US 4,900,085 AGranted

Chair construction arrangement, particularly for office chairs, typing chairs, and the like

AssigneeEquus Marketing AG

InventorPeter Tobler

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

To permit use of injection-molded plastic parts in chairs which, otherwise, have a wide variety of coverings or shapes of the seats and/or the chair backs, the seats and chair backs are upholstered with material such as fabric or leather or imitation leather in accordance with selected colors, and made in shapes determined by designers; the back of the chair, and where the coverings are attached to a chair core (45), typically of plywood or the like, is then covered by injection-molded plastic shells or panels (51, 54) which can be snap-in attached by an interengaging attachment means to support brace (27) for the chair back, which support brace may form part of a synchronous seat-back tilting mechanism (15). The seat adjustment tilting mechanism (15) can be identical for any numbers of seats or chair backs, of respectively different shapes (FIGS. 3, 4, 5, 6), thereby permitting inexpensive modular construction and reducing stocking requirements for spare parts.

Claims13

Dependent claims

A modular system for assembling from stock components, selected models of pluralities of chairs,

wherein some of the pluralities of chairs form first selected models, and others of the pluralities of chairs form other selected models;
and
in which each one of the chairs of all models includes a seat (11);
a back (13) having a surface directed towards the seat and defining a forward surface and a back surface opposite said forward surface,
wherein the perimetrical contour of the backs of the chairs of different models differ in shape;
a back support element or brace (27) supporting the back;
a covering (47) covering the forward surface of the back;
the back support element or brace (27) being coupled to said seat (11);
said modular systems comprising
a plurality of cover shell elements (51, 54) of identical shape and of selected colors and including a downwardly extending portion;
attachment means (53) for attaching the cover shell elements (51, 54) to the back surface of said back;
wherein the downwardly extending portion extends over at least part of said back support element or brace and below the level of the seat;
and
said covering (4) of all the chairs of all the models including extending covering portions (47') unitary with said covering (47) extending over at least part of the back surface of the back (13) and coverable by any one of said identical cover shell elements,
said identical cover shell elements being dimensioned and shaped to leave uncovered a substantial part of said extending covering portions (47');
and wherein said covering (47) and extending covering portions (47') of the chairs of the first selected models and said other selected models differ from each other in shape.

13 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.