Reclining Chair Mechanism
....This was an exercise by Steve Hines in mechanical design of a linkage for a reclining chair. The requirement was that the chair had to be able to recline, even though backed up to a wall, without the back bumping into the wall.
Like most mechanical linkage designs, this started out as cardboard cutouts pinned to a board with thumb tacks. When experimenting by moving the back rest in the needed motion (the top sliding down the wall, and the bottom moving out from the wall), the midpoint of the backrest was seen to move at a uniform distance from the point where the wall and horizontal track intersected. By attaching a link at that point, when the bottom was slid horizontally out from the wall, the top of the backrest slid down near the wall at a uniform distance without interference
This was Steve's first paid consulting project, done while a second year design student, for the head of the Product Design department at NCSU. This mechanism is now used in LazyBoy and other reclining chairs.
This product is not for sale. Do not contact us to purchase this product. This project is shown only as an example of past projects. HinesLab currently offers consulting in the area of industrial design, novel solutions to your problems as well as a variety of licensable technology.
Glendale, California, USA
email: Steve@HinesLab.com