Modulare Furniture Design

[moebelkonstrukteur]

Hello everybody,

I am working on a somewhat big gift for my godchild (to be honest, I also have fun working on it).

I want to create a set of simple components that can be combined to easily construct a chair, a table, a shelf and possibly many other kinds of furniture.
Thinking back to my childhood playing with lego I began to wonder a while ago why the furniture I have cannot be dissambled an recombined to form other objects. For example if I have a table and want to replace it whith a shelf: why can't I use the parts from the table to easily build a shelf?

I had a look at basic furniture and recognized that on an abstract level it is composed of only three elements: plates, rods and joints between them. So I came up with the idea to try to create basic furniture based on these elements that can be disassembled and recombined to build other objects.

The resulting furniture may not reach the functionality and aestethics of some design furniture but I think it could be great for a child to play around with it and create its own furniture or other objects.

I have several construction goals:
- Use as few types of basic components as possible
- Make it easy to assemble and dissamble the components
- Construct the basic components in a way that they can be combined as freely as possible
- Design everything in a way that it can be assembled and dissasembled without any tools
- Construct everything in a way that it can withstand some (not yet exactly defined) load (e.g. a child or even adult should be able to sit on a chair without it breaking down)

I already started to construct some basic elements and combine them to different kinds of furniture (see the attached images and pdfs).
In my current design I use dovetail joints to join the plates with each other and with the rods. I don't know yet how to join the rods with each other (I used holes in the rods to symbolyze the areas where they can be joined).

Currently I have 5 different elements: a plate with dovetail joint, 2 types of rods with dovetail joints, one rod withouth dovetail joint and a cube without dovetail joint.

Concerning materials I had wood and/or plastic in mind.

As I do not have much experience in construction I wanted to ask if somebody has some ideas how to improve my concept?

Every idea is welcome (basic elements, joints, materials, etc.)!

I am happy about every (constructive) reply!

[zwei]

Maybe this will give you some idea
https://3dprint.com/70355/3d-print-furniture-modular/
(I came across this years ago)

[Lucas]

I think you could use pins as the simplest auxiliary structure to connect everything, although they are very susceptible to sheer stress.
Making something like this would increase the inertial:

Was checking this Japanese joinery recently. It's not something to be used for re-assembly, but it's also interesting:
https://www.finewoodworking.com/2015/10 ... se-joinery

Cool project, send some pics when it's done

[Virusert]

I took a look at the attached images and PDFs, and I must say, your designs are already looking promising! The dovetail joints provide a solid connection, and the use of different elements like plates, rods, and cubes adds versatility to the system. It's exciting to see the progress you've made so far.

If you need any suggestions for joining the rods together, perhaps exploring interlocking mechanisms or connectors could be worth considering. The possibilities are endless!

For anyone interested in checking out the images and PDFs of your modular furniture designs, they can find them here. It's inspiring to see your creativity in action.

[ctsturdiv]

With wood, depends on what kind of wood. When I helped my dad make furniture for arts and craft shows, pine is the cheapest, lightest and easiest to work with at the expense of durability and the fact you have to pay very close attention to knots and grain. You also hopefully have access to the equipment that allows you to put dovetails and grooves in easily. oak is sturdy and lasts forever, but very hard to work with.

The only issue I have about it is functionality.

It is not very often you need, say, a chair one day, an end table the next, then a shelving unit the next. In trying to be all things, it would succeed in being superior at none. That and a lost/ damaged part would render the thing useless without the tools to make another piece.

However, if pieces can be kept together and not missing, I could see some merit in having easy to disassemble furniture if you are someone that has to move a lot. Only problem, once again, is lost parts.

That said, I keep procrastinating because of my work load, but I have been in the process of refurbishing a 1980s era office desk that had major issues as my drafting battle-station. Still have not fixed all the shelves and need to rekey a lock. But the original 1980s writing surface pull out works now and one drawer. I am also ashamed of my cable management.