Knoll Life Chair Series 400 High-end Office Chair Redesign

Abstract

The main motivation of the project is to reduce the cost of the current chair by limiting the number of parts used while still maintaining the various functions of the chair. We reduced the synchronized recline and the upright tilt-lock mechanisms’ part counts from 30 to 21 parts and 6 to 3 parts, respectively. This will help reduce the cost of manufacturing the chair as well as the indirect costs such as overhead because it will reduce assembly time. We also maintained the current functions and specifications of the chair because the results we received from our prototype were similar to the current chair’s attributes. We recommend that distributed compliant mechanisms be explored in the future work and also be able to integrate the designs onto the current chair.