Every wheelchair has a different "footprint," meaning the location of the wheels relative to each other. Some wheelchair footprints are easier than others to use with the Lilypad scale. We don't think that any footprint makes it impossible to use the Lilypad scale, but some might take some more practice or skill than others. If, after trying out the suggestions in this article, you are still not able to easily and conveniently roll on and off your Lilypad scale, please email a picture of your scale setup and hwto support@lilypadscales.com or call us at 1-855-590-5459.
The most common cause of difficulty is a difference in how close together your front wheels are compared to your back wheels. Some difficulties are also caused by the front pads being very close to the back pads. For example, your scale setup may look like this:
This usually makes it difficult to roll on straight, and may even make it difficult to roll on going forwards. If this is your problem, here's what we suggest:
Rolling On:
Try rolling on by going over one pad with one front wheel, and rolling through the two pads with the other wheel. Once over the first two pads you can then pivot to try to roll straight onto all four pads. This looks like this:
Rolling Off Forwards:
A similar problem can be encountered when rolling off forward. The guide rails of the front two pads may get in the way of your back wheels. Again the easiest way to deal with this is to try to pivot as you roll off so that one wheel goes over one pad and the other wheel avoids the pad entirely. This would look like this:
Sometimes, however, the front set of pads may be so close to the back set of pads that you don't have enough space to pivot. This is a tricky situation for using the Lilypad scale. The ideal solution is to try to back off of the pads the same way you got on, but generally going off backwards after rolling on forwards will cause your castors to try to pivot on the pad and get stuck, so we don't recommend this.
One way to fix this is that there is some wiggle room in the side-to-side placement of the pads. You can try shifting the locations of some of your pads to one side or another to see if this gives you enough space to better go over or around a pad. When you do this, just make sure not to pull the Velcro off of the mat or to change the front to back positioning of the pads.
Another possibility is to setup your scale again in such a way that you can roll onto it backwards. Note that this means that you will probably have to change the location of your front pads to match the different location of your front wheels when rolling backwards rather than forwards. This solution will probably also make it a little harder to get onto your scale in the first place, since you'll need to do it backwards.
If none of these options work for you, please email a picture of your scale setup and your wheelchair to support@lilypadscales.com or call us at 1-855-590-5459.