In this part, I will be making adjustments to the chair following recommendations from a Wood Magazine article, Must Have Measurements For Comfortable Seating; Pallozorodcarlocom; and measurements from sitting in chairs. The adjustments I make will be specific for me. If you are following along, alter dimensions for your personal comfort.
Must Have Measurements for Comfortable Seating chart
This is the first of an undetermined number of posts in a chair design series. My goal is to make a completely 3D printed, functional chair based on Enzo Mari’s chair from his book, Enzo Mari – autoprogettazione? My plan is to spend a fair amount of time designing the chair before I begin printing. I will be exploring ways to minimize elements while optimizing a design suitable for printing in a 600 cubic millimeter space. Instructional videos will be included. At the end, I should have a well-designed 3D printed chair and anyone participating should have one as well.
Enzo Mari is an Italian artist and furniture designer. The photograph above is a copy of page 52 from the second edition of his do-it-yourself book; free to everyone except factories and traders. I have three reasons for starting with Enzo Mari’s design instead of starting from scratch: His design is fine and simple; I have attempted making seating before; good chair design is tricky.
I made a hamper stool in 2017 that was in service until Summer 2019, at which time I dismantled it before moving. What I learned from this is that seating looks easy, but requires some engineering to be useful for long periods.
Later the same year, I made what I originally intended to be a bar stool. When I sat on it I realized I missed the mark and it became a table.
YouTuber, Design Squad Global, made a video about employing triangles to provide good support for seating. I have tried adding triangles to designs, hoping to replace material needs, but when I placed parts in Cura for slicing, I found I had not saved much on filament or time.
Plus, I did not like looking at the triangles and I just wanted to cover them. The render to the right shows triangle cubes I imagined could be used as a divider in my living space. It just looks horrible.
In the video below, I show how to put the chair together according to Enzo Mari’s design. When I revisit this, I will experiment with ways of changing the design.
