Mod-Couch

Module Drawing
LED Setup
Back and Table Ratchet Hinges
Module Prototype
Leg Strap Hinges
Night Mode
Mariia with recycled wood planks
Diane working on the LED seating display
Mariia cutting aluminum extrusions
Emma drilling hinge holes
Stored chair

Introduction: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1eMnuHClQrch4WPd5JzehKxUaAKKdOjbheeuLiOVsfcQ/edit?usp=sharing Final Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1S70K8QYXDsaunxqsiPcs-RRnbbntDoIcjghLZhncsCo/edit#slide=id.gc91f5e3b0f_0_83

Inspiration Our pod dines together on Sunday nights, and often socializes as a group while playing games. Unfortunately, with the lack of pod lounges and furniture available, we often find ourselves sitting on the ground and chatting, or eating while holding our plates in our laps. While this is satisfactory, and any socialization is desirable, comfortable socialization is and has always been the goal. For the sake of our buns, we wanted to come up with a way to allow for social eating and hangouts while not taking up an absurd amount of space in our dorm.

What it does The Mod-Couch is a piece of modular furniture that offers a sitting area and a desk/eating area all at once! It is modular and compactable, which allows for a single MIT student to store it in their room, but can link up and allow for comfortable social interaction.

What its made of The modular couch is constructed from a wood seating surface and a metal frame. While the frame has to be metal in order to meet our size and strength requirements, the wooden seating surface could be made of surfaced and sealed pallet wood, allowing for an element of recycling in our design.

Challenges A big challenge on our part was stabilizing the legs of the chair while still allowing them to fold in a compact and simple way. We came up with a solution using hinges and pins, which constrains the chair from collapsing when upright, and when removed, allows the chair to fold. We hope that in the future we will be able to iterate on our leg design and make it even more stable and user-friendly.

Another challenge was that the rachets we used did not lock completely at 90 degrees. This meant that the table part of the chair was not automatically level when we snapped it up. To fix this problem, we used washers and placed the rachets at a slight angle to make the table level. This prevents the mod couch from folding completely flat, but we decided that we would prefer that the table be level as opposed to keeping the compact form completely flat.