AM: A change of direction....

Today I met with William from Action Manufacturing, and their design engineer Sam, who as expected, was a wealth of knowledge regarding manufacturing techniques and considerations. Discussing my design revealed a few issues. Placing the wood frame within the Omnipanel would prove to be a difficult task. While easy enough for the desk, doing the same for the chairs I had designed would be hugely time consuming; a factor I am trying to avoid at all costs. The shape of the chairs themselves proved problematic, with high percentage of unusable offcuts. There were also concerns raised about the ability to fabricate a solid press fit using the CNC machine.....as the CNC tool bit wears, it's cutting accuracy diminishes, which will cause a sloppy and ineffective fit.

It's a lot to work through, especially at this late stage in the design process, but I have a few ideas that will aid me in finding a solution.

Firstly, I'll look into edge banding or push in edge moldings instead of a wooden inlay. This process is quick, affordable, and will achieve a similar look to my wooden insert concept. I'll redesign my chairs in order to minimise wastage, and I'll look into alternative joinery processes. I thought back to a first year product design experiment where I utilised plastic bottle string in order to create a join. I thought of its use in my project......in developing nations plastic bottles are more or less free, readily available, and will allow the users a 'hands on' experience in making their furniture, adding an element of heuristic learning. Its something I'll look to implement in my design.