Automotive style, Marine function.
Tangent recently partnered with Wieland Motion, a market leader in seating and furniture design and manufacturing for a variety of specialties including, health, hospitality, automotive and marine, to design and develop, from the ground up, the Revolution Helm Chair. Noting a lack of high function, automotive style helm chairs in the pontoon industry, Tangent and Wieland set about designing a helm chair that would set a new benchmark for pontoon helm seating.
Starting from a blank slate, Tangent worked with Wieland to develop 2D ideation sketches of potential two part hinged and single piece short-backed helm chairs that would utilize rotational molding’s robust construction and relatively cost-effective manufacturing techniques. Drawing inspiration from the latest automotive seat designs, Tangent & Wieland set about adding high style and heavy functionality to both sets of chairs, including adjustable seat bolsters, a removable lumbar support panel, collapsible armrests, modular headrests, and additional molded back panels for increased style and comfort.
After settling on a 2D design direction, Tangent took to Autodesk Alias to further develop the helm chairs in the 3D world. Working with our vast knowledge of roto-molding techniques, Tangent was able to develop in tandem, a reclining and single piece helm chair that would work within the production constraints of the roto molding process, giving the chairs a robust, self-supporting structure that could accept additional modifications and components.
Throughout the 3D CAD process, Tangent was careful to utilize our in house, VRED powered, virtual reality software, to gauge the chairs’ overall proportions and aesthetics and insure that both versions would be ergonomically functional in all sorts of marine environments.
After validating the chairs in VR, Tangent took the development process a step further, taking advantage of our largest in-house 3D printer to create full scale rapid prototype parts of both chairs, thereby ensuring the efficacy of the final, full-scale product.
You can learn more about the Wieland Revolution helm chair at Wieland Motion