Front Handle

The front wheel and handle subsystem is a passive system (i.e. is it moved by a person, not itself). Normally, when engineering a passive wheel, it would probably be designed to use a dead axle, which is where the wheel spins relative to the axle and the axle spins very little, if at all. In this case, I used a live axle (i.e. where the axle and the wheel spin together relative to the attaching plate) because the wheel I used does not come in a dead-axle configuration. The front wheel subsystem has two degrees of freedom (directions of movement independent of one another). The wheel spins on the horizontal axle to drive the scooter forward and the whole system spins on the vertical axle to steer the scooter. The vertical axle is attached to the bottom portion by a custom waterjet cut gusset plate. The system is connected to the rest of the scooter via a radial-thrust bearing that slides over the vertical axle, allowing it to spin freely while absorbing all of the forces it takes. The final version will feature a crossbar at the top of the vertical axle, but I was unable to model it due to limitations in the CAD software I used.