Built of a single sheet of material, the chair is a compliant mechanism
A futuristic BYU-designed, origami-inspired Flex Chair, cut out of a single piece of flat material and folded into shape, has made YouTuber Mark Rober’s Top 10 list. In a Nov. 2 video post, Rober spotlights the chair at #7 on his list of Crunch Lab builds in the past year, and credits BYU compliant mechanisms researchers for the innovative design.
“What makes it really cool is it’s made from one single sheet of continuous plywood,” Rober, a BYU mechanical engineering graduate, told 58 million subscribers. “It’s weird to think of wood as foldable and bendy, but this is another example of a compliant mechanism.”
Compliant mechanisms, based on the bends and folds of origami, create movement without hinges or joints, making them useful in various applications. The Flex Chair, created by BYU design professor David C. Morgan and his students, incorporates research from BYU’s Compliant Mechanisms Research Group, led by BYU mechanical engineering professor Larry Howell.
The surface of the Flex Chair is cut into a specific tessellated pattern, patented by BYU, that allows a rigid material like wood or acrylic to fold and bend, yet still maintain its strength.
“On the engineering side, this is a great demonstration of the fundamental theory that we’ve developed in compliant mechanisms, particularly lamina emergent torsion (LET) joints. The collaboration with the Department of Design made it possible to not just show it in some generic device, but in what turned out to be a really cool product,” said Howell, whose compliant mechanisms research has included everything from solar arrays for NASA to microscopic surgical devices to ballistic barriers.
For Morgan, the Flex Chair is not only visually interesting design, it is also fabricated in a unique way, so that consumers are invested in the product.
“Research shows that many people place a higher value on their things if they have some role in creating them. In the literature it’s sometimes called the IKEA effect. So folding the Flex furniture may create in the consumer a connection that we hope will encourage them to hang on to their stuff longer, reducing needless consumption and waste.”
Morgan and design students, now a part of the College of Fine Arts and Communications, showed their designs at Milan Design Week, and have launched Wasatch Design Collective, a co-op of industrial designers, to share their products.
Rober was first impressed by the Flex Chair when he saw it on campus, while working with BYU engineers on a unique microscopic Nerf gun compliant mechanism project. (See the behind-the-scenes video on the Nerf gun below.) On his channel, Rober also shared free downloadable designs from BYU so people can 3D print miniature versions of the Flex Chair and learn more about the research.
