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e

Furniture Design

How Ikea's New Joinery is Advancing Their Design

The Lisabo does more with less

By Rain Noe - January 3, 2017

Let's get into table design for a second. If you look at your average dining table, you'll see most have aprons. The aprons prevent racking and, in the case of solid wood tops, help prevent the tops from warping.

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Look underneath the average dining table and you'll see the aprons are often connected to some type of corner braces. These are to keep them square and provide a solid connection with the legs.

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Aprons and braces, necessary though they may be, require more raw material, are extra things for a manufacturer to ship and extra things for a consumer to assemble, not to mention pay for. So Ikea has done away with both aprons and braces with their Lisabo line.

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Here's how they did this. Remember the funky wedge dowels Ikea's prototype engineers came up with a couple of years ago?

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Ikea designers Knut and Marianne Hagberg took the wedge dowel concept and applied it to the legs of the Lisabo series of tables and desks.

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By CNC-milling striations into the top of the leg, and a corresponding shape into the underside of the tabletop at the four corners, the Hagbergs created a leg that simply slides into place and locks in with a single screw holding a wedge.

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This wedged, striated joint provides enough registered contact area to preclude racking, meaning aprons aren't required. Since there's no need for aprons, there's no need for corner braces. And the consumer can pop the legs in quickly, which is a boon not only the first time they do it, but anytime they move.

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And the table's pretty easy on the eyes, too. The Hagbergs used the old design trick of chamfering the underside; since the tabletop's got to be thick enough to accommodate the joint, chamfering the edges provides the illusion of thinness to the top, making the table look airy.

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Anyways, this is just an example of how prototype engineers seeking a faster joint connector ended up influencing and advancing the design, both aesthetically and from a UX perspective, of a dining table. The Lisabo uses less material and looks, to my eye, prettier than its rectilinear, apron-and-corner-brace-saddled cousin.

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Furniture Design

Rain Noe

Rain Noe is a writer and industrial designer based in New York City.

24 Comments

Garrett Brooks

2 years ago

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Seems the editor isn't aware that canting the legs is indeed integral to the design. The joint that they came up with is great for the flat pack design and simple assembly, but by angling the legs they are able to get rid of both the apron and the braces, because this does it by putting the legs in constant tension. Now if you go to IKea , you'll see that the legs still rack/ wobble - but far less.

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Chuck Mack

2 years ago

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I keep coming back to this article which illustrates evolution in table design quite well, because this concept (no substructure) is something I have spent a fair amount of effort on myself. I use a different technique (and a bit more complex) which uses tension and a broad stance against the underside of the top. The solution shown here captures the tenon in a tapered mortise giving a vise-like connection. The look is sleek but the result marginal and the volume of wood is a trade-off as a thick top is required.

Given the vagaries of wood, the connection is bound to loosen over time and is inherently weak in the transverse direction - note the comments that it is wobbly - Wood fibers compress and dimensions change with climate and season.
My fix without changing the look would be to use a dovetail profile rather than the ripples so there is more shoulder, ramp the mortise a fraction of a degree so that shoulder really sucks tight to the top, and allow some redundancy so one can periodically tighten those wedges. An extra step of pre-compressing the tenons might also help.

I doubt anyone will pay attention to my suggestions so I may do my own proof just to see.

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Chuck Mack

2 years ago

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RN, after posting that link, I had a flurry of studious views, received a bucket load of spam, and had one invitation to enter a pay-to-play European design competition. Ain't it grand?

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Anna Willoughby

2 years ago

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WANT

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TDan Schumacher

2 years ago

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So elegant The picture of the table with chairs Leaves me wondering when a complementary chair is forthcoming and Whether there would be a detail Wherein the rail of the chair back up from the topside Could be in line with chair leg from the underside As is and Wedged in only with the block from the underside Leaving the seat unsullied The bevel would be nice if curved

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Chuck Mack

2 years ago

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Very slick but I expect there's some transverse wiggle, probably could not dance on it.
I have been doing direct all-wood tabletop to leg connections (sans apron) for some years that do offer extra lateral support. Hardly anyone noticed though.

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- Rain Noe
  
  Chuck Mack
  
  2 years ago
  
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  Hi Chuck, please post a link to your work, I'm interested
  
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  - Chuck Mack
    
    Rain Noe
    
    2 years ago
    
    Z
    
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    You can see some here; www.chuckmackdesign.com though I have not upgrade the site for some time.
    
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  - Chuck Mack
    
    Rain Noe
    
    2 years ago
    
    Z
    
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    www.chuckmackdesign.com
    
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- Scott Bennett
  
  Chuck Mack
  
  2 years ago
  
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  Pretty cool!
  
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  - Chuck Mack
    
    Scott Bennett
    
    2 years ago
    
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    Scott, thanks for noticing. The concept with the colored legs is a true 'knockdown'. The connectors are spring steel clips from Modular systems - those together with the drop-in crossbar gives a sturdy result as does the 3-point single bolt system on the round table concept.
    One does not have to have a big firm behind them to come up with a decent concept, but it sure helps to get it to go further, i.e. production.
    
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CHRISTOPHER HANLON ®

2 years ago

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Nice prototype. What happens when the design changes? What happens when substrate qaulity changes? What happens with varied long-term addition stress (movement,usage, age)? Ikea furniture joints are NOT STABLE LONG TERM. You need flexible adhesive.

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Dan Sjoeholm

2 years ago

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Is this really a material saving considering the tabletop has to be that thick?

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- Ken Jacques
  
  Dan Sjoeholm
  
  2 years ago
  
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  It could if they constructed it the same as the tables in the link they provided
  
  http://www.core77.com/posts/27726/ikeas-new-tool-less-connectors-and-a-potential-end-to-particle-board-27726
  
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Square Dog Studios

2 years ago

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Really interesting and a great innovation. Question, I noticed the legs with the new joint aren't quite vertical. Do they have to be at an angle because they are not quite as strong as a apron and corner brace? Or was that an aesthetic choice?

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- Rain Noe
  
  Square Dog Studios
  
  2 years ago
  
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  I believe it's a bit of both. By splaying the legs, you set the physics up such that any weight on the table is driving the legs tight against the wedges, precluding wracking. And I think that aesthetically the table looks better with angled legs.
  
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- Ken Jacques
  
  Square Dog Studios
  
  2 years ago
  
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  Angled legs would see a moment on the joint putting all kinds of stresses on the connection. Straight legs would only load the flange of the leg. This all assumes a vertical static load on the table. Bumping the sides of the table would put a moment on straight leg joints as well.
  
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Robert Wilkey

2 years ago

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This is super cool. Hopefully we as consumers will be able to purchased router bits that enable the fabrication of this kind of joint soon!

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- Robert Wilkey
  
  Robert Wilkey
  
  2 years ago
  
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  *Hopefully was as fabricators will be able to purchase...
  
  Not sure what happened when I typed this
  
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  - Robert Wilkey
    
    Robert Wilkey
    
    2 years ago
    
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    *we as
    
    Time to turn autocorrect off again...
    
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Kyle Lawson

2 years ago

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Rain, you should get some kind of read-it-here-first award for positively linking the words "Ikea" and "boon... any time they move". Very neat.

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Juan Cano

2 years ago

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That's a really nice looking table, so simple.

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