Sunday, September 28, 2014

trundle bed part i

we've got plans to have a nice trundle bed in the corner of the guest room. The sketch-up (ketchup) drawing below shows the plywood components, excepting the one cross beam (more on that further down). These will then be clad in reclaimed redwood frame and panel facades.

For us, we wanted as low a profile as possible with the bed as it's going to mostly be used as a spot to lounge on and it's nice to be lower slung. But trundle beds tend to have a really tall profile due to the need for an extra tall span running along the opening for the lower mattress and all it's required debris. We're opting for futons with ~ 6" of loft. Casters are around 1,1/4" tall.

I talked to dad about it. he did a few quick sketches and sent them my way, recommending an aluminum I-Beam construction for the span. His calcs indicating that 2, 2" wide by 1/8" thick soft aluminum straps in a 4" I-beam should support 300 pounds of human pretty well along a 6' span. So it goes.

I concluded today with the beam, a lamination of doug fir that's 4,1/4"x2,1/2"x79,1/2" with the alu straps recessed into place. Epoxy and 2" flathead screws secure it to the wood. This ought to work, hopefully!

3 comments :

  1. Pretty darn solid looking beam! We could use those on the B-777X. How would your operation be set up to produce about 475 of these per month? - for the next 35 years? I bet you had to do some high and quick stepping to get that aluminum in place before the 5 minute glue started setting up, eh? That thing will be really stiff.

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  2. It appears that your father calculated the stress and deflection of the aluminum plates neglecting any strength and stiffness contribution from the wooden beam. I would expect the final deflection to be virtually non existent.

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  3. Your calculations are spot on. Go with them..!! Just perfect..!!
    Beds with trundle or trundle beds are best options to save your space along with the perfect comfort needed. These beds have special trundle bed mattress which fit to the size and provide the needed comfort and coziness when you sleep. I was surfing the net to learn about trundle beds and found bedwithtrundle.com which had complete information along with a large product range of trundle beds.

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