Making of an Armrest: Adjustability and Ergonomics

“Everyone is built differently and you want to accommodate all different kinds of people that will be working in these cabs, while still maintaining rigidity and creating a robust product.”

No two operators are exactly alike, in either physical build or how they hold themselves while working. That’s why adjustability is so important when designing an armrest for heavy equipment. However, when you’re only focused on that adjustability, it can come at the cost of both stability and ergonomics . In this series, we look at all the factors that go into designing a custom armrest or console for heavy equipment with different experts from our engineering team.

In the last episode, we discussed joystick design and how that extends to armrest as we optimally integrate a custom solution into your machine. In this video, one of our Mechanical Engineers takes a closer look at a large custom armrest we recently created. It is a heavier armrest at 55 lbs and we needed to create a way to smoothly move it and create space for the operator to exit the cab on that side.

“When you try to bake in adjustability it increases the likelihood of the seat being flimsy or not as solid as it needs to be.”

He discusses how we created a way to not only simply and incrementally move the armrest, making it highly adjustable, but that also maintained the existing ergonomics and solid foundation. Contact us to find out we can utilize our wide range of engineering experience to improve ergonomics or adjustability in your armrest or seat assembly.