we have this custom forklift—a rigging forklift—which has a crane on the top. But it's also interesting that the back of the forklift can extend farther out to better counterbalance the weight that we have on the front.
Take a look at this over here. Kind of fun. Pretty heavy-duty equipment to move heavy-duty equipment. This is what we are trying to build with our new machine. What you see here is a few of our one-off prototypes—prototypes that we've been using for testing and filming for the past year. Building them one at a time, though, is slow and rather expensive. So, just like Henry Ford did with the automobile back in 1913, we'll be mass-producing our off-road wheelchairs to bring the price way, way down. There are about 5 1/2 million people in the United States who use a wheelchair as their primary means of mobility.
And our goal is to build enough of our Rig 2.0s for everyone, which is where our new machine comes in. It's called a Trump TruBend 2100. And while its name is rather unfortunate, its abilities are extraordinary. The TruBend 2100 is a 100-ton CNC press brake, and we can use it to turn 2D sheets of metal into three-dimensional objects. It is rather dangerous, but we'll get to that more in a second. Basically, this has the crushing force of 20 full-size elephants; but since we don't have the resources to feed that many elephants, we bought the brake press instead.
But before I can show you the brake press in action, we have to get our laser-cut parts from inside the laser. A lot of our off-road wheelchair parts and wheelchair parts use sheet metal for, like, the seatbacks and kind of like the frame design. So, we put a giant 5x10 sheet on this side, and it gets pulled into the laser where laser beams can cut out the exact dimensions we need. The laser is what helps take the 2D flat sheet metal and gives us a dimensional shape that we can then make 3D with the brake press.
Flat sheet metal is one of the most common ways metal is manufactured and distributed. And we can use a literal laser beam to cut out the intricate shapes we need for the off-road wheelchairs. Basically, the CNC laser concentrates a beam of light onto the surface which melts the metal into a molten lava. Then, high-pressure compressed air blows the molten metal out the backside of the cut. Thumbs up for that. It's an extremely impressive machine. If you want to learn more about lasers, I did make a whole video on this guy when we bought it last year.
Our wheelchair factory is growing super fast thanks to you watching our videos. And here comes all of our laser-cut parts. The sheet is actually still really hot because of all the energy that went into making the cuts. But as you can see, some of the parts are already coming out of the metal. This piece is going to become the base of the battery box, and this will become the lid. They're flat right now, but not for long. Basically, any shape we can dream of out of aluminum or steel, this laser can provide for us really quickly.
We can probably cut out all the individual parts we need for a single off-road wheelchair in about 20 minutes. Then, it's time to take the parts over to our press brake. This machine is going to help us turn flat sheets of aluminum into our next-generation off-road wheelchair. Creating something out of nothing doesn't happen by magic, and it doesn't happen overnight. And really big machinery like this is what helps make it happen. We got this machine used for about $100,000. But luckily, we didn't have to pay all of that. HBADA saw what we were doing here at the factory and decided to hook us up with their heated and cooled massaging office chairs and help offset a significant portion of the brake press machine. So, thank you, HBADA, for supporting the factory.
These chairs are pretty epic, by the way. It's called the HBADA X7 Smart Ergonomic Chair. And not only does it have automatic lumbar smart tracking to make life easier on your lower back, but it also has 8D biometric hand massaging built right in. The chair can auto-massage you after prolonged sitting with three levels of red light therapy that heats up deep into your muscles. Imagine being at a spa while gaming, because that's what you get with the HBADA X7. The automatic lumbar support moves with me automatically every time I change position. There's a magnetic charger, a 5,200 mAh internal battery for 3 hours of full-power use, and dual-fan ventilation built right into the seat to help keep all your bits cool, and a super comfy zero-gravity recline.
There's so much technology built into this chair that it probably deserves a teardown of its own. But until then, there's a link in the description; because if you're sitting down for most of the day, it's probably time to treat yourself to something nice. You can give yourself a promotion with the HBADA X7 Smart Ergonomic Chair, and the link is down in the description. But let's get back to building our off-road chairs. We might not have automatic lumbar support, but the improved suspension makes up for that. Instead of outsourcing our seat manufacturing, which could cost us hundreds of dollars per seat, we build everything here.
So, it only costs tens of dollars per seat. We have the tooling set up in a way that each of the operations has its own set of teeth. Uh, what's interesting is that they call this top piece the "jaws" and then obviously this the "teeth." So, it's like a big old mouth that just clamps down on the metal. So, each of these stations is a different operation. And the stops on the back make sure that we're not pushing the metal too deep into the machine. The CNC brake press knows the length of the flange that we're trying to create, and the back gauges make sure that we don't screw it up.
Each of these individual teeth—this one, the lower portion—is called a die, made out of hardened tool steel. And then up here, these are called the punches, and they have like a little indention at the top which helps them clip into this groove and hang where we tighten it with these Allen bolts here. But these allow us to set how long each of the bends is going to be, up to a total of 10 ft. So, we could put a whole flat sheet of steel in here and bend it at the same time—assuming, of course, that the bend itself wouldn't require more than 100 tons, because that is the limit of this brake press.
One way to keep all of our fingers intact is a laser beam system that watches where the tips of the punches are at. Kind of like the laser below your garage door. If anything disrupts the laser beam that's not the punch itself, like a finger or an arm, the brake press will stop and hopefully not shear off any of your digits. It's super nice that the machine does all of the measuring for us, which saves the operator a lot of time as we build our off-road wheelchairs quickly. What's interesting, though, about this TruBend 2100 is that obviously dealing with the downward force of 20 elephants stacked on top of each other, or the weight of two whole excavators, the bottom jaw is bound to flex.
So, what Trump has done on their press brake is to hollow out a cut in the super-thick lower steel plate and adds reinforcing hydraulics on either side of the jaw so that it can offset the crowning or bending of the tool itself. The lower hydraulics compensate for the natural deflection of the bed, which is the lower part, and the ram, which is the upper portion. The amount of flex is predictable, so the compensation needed to offset that flex is also predictable. The large hydraulic pump on top is regulated by two proportional valves which allow the hydraulic fluid to flow on both sides of the ram for super precise positioning.
It's hard to see with the thin aluminum, but I got some 1/2-in steel plate that we can also try bending as well. A 1-ft segment of 1/2-in steel plate would probably require about 40 or 50 tons worth of pressure to bend. So, our press is still overkill for even 1/2-in steel. But, it's super cool watching our laser slice through the steel like butter. We are cutting out the shape of an oversized wrench just for fun so we can turn it into a wrench bench. The steel wrench is a tad more complicated to place inside the opening since we don't have a flat spot on the flange of the CNC back gauges to reference off of, but I'll just eyeball the lines we scribed on the metal and hope for the best.
Glorious. You'll notice that the bottom die we are using is quite a bit larger this time around, since the radius or curvature of the metal is also going to be larger. The punch on the top is also quite a bit thicker. And the coolest part that's now easier to see with the steel is that the press brake actually bends the metal past the 90° we want so that it will spring back to the angle we request. Intelligent machines are extremely helpful, and luckily metal is pretty predictable. As long as the machine knows what type of metal it is, it can predict the flex.
It's nice. That's a good height. We're going to have a nice wood seat on it. You've got to try this. It's nice. I'll have to add a wood top to our wrench bench later, but I think it turned out super cool. And speaking of intelligence, like I mentioned earlier, it only takes about 1,000 lbs to shear off a finger. And this machine would probably be capable of shearing off about 200 fingers all at the same time. We'll have to save that test for a different video. But luckily, there's a level of safety with a laser sensor to keep that from happening on accident.
Protection is always a good thing. And there you have it. Between the laser and the brake press, we could basically reconstruct society from scratch or build really cool, inexpensive off-road wheelchairs. I'll leave a link down in the description for the HBADA X5, as well as we are doing pre-orders for the off-road wheelchair. That'll be down in the description as well. Thanks a ton for watching, and I'll see you around.
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