Chair's future furnished in 3-D
A mysterious new company is aiming to print wooden furniture in three dimensions.
3-D printing is changing the state of many industries, and it seems furniture could be next to step into the future. 4 AXYZ is a company founded by CEO Samir Shah with the idea of working with layer-upon-layer of extruded wooden material.
“Effectively what you’re seeing is solid wood furniture is too expensive and quality is dropping. We have something that is not rocket science, even though it is patent pending,” Shah says.
“You can make [furniture pieces] to North American standards, and we can deliver them within 15 days even if they were customized by the customer.”
Mr Shah said the system could be used to build a chair with a previously impossible, ornate or ergonomic design, even with complex engraving to match its upholstery.
“The more complicated it is, the more expensive it is. It wastes more material and more effort. Our machine would reduce the number components substantially. The more complicated it is, the cheaper it gets with our process,” Shah said.
4 AXYZ are keeping very quiet on the specifics of the product. Shah says a big part of the secret is to do with the way the machine cuts the wood and secures layers together. The company is in its conceptual phase at the moment, hunting investors to bring it to full scale production.
Once they find the money, Mr Shah said the first machine could be operational in six to eight months.
“When people see it they say, ‘Why didn’t we think of this?’ We discovered that we had something nobody else is doing out there,” Shah said.