It's been a minute. I'd like to welcome Cambry back to the channel. If you remember, two
years ago we launched The Rig, which is an accessible 4-wheeled wheelchair of sorts made
almost entirely out of bike parts.
-And we've sold them in almost all 50 states. It was a bit of an adventure to keep up with
those orders through a pandemic, but it turns out there is a market for inexpensive accessible
equipment.
-All of the Rigs we've sold are manufactured by Utah Trikes right here in the USA. Their
building is about 30 minutes south of here, and that part's not going to change.
-But we do need a space of our own where we can start constructing and working on some
of our new inventions, which is what we have back here.
-Our promise to you is that Cambry and I will never make a profit off of the sale of these
machines. This is just like a passion project for us.
-All the money that we make from this goes right back into the business to make this
world a more accessible place.
-And viewers like you are a huge part of what makes all of that possible.
-So thank you for watching these videos.
-We bought this building behind us to expand Not A Wheelchair and take things to the next
level. The building is currently a duplex, meaning that it's two buildings in one. And
we need to bust down at least like 5 walls to make room for everything we're doing. We
have a lot of work ahead of us and a lot of walls to break down, both metaphorically and
physically. Are you ready?
-Let's get started.
[Intro]
Let me give you a little tour just so we can remember how it was when it all started. Coming
in through the front door here. We have a small kind of little greeting room. We're
going to knock out this wall here to kind of expand things. In here is where we're going
to have all of our computers. In here probably printers. Kind of a break room area. But out
here is where the magic happens. Big wide open area. We have a garage door over here.
I can't tell you what's inside of this box yet, but we are going to bust down this wall
right here so we can access the other half of the building. This thing though is freaking
sweet. It's an all-electric walk behind pallet stacker which we're going to use quite a bit.
And it's one of the reasons why we have to knock down the walls so we can get to the
other half of the building.
This is where this box is going to go, eventually. In here we have some bathrooms. And down this
hall, this is where we're going to break open a big door to get into the other side. And
some massive storage rooms. This used to be a dance studio. It's interesting to see how
thick it is. You can see the hardwood floor was resting on top of these rubber pads to
kind of isolate it. I'm no expert on clogging but it seems like a good surface to handle
that kind of thing. And finally we get to the other half of the duplex and these walls
as well are saying goodbye, just so we can have a wide open area in here to kind of show
off our different machines. Now that we have all that documented I think it's time to change
things up.
[Music playing]
We are through the wall!
[Music playing]
[Sawing sounds]
Much better. One wall is down and that one's more to just kind of widen the showroom area
of Not A Wheelchair. The wall we have here is so we can get the massive forklift through
the hallway into the other storage rooms so this one's a little more important.
[Sawing, hammering sounds]
Woo!
[Sawing sounds]
Yes!
[Sawing sounds]
And now we have easy access from the large main room into the storage rooms...of course,
once we clean up our mess.
[Carpet ripping sounds]
The company that used to own this building before us was a photography business. And
this area back here was one of the giant infinity walls where they had the curves on every corner.
So if you ever took a picture of something in here it would just look like a solid white
background going off into infinity. But we don't need that for what we're going, so it
all has to come down and a whole lot of drywall patching has to happen.
One of the construction materials we use here in the United States for the interior of buildings
is called drywall or sheetrock. And it might sound strange to people living outside the
United States where a lot more concrete and block is used. But working with sheetrock
is actually pretty simple. It's made of a mineral called gypsum which is sandwiched
between two sheets of paper. And when I say it verbally it does not sound very strong,
but it's mounted up on a surface it is pretty hard. To manipulate the sheetrock we sliced
through one side of the paper and literally just break it in half. And then slice through
the other paper on the opposite side, and we get the exact size of sheet that we need
to work with. The gypsum inside is that white powdery stuff.
Here inside of the photography area we do have some holes we have to patch where if
the wall was concrete it would be fairly complex and difficult, but since it's drywall, it's
pretty easy to add little pieces in place and put the mud over top. And it'll be like
it was never there after we paint it.
To patch little holes like this I'm taking a piece of plywood, sticking it up in the
hole with a little screw to hold onto. Then I can drill in both sides of the plywood,
and then one screw through a little block of drywall. And once we put mud over this
you'll never know it was there. So we have the arches drywalled up right now. And you
might be wondering how we do the edges so that it's a clean finish on this side. And
that's done with corner bead. And the mud will sit down in between this and cover up
all the screws. It's nice that the space back here is more like warehouse and assembly space
so it doesn't really need to be perfect.
Once all the drywall's been hung we use something called mud to smear over the top and blend
pieces of drywall together. If we were doing this in like a residential building it would
need to be pretty smooth with lots of coats. But since this is industrial and no one's
really going see it, I'm just going to call any imperfections “texture.” Another thing
we are doing is we are swapping out the original fluorescent light bulbs and installing LED
light bulbs. For two reasons: one, you'll notice in here the room is far more yellow
which is not my favorite. In here the color is a bit more white, which all has to do with
color temperature. This is a 6500 and this is a 5000. And while the color might be more
aesthetically pleasing on this side, the real reason we're switching is because of the power
consumption. The fluorescent lamps use about 5,000 watts when everything is turned on,
which is almost as much as charging an electric vehicle. But when we switch to LED bulbs,
the power consumption drops by half. Now when everything is turned on we'll only be using
around 2,000 or 3,000 watts which is like 2 hair dryers running at the same time...not
that I have much experience with hair dryers.
Initially I thought that I would only paint a few walls, but it turns out since this building
is about 20 years old, most of the walls are covered with an old school off-white paint.
Kind of yellow. Which doesn't look very good on camera. And since I plan on showing how
we manufacture a lot of our accessible equipment here, we need to make things look good on
camera. The sprayer I'm using is an airless sprayer, which as the name implies, does not
use any air. Instead it compresses the paint and atomizes out of the little nozzle. It's
good for throwing a lot of thick paint really fast which is what we're going for here. One
good nice thick coat. My favorite part of painting though was laying down the blue,
since blue is a part of our Not A Wheelchair logo and the color of the globally recognized
handicapped symbol. I think it turned out pretty slick. We even got my mom helping us
with this part.
So far I think things are going pretty well. We've knocked out a bunch of walls, made everything
white, added a bunch of blue to brighten things up. Now we need a little epoxy and some carpet.
The process of laying down epoxy over concrete is rather fascinating. First we use a diamond
grit concrete grinder to smooth out and resurface the concrete, getting rid of any rough spots,
lips, or paint spills. We went with a local company called Quality Pro. It turns out when
the owner saw what we do here at Not A Wheelchair, he said he would do all of the epoxy work
as a trade for one of our Rigs since he had a family member who could use one. It's cool
seeing how everyone really comes together to help move this project forward. The reason
why we're putting down epoxy is because it looks cool and also seals the concrete and
makes the floor way easier to clean.
[Mixing sounds]
Concrete absorbs spills like oil where epoxy does not. Plus the two part hardened coating
lasts for about 20 years. The colored flakes add texture and it's kind of cool seeing them
get scraped off and saved to be used in other projects in the future.
[Blower machine sounds]
[Mixing sounds]
The whole thing is then coated with a clear coat of the same two part epoxy, by people
wearing those cool special spiked shoes. Bridging the gap between the walls and the epoxy floor
covering, we have some industrial rubber baseboards. In the front of the shop we're putting down
some industrial carpet. It looks almost completely black at first glance, but with speckles of
colors sprinkled throughout. This is where we're going to have the office space as well
as a showroom for our inventions. And hopefully, fingers crossed, we can have a few extra machines
for people who would like to rent one out for a weekend here locally, but that'll come
in the future. We have to get caught up on our existing orders first.
One thing that surprised me, mostly because I've never really thought about it, was the
physical size of our street signs. The street sign is made from two long sheets of translucent
acrylic, 9 feet long and 3 ½ feet tall. It's translucent so that when the lights turn on
inside of the sign, the design on the sign illuminates. As for the office space this
room is where the designers will be hanging out with our custom built computers. These
desks, the one we're working on, were donated by Uplift Desk. They have the ability to go
from super tall standing desks all the way down to a floor sitting desk, and of course,
anywhere in between. Super accessible. I've actually been using an Uplift Desk at my own
home for the past three years so it's super cool of them to join us here at the new shop
as well.
Aside from just motoring up and down, these desks can hold 350 pounds and have all different
kind of desktop surfaces to choose from. They even have a desk that comes with a whiteboard
top. Very interesting. We stuck with the black laminate, but maybe since the desks are modular
we'll branch out and do something a little more exciting in the future. Since from the
personal experience of having purchased and used one for the past three years at home,
they have zero issues and will be lasting us a really long time. I'll leave a link down
in the description if you want to check them out. And huge thanks to Uplift Desk for helping
us get Not A Wheelchair headquarters up and rolling.
When choosing components for the computers we tried to land in that sweet spot of power
and price. Not quite the latest and greatest but still good enough to last for years. We're
using the Quadro brand of graphics cards that are designed specifically for workstations
and computer aided design or CAD. A lot of our stuff gets figured out in a digital space
before coming online into the physical reality. Our whole goal with Not A Wheelchair is to
make inexpensive nonmedical accessible equipment right here in the USA. And since you've made
it this far in the video I think it's only fair that you see a couple of the projects,
sneak peaks, that we're working on right now.
-Something I'm excited about are these new sand tires we have for the Rig. We're calling
it the Rover Package. If you remember from some of our previous videos, the Rig has a
difficult time in sand. It gets kind of stuck. The Rover Package with its wider tires should
make it easier to drive on sand.
-We're also making a stairlift. This one is currently semi-disassembled and not quite
ready to show off yet, but when we're finished it'll cost a fraction of what other lifts
are currently priced at. And we have a few other projects in the works as well that still
need to remain a secret. Obviously we're still not entirely done setting up yet, but you
get an idea of what's going to happen in this space. Eventually we want to design our own
physical wheelchair. Since currently manual wheelchairs cost around $4 or 5,000 and I
think we can cut that in half. Also it's always really really fun for me to meet people in
real life who watch my videos. So if you see me or see us walking around, feel free to
say hi anytime, but this particular building is not really the place for meet and greets.
For one, I won't always be here. I've hired a fantastic team to help facilitate the expansion.
This building is for people to come who might actually need our machines and not necessarily
just to hang out. That being said, if you own a business that sells equipment that might
help us achieve our goal of making accessibility more inexpensive and want to show it off here
on the channel, feel free to let me know. We're setting up shop and we can take all
the gadgets we can get. Plus, I am extremely excited to show you what is inside this box
right here.
-We've come a long way from welding two bikes together and it'll be fun to see what we can
accomplish in this space.
-All of which is thanks to you guys for watching our videos and helping make this happen.
-Thanks a ton for watching. We'll see you around.
-Nailed it.