The requested URL /blog/?tag=plywood was not found on this server. All Decking materials Ratings Rhino Deck Rhino Deck decking This model has been tested by our experts. Ratings, Reviews, Reliability & Compare are for Subscribers Only The Rhino Deck Rhino Deck is part of the Decking test program at Consumer Reports. In our lab tests, Decking material models like the Rhino Deck are rated on multiple criteria, such as those listed below. Resistance to slipping: Resistance to slipping is amount of friction for leather and neoprene under wet and dry conditions. Resistance to flexing: Resistance to flexing is resistance to bending under load. Resistance to sagging: Resistance to sagging is resistance to permanent bending from gravity over time. Why use Consumer Reports Price & Shop? Unbiased: Retailers cannot influence placement. Ad-free: As an integrated part of Consumer Reports, you shop in a completely ad-free environment. New products only: You will never find used or refurbished products for sale.
Consumer Reports is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to helping consumers. We do not accept advertising.John Thomas Heida is an architectural designer, a furniture designer, and a digital-fabrication specialist at the School of Visual Art’s Visible Futures Lab. He teaches at the New York School of Interior Design, School of Visual Arts and at Pratt Institute in New York City. Serving the NYC and SF Bay Area for over 8 years, John has worked with Architecture Firms (& related industries), Jewelry Designers, Furniture Designers, & world class Branding Agencies in various capacities. He brings a toolkit packed with software, construction, and fabrication knowledge which helps him to provide cutting edge solutions to the most demanding clients. I caught up with John by phone recently: MB: Several people at ShopBot found your article in Popular Mechanics and were excited to see the retro chair design recreated (or more correctly, created anew) with the help of CNC technology.
How did this project come about? JH: The editors at Popular Mechanics came to me with what was basically a proposal/challenge, “Can you CNC this?” “This”… being a classic American chair which features the bending of wood to make a one-of-a-kind design. The impetus behind the assignment is the magazine’s initiative to delve deeper into CNC and other digital fabrication technologies and share its potential with their readers. So of course I said YES! The trick here was to find a way to pay homage to the classic curved design using ‘2D’ pieces. As John notes in the article: “I built this chair without touching a single traditional woodworking tool. No, it’s not because I’m some kind of Luddite. I just love the immediacy of rendering a chair with 3D modeling software and then cutting out the parts with a CNC machine. Everything snaps together like flat-pack furniture, but without the cheesy fasteners—just mechanically sound through tenons and lap joints.
The manufacturing process takes 2 hours.” John found that he was able to get material for making two chairs out of a single 4 X 8 sheet of plywood. The Popular Mechanics article provides a link to the files, so you can get to work making the chair yourself. John notes, “Download all the files for this chair and open the 3D model with a CAD (computer-aided design) application. I use Rhino ($995, PC/Mac beta), but if that’s too expensive, use the trial version or Autodesk’s free app, 123D.” MB: Can you talk about your work at the School of Visual Arts?The Visible Futures Lab was created about 2 years ago; it’s integral to the graduate program at SVA for Industrial Designers and Fine Arts students. This Lab supports all of their work. Basically it’s a maker space furnished with all of the traditional and digital fabrication tools that you’d expect, including a laser cutter, 3D printers, and of course a ShopBot CNC router which we used to make the classic chair.
MB: Can you share some detail about your work with the students? JH: Well that is interesting because at SVA I have the opportunity to work with students with varying interests. I work closely with Fine Arts students, who are thinking about design very differently than industrial designers. With Fine Arts students, they are using the CNC and other digital fabrication equipment to help them visualize and create often very fluid sculptures and other structures. Altogether there’s a “freedom” from the rigid requirements of architecture; you’re trying to make an emotionally provocative piece of work, and are less concerned with getting exact tolerances down to the 1/100th of an inch. MB: And the industrial designers… JH: Well of course they need to be concerned with getting the tolerances right! John has been building an impressive and varied portfolio of work. Here are just a few samples: Learn more about John’s work and see samples from furniture to jewelry to architectural projects, at his website.
Terraform Design is a company that creates fixtures, furniture, and lighting using Rhinoceros and Grasshopper to design, customize, and help fabricate their pieces. The founder, Nick ODonnell, is an Entrepreneurship graduate from Florida State University. He runs the company and works with clients on special furniture and fixture projects within the field of parametric design. His lighting and furniture work has been in USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, and he recently received the 'Governor's Young Entrepreneur Award' for the State of Florida for his Check out some of his projects and their Storefront in Etsy: Sporelamp: The Sporelamp is Terraform Design's best-selling lamp. Made of more than 130 laser-cut pieces, the model reflects the geometric patterns seen in plants like pine cones and artichokes, as well as in animals such as the Pangolin. Terraform Chair: The Terraform Chair was the company's first model. It was designed after the form of an average-height male body in relaxing position, to provide a level of comfort surprising for a chair made entirely of plywood.