Home electronics/engineering project... HELP?

Question

Okay, I have a futon, if anyone else does, they know it's a pain in the a-- to get it to turn from couch-mode back to bed-mode and back again, so I wanted to design a simple machine to attach to the bottom of my futon to push and pull, or twist, on the futon, to turn it into the bed then couch, then back again, as needed, understand what I mean?

Okay, I have TWO questions on this, answer either of them and It'd be much appreciated, thank you...

1- Could someone help me as to understand HOW I would go about making a mechanical contraption to do the above? Note that I have very little knowledge in electronics, more of a software man myself...

2- Could someone direct me to a piece of software that could help me to do this? And I don't mean electronic how-to's, I mean a program which I could model and build this project in then understand how to build the project myself.

Answer 1

AutoCadd or SolidWorks will help you draw and work your idea....(get ready for sticker shock, it would be cheaper to by a new sofa)

Answer 2

You'll need someone with a background in electronics, but you'll need a hydraulic pump and a transformer to actually have your futon do that function along with a track system of some sort to guide the futon down into bed mode. By the time you purchase everything, you probably could buy a couple futons. This will not be cheap, but it could be done.


To devise your creation, you can use either autocad or 3dsMax. Both programs are extremely expensive if you don't own them or know somebody that does. Either program will allow you to create a model and animate it to see the functions of each part. Auto Cad will probably be the better of the 2 programs. It gives you a more realistic approach of solving your problem.

Answer 3

wow that's a really good Idea!!!

the way I'd go about this is to look at/map out what moves, where it moves, how it moves and when it moves in the sequence of turning the futon to a bed. then I'd look to see how I could control these movements. In this case, levers and cams may be the best bet.

i don't know where to turn for software like that... but it would be really easy to wire motors in parallel and use push buttons if you don't want to do a ton of work... van door and window motors from cars work really well for this kind of stuff

Answer 4

ok Ill try and do this in my head a lil...
1) look at the essentially moving parts, and what needs to move where to get it in bed mode from couch
2) note which ones do what
3) design and fab up from any kind of tube and screws you can get... it a project if perm. I'd say out of alum.
4) use simple stepper motors to drive the sections off the rods attached to the essential moving parts
5) the easiest way to control this is to just use simple push button switched to turn the motors on and off as needed
6) as for your programming need I'd say go easy and use either labview or Java... they seem to be the easiest programming-control programs I have used in school
7) if not either of those, if you where to buy a kind of remote it tells you what system it uses to transmit from pgrm to out and just use the same

Answer 5

Transmitting Electricity via the air. Nikola Tesla attempted this and has been utilized in a few house packages for powering home equipment. Imagine this approach for offering vigor with out transmission or distribution strains.