Referencing tradition

Rethinking my idea.

Originally I had planned for the sections of my massager to be held together by vessel clamps, however after some research the specific clamps I wanted were going to cost me £30 a clamp. So I decided to look for cheaper alternatives I came across some exhaust clamps which I bought to test my idea. The clamps were £5 each which doesn’t seem like a lot until I realised my design needed 20 and being a student I don’t really have £100 lying about. Going back to the drawing board I had a tutorial with huw and he suggested some alternatives to the clamps as he felt they might be a little overkill.

He talked to me about laminating veneers that can be vacuum bent

You start by gluing multiple layers of veneer together

then you decide what shape they need to be a create a mould

The piece of wood are then placed into the mould and then placed in a vacuum bag where the wood bends to the shape of the mould. This allows the wood to bend and retain the shape you want.

He talked about using this method to create the structure of my piece and then using some kind of flexible material which would allow the bearings to clip into it

At first I was a little bit concerned with this idea of using a flexible material s I haven’t used a lot of plastic and I feel like I wouldn’t have enough time to research which material would be best for the job and create a prototype in time for the deadline. However I did use one of the designs and adapt it to wood. I found this tutorial extremely insightful as it opened me up to new techniques and from the discussions I came up with a different but more cost effective design for my massager.

I have also decided to shorten the length of my massager, when looking at the lengths of the spine I looked at the measures from the very top of the spine (cervical) to the very bottom (coccyx and sacrum), however the the coccyx and sacrum are tucked in at the bottom of the spine therefore the massager would be no good. I have decided to use average measurements from the cervical to the lumbar region.

Referencing tradition

Plans for my wall mounted massager

Referencing tradition 2

After a tutorial with huw I realised I was getting bogged down with the idea that this had to be a chair, maybe it could be an attachment or a wall mounted piece. The idea of it being wall mounted seemed to solve a lot of problems for me, but it also posed some new ones.

With it now being a wall mounted piece it meant that I would be able to make the thing rather than make a Maquette as making a chair is a challenge in itself with the time constraints of this project. It also meant that there wasn’t so much stress as to how I would make it to accommodate different uses of different sizes, instead of it being a fixed thing (chair) having it wall mounted meant that I could make the height interchangeable by having different height fittings.

I decided to have a look and see if anything like this already existed and whether there was a market for this type of thing.

The first was this single ball roller that is used for specific point in the back, this attaches to the wall using an industrial sucker.

The second was something that was similar to my design however it doesn’t seem allow for different sized people, its would also be difficult to use for other parts of the back other than the spine itself.

This third one is slightly similar in design but you can see the obvious problem that it is difficult to massage the lumbar section of the back due to its shape.

Referencing tradition

After I had chosen to do the referencing tradition project I began to look through my st fagans photos form the archives and museum. I was particularly inspired by the chair that was used as the example for wood turning and the rolling pins used to make oat cakes.

When I was younger I was heavily involved in athletics and one of the pieces of equipment I took everywhere with me was my foam roller, it was used to stretch and release knots in my legs and back.

I was thinking about how I could combine the 2 to make some sort of massage device, maybe a chair where the turned pieces become part of the back rest and you could use it to massage your back.

The idea would be there would be turned piece would sit along the back of the chair and rather than just be decorative they would serve a purpose.

If i was going to make a chair i had to research into the ergonomics of chairs and positions of the spine in order to Work out where these massage point would be.

http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/dea3250flipbook/dea3250notes/sitting.html

https://www.bartleby.com/107/25.html

In the first image you can see the different sections of e spine, the second image shows the names of the different bends within the spine, in simple terms: lordosis being when the spine bends in and kyphosis being when the spine bends out.

I thought it would also be important to look at other ergonomic designs such as the office chair

Just to identify the working of other products in the market.

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