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Comment by 2np | Hacker News Reader

I just had a genius revelation: I, like another poster here, don't like resting my feet on a bar all day. I like to have them planted firmly.

What if we had tall desks and tall office chairs with a flat, elevated platform? Then you could easily plant both feet on the platform and it would feel just like a regular chair, but then you could easily stand up and have a standing desk?

Something like this: http://www.lkgoodwin.com/more_info/brio_series_chairs/brio_s...

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I swear to god they used to make them with like these two plastic pads like 3"x6" that attached to those rings but I've haven't been able to find one like that for as long as I've been looking. I do admit the bars are crap though it's never been an issue because the when seated my feet are further under the desk than when standing and I've always had a boxes of shit under my desk. Or I just stood up or did the one cheek on one cheek off move.

ETA holy crap you found one</praise jesus hands> I feel like a jack ass now.

I bet you could 3D print those pads for "normal" tall chairs with the bars if you wanted to.

By "3D print" you of course mean going to a home improvement store and buying some wooden boards and metal attachment pieces. 3D printing is totally unsuitable for the task, both because of low durability of printed objects and the time it would take you to print a pad like this (a few days, probably).

Really, that's the time it takes to print an object that size with off-the-shelf 3D printers? I have no experience in this area, so my (uncalibrated) expectations for 3D printing were that it might take a couple hours.

Print speed depends a lot on the layer height (smaller height = more layers = more time) and infill amount.

We're primarily using a Printrbot Simple Metal at my local makerspace, and I usually expect a solid object the size of my fist, 20% infill, PLA, to run 3-4 hours.

Here's a ~6" tall hollow rabbit being printed in roughly 7 hours. 3D printers are still just useless and awful. The promise is clear if they ever improve but for now, especially the cheaper home variety, they just don't do anything useful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx81wv0KRmY&feature=share

I would amend that to "commercial grade 3D printers are terrible and awful". There are some monsters out there that can pump out amazing stuff quickly, but they come with a hefty price tag. And some use lasers, so that's super cool.

> they just don't do anything useful.

We use a cheap 3D printer weekly to make little fixtures, brackets and mounts for robots. These we use for months or years. They are also incredibly great for prototyping: print the doohickey in crappy plastic, check it fits together right, then get it made for real. It's amazing how helpful it is to have a model in your hand for debugging before spending a fortune.

Consumer 3d printing is invaluable for small batch rapid prototyping. I can design and print multiple revisions of a prototype in as many hours. That type of efficiency was previously out of reach(expensive) for tiny, bootstrapped product design teams. It's a huge win.

It is definitely not ready for my Nana to print out a new frame for her eyeglasses after she accidentally sits on them. But it will be one day.

Once you start treating the output as something you can make a mold out of, it makes a lot more sense. Print something out, create a mold, then cast your real parts with that mold in short order.

Print times vary enormously for the same object depending on the settings the operator selects. I might be able to print you something in an hour at low detail, low strength settings, but the same object could easily take 30-50 hours if you crank those same settings to the max.

This is actually a pretty good application for home 3d printing.

I'd say that you'd be looking at 8-10 hours per print with a consumer FDM (extruded plastic) printer on the default settings.

If the printer is correctly configured it will probably be more durable than you're implying, and even if it only lasts a year you could always cheaply print more.

I find the notion of a specialized, adjustable standing desk ridiculous. Why raise and lower the WHOLE DESK, when you could just fix the desk at a high point and raise and lower your chair? It seems so much more efficient and convenient.

Probably so but no one makes chairs that go high, except drafting chairs which are extremely uncomfortable and even more so unergonomic for computer use.

An apple box¹ under the desk would work just fine, and also allow you to put a foot up while standing.

¹That's what they're called in the trade, but they're much sturdier than an actual apple box.

That's what I did with the "shelf" my Ikea Jerker.

Explain. What did you modify?

Imagine this desk, but with the two horizontal slabs swapped so that the big surface is at "standing height" while the other is where your feet would be when in a tall office-chair.

http://imgur.com/d94KObO

Oh, nice.

Yes! I miss the Jerker...

My first standing desk was similar: http://is.gd/X0JzNu

Our cubicles let you attach shelves or desk tops anywhere along the height of the cube wall. Oh man, I forgot I literally used tape to keep that together. And it wasn't even duct tape, yikes

Why not use a stool instead of a specialized chair?

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