Makerchair from Bits & Parts
Bits & Parts, a spinoff project of the Makerchair series initiated by Amsterdam based Joris Laarman Lab, has utilised the capabilities of small 3D printers and CNC milling machines to produce full sized furniture fractioned into small parts. A piece the company has just been working on is the world's first crowd fabricated open source chair.
The potential for consumer 3D printing is highlighted in this project because it shows the scale of product that can be produced on such small and accessible machines. Originally the prototype for the chair was fabricated out of a single shape divided into 202 3D jigsaw pieces but now the design has been improved to only contain 77 parts that click together like a jigsaw puzzle. The whole piece can be manufactured in about 10 days for around $30.
The company has a very interesting way of looking at the fabrication of furniture. In a video for Ultimaker, Joris says: “We make innovations sometimes out of necessity. We want to make something which is completely new, has a new shape, has a new material combination. We imagine what the world would look like in five years and how people will produce their new designs and try to do it now.”
Bits & Parts is very much a work in progress project and invites makers from across the globe to help improve designs, radically reduce the cost of manufacturing and accelerate the automated fabrication process.
The plans for the open source chair are readily available from YouMagine and bitsandparts.org.
