INDN 342: Constructional!

One of the things I have to consider in my design is how the whole thing works. Fortunately for me, the way I design things and consider options is always from a rather critical "will this even work" stance, which ensures that the designs I come up with have a tendency to be relatively solid in terms of construction and how they fit together. The bad side of that is of course that sometimes my creativity ends up being a bit stifled because I can shut down ideas before they have a chance to come to fruition.

The construction drawings for this stool were really fun to generate, and I love the way that line drawings like this look. They're almost a kind of ethereal drawing, revealing hidden secrets about the design. In this instance, the area I decided to focus on for the detail was the way that the legs of the stool are connected to the actual seat construct of the seat.

Another consideration I have to make that transcends my ability to imagine how it could quite work is the way that the forces interact on the stool. As such it needs to be broken down into it's constituent parts in order to fully understand how the forces act on each other. A loading force is applied to the stool from above, which then is spread down through the legs via rigid joints where the wooden legs are encased in metal collars. These steel collars will be welded to the stool seat, creating a really strong bond. Ideally however, the collars shouldn't experience too much force laterally in a bending direction because the legs aren't bent outwards too much. As a result, the force on the legs should be primarily in compression, not too much shear or bending.