Toilet seats with wings for easier transfers

“The defining moment was when I was sitting on a toilet seat trying to figure out what I could possibly use to support some portion of my weight and lessen the severe weight bearing pain in my knees after a day of snowboarding 30,000 vertical feet on double black diamond moguls. You see, I have spent a lifetime enjoying extreme sports and I have the knee surgery scars to prove it. When I lowered to the toilet seat that day it was painful, but from experience I knew that raising was always more painful. In the end, the only thing I could find for support was the front of the toilet seat. Wingman was as much for my father as it is today for me. It was after I had seen that he (at age 87) had worn the paint off his toilet seat with his palms supporting himself while lowering and raising that I designed a toilet seat with wings – Wingman”, the innovator explained.

When Stephen realized he had this need, he started prototyping. “The first prototype was easy. It only took a few months to create a 3D model and print it out in ABS plastic with a 3D printer. The follow on prototypes required careful material selection for strength, safety, ease of molding and then the creation of hard tooling. This process has taken a couple of years. The single most important problem was realizing that to achieve the strength required the seat was heavy and to prevent it from coming down to hard it required a dampening device or torsion spring to lessen the weight when lowering or raising”, he said.

Then, using his savings, the inventor founded his own company – Wingman.

Adapted from: http://bit.ly/2n4LZpa

More info: http://axs-wingman.com/Home_OYQ4.html

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6UL9PSi-UU