A study on furniture design by CAD/CAM- A case study of KD magazine stands

Abstract

Furniture design and production are highly technological and have high operation danger. Without basic professional training in furniture carpentry, one can not design or produce delicate furniture. In particular, undergraduates, who possess only design concepts, in relevant departments frequently can not produce furniture which expresses their concepts due to insufficient practical courses. Therefore, this study aimed at the third-grade undergraduates without adequate fundamental training in carpentry. These students were taught how to employ CAD/CAM and CNC Router, and, later, they tried to design a two-storey KD magazine stand, whose size was 1230mm (H)×590mm (W)×260mm (D), according to the golden ration. Based on this stand, they further designed a one-story KD magazine stand and a three-storey one. They also took 1210×2430mm MDF planks as materials to further investigate relevant factors, such as material application, modeling and structural processing, and the strength and stability of product. It was found that when two pieces of planks were employed to create four magazine stands, respectively a one-storey one, a 2-storey one, and two three-storey ones, the 80% utilization ratio was the highest. In terms of stability, the side bearing capacity of the one-storey, two-storey, and three-storey KD magazine stands was respectively 47.2kg˙m, 27.82kg˙m, and 25.49 kg˙m, and the front bearing capacity was respectively 34.72 kg˙m, 14.6 kg˙m, and 12.74kg˙m. It indicated that the side stability was approximately twice higher than the front stability; as the number of the storeys increased, the stability became worse; in terms of long-term load creep, the more storeys a stand had, the higher the creep of height would be, and the bottom storey had a greater frame creep. In addition, a one-storey KD magazine stand, a two-storey one, and a three-storey one could be again assembled into three two-storey KD magazine stands according to the needs This study proved that even with inadequate basic training in carpentry, modern high-tech processing technology could be applied to the design and development of furniture for mass production.