LOW FLOOR
SEATING For the Charkha users
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LOW FLOOR
SEATING For the Charkha users
KiranPrasanth.R
Furniture & Interior Design
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National Institute Of Ahmedabad Design Gujarat
The Project Design a Low floor Seating furniture for people who works on the Charkha ( The Spinning Wheel )
Guide
Rama Krishna Rao & Nandita Mehrotra
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I dedicate this Project to the father of our nation whose concept of the charkha was a symbol of self-entrepreneurship, which alone can help the nation protect its bio-diversity and provide sustenance to the poorest of the poor.
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Brief
Keywords
As the part of the course Simple Furniture Design I was told to design a furniture for people who works on Charkha. A study was conducted on Charkha, its history ,the various types of Charkha and kinds of work done in it and the time taken by the people.
Low floor seating, Charkha, Simple, Indoor, Questionnaire, Ergonomics , Percentiles, Storage, Light weight, Soft, Labour Class, Standard, Textured, Comfortable, Friction, Motion.
The target users of this project that I focused was not only the Charkha users but also the people who does their work sitting on the floor, including both male and female for this indoor furniture. Focusing at the target users, the furniture must be portable, light wait, easy storage, soft etc . An ergonomic study was done, looking at different human posters, questionnaires, time taken by the work, kinds of work , human percentiles etc. The project is divided in to three parts, stage 1,2 and 3 which consist of the Research & Study, Furniture development and finally the Manufacturing Processes.
Form Smooth, Soft, Comfortable, Movement, Light Weight, Textured, Thin.
Colour Dark, Standard, Classic.
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Students, in their morning practice of spinning at Gujarat Vidyapith, Usman Pura, Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
Research & Development 6
Stage- 1 consists of the researches regarding target users, variations in their kind of work, their needs, ergonomics, what the needs ? Etc. The study regarding this project was started from Gujarat Vidyapith, Usman Pura, Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Here, In this collage, it is mandatory for each and every students to practice spinning on charkha From 8:00 to 10:00 every day. They were given certain assignments to finish. Students from 10 to 20 year old are involved in this practice, which helped a lot in the ergonomic study and data analysis in this project.
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Amber Charkha
Box Charkha
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Ergonomics
Questionnaire 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
What type of Charkha do you use ? Is it necessary to sit on the floor for working on the charkha ? For how many hours do you use a charkha continuously? Which are the postures that you normally sits ? After how many minutes do u change your posture ? Which all parts of the body gets pain while working on the charkha ? What kind of movements are done by you while working on a charkha? Do you prefer a small height from the ground level for working? Do you prefer a back-rest ? If yes, after how many minutes do you prefer a back-rest? Do you feel uncomfortable while sitting and standing from the floor?
After the research, study and practice I came to know, which all regions/area in the body the pains and discomforts occurs. The following image is depicting the body regions were the pains & discomfort happening while working on a Charkha.
User Perspective 1. Comfortable 2. Affordable price
Perspective Of Other People Involve ( Designers, Manufacturing company, Product Distributors, etc. ) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Maximum Simplified Less materials No mechanism Less Joinery Mass production Functional Good Aesthetics
* (image provided by Prabir Mukhopadhyay, Ergonomics Faculty, National Institute Of Design) 11
Rough sketches of people sitting on the floor in different postures. 12
Here are the images that shows the basic postures and movements that a person does while working on the spinning wheel . The postures of working in the charkha varies according to the different kind of charka they use. Now a days in industries they use Amber Charkha, only in rural areas the normal charkha and Box charkha (also known as Gandhi charkha) are used.
* (images of body posers and movements from the book ‘Indian Anthropometric Dimensions written by Debkumar Chakrabarthi) 13
Some rough concept sketches for exploring various possibilities and techniques 14
According to the study, I came to the conclusion that the major pain and discomfort happens in the buttock region. Its because of the weight of human body . Even if the user changes his posture while sitting, because of the weight, pressure, improper blood flow in the buttock region the pain and the discomfort again happens. Pain on the shoulders happen due to the movement while working on the charkha. The workers avoid the pain that happens in the shoulders and legs by changing their sitting posture. After 10 to 15 minutes every person changes their posture. It became interesting when a small height was provided from the floor it was more comfortable and the users could work from 15 to 20 minutes without changing their posture. The small height is allowing to distribute the weight and pressure to an extend and this also helps for a comfortable blood flow. The diagram in this page represents the ergonomic research on different percentiles of people.
Outline drawing of body regions in contact with the floor of different percentiles of people, the outlines of buttock area, knee and foot are sketched out.
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Keeping the ergonomic data drawing as the basement and without changing it, a rough form of the furniture is sketched and the total space taken by the furniture is figured out. Here most contact region is the buttock region. The buttock region is the region were more pressure and force happens, not only while a person sits or stands from the floor but also its the area which holds most of the body weight.
In the drawing above, the dark shaded area represents the body regions around the buttock area were more softness is required. The softness is needed because the buttock area is the region were more body pressure always occurs. This body pressure happens mainly due to body weight and can cause problem in blood flow, pains, diseases etc. can occur. The dark shaded area is also provided with a small amount of height which was a turning point in the ergonomic study of this project. The height makes the user more comfortable and makes his body study by decreasing the pressure coming on his upper and lower lumber. It was observed during the ergonomic data analysis that when the height is provided to the buttock area the the upper torso of human body becomes straight and study and distributes the weight and pressure coming on the buttock region which was a useful fact for the users.
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A height was provided to the seat-pan in the buttock region which was a mile stone in the ergonomic study of this project. After a trial & error method i came to a conclusion that the height must be ‘6cm’ considering all user percentiles. Many mock-up models were made using thermocol & foam board and experimented on different people of different percentiles. The pictures depicting the experiment is shown below.
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Concept Sketches done after the ergonomic study which gave a rough idea about the form
The selected concept
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Prototyping 22
R50.00 R50.00 R6.00
33.00 33.00
R6.00
R110.00 R110.00
R105.00 R5.00
R105.00
R5.00
R10.00 R55.00
R10.00
R55.00
24.00
40.00
24.00
R3.00 R3.00
0.50 0.50
R2.00 R2.00 57.00 57.00
FRONT ELEVATION
2.50 2.50
40.00
7.50 7.50
PLAN
R2.00 R2.00 57.00 57.00
SIDE ELEVATION
* ( All the dimensions are in Centimeters) 23
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As the base of the furniture, rubber sheet of thickness 5mm which is hard and light weight with a very good flexibility is used. A grip is provided on the one side of the rubber sheet which will be coming in contact with the floor which helps to bring friction. For the buttock area high density PU Foam of grade M94 (3) is used which is hard as well as soft. Synthetic Rubber Adhesives like Real God & High Fix are used to stick.
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In the base part, PU Foam of 1 inch thick, grade 50 is stuck on to the rubber sheet using the glue and is coverer with rexine. The part that comes in contact with the floor of the rubber sheet is provided with grip which brings friction. The PU Foam and rubber sheet obtained this shape with the help of JIG- Saw machine.And on the PU Foam a small radius of 3cm is sanded out. After covering both upper and lower pieces of the furniture with rexine, velcro is placed between them. This makes the furniture dismantling and helps the user to adjust the furniture according to their comfort level.
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The Prototype
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The images showing how the user comes to his sitting posture in the furniture.
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Users adjusting the furniture according to his comfort level
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The furniture allows the user of any percentile to sit comfortably. As the furniture is in two parts which can be detached and reassembled easily, it allows the user to adjust the furniture according to his or her comfort. It is very difficult for a person to change his posture while sitting on the floor. Here the height provided in the furniture solves this problem to an extend.
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Acknowledgement Pradyumna Vyas ( Director, National Institute Of Design )
P. RamaKrishna Rao ( Coordinator, Furniture & Interior Design )
L. C. Ujawane ( Senior Faculty, Furniture & Interior Design )
Dr. Ranjit Konkar ( Coordinator, Product Design )
Romanie Jaitly ( Coordinator, Textile Design )
Prabir Mukhopadhyay ( Ergonomics Faculty)
Anuya Naik Mann Singh Bhavin Kothari Aarti Srivastava Shaktivel Kamlesh Bhai All the staffs of NID workshop Pankaj Bhai Patel ( Textile Faculty, Gujarath Vidyapith )
Ashok Bhai Makvana Gujarath Vidyapith Khadi Gram Udyog Mandal
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Swaroop M S Vivek. V. Ram Rajvi Metha Ashoka Prem. P Biwajeetha sethi Shreya Sen Pooja Kulkarni Govind Krishna Akash More Nayan Shrimali Komal Lakhanpal Aditi Agarwal Anjali Menon Naina Shenoy Shipra Srivatava Mahaan Ghosh Lakstine Fernandes Sumila Phijam Rahul Sahu Pranab. P. Kumar Ribin Raj Swathy Deepak