Designing a massage headrest

Sup everyone!

A month or so ago I was contacted by a German customer who liked my playDesk design and asked me to design a 100% CNC, adjustable height massage headrest so he could make and sell in Germany.
This was a challenge cause I had no idea of how to make an adjustable design that is both strong, stable and in a very compact design. I took it and this is what I’ve been up to for the last few weeks.

This was his first approach:

I think it was a pretty good one but thought I should aim for a more compact solution.

My playDesk2 and zTandingDesk height adjustment systems could be adapted but as the desks are large, I didn’t focus that much on making them compact, as they need to be big and tall, I focused on making them structurally strong, and in the case of playDesk, getting the height+inclination adjustment system right. In this case I needed to think of a way of changing it’s height with as few moves as possible, while keeping the whole thing compact and the adjustment system below the cushion. How would you have solved it?

Here’s the end result! it has 6 height positions with 20 mm steps.

I won’t be selling this plan because it lacks the cushion which the customer ads and I only offer plans for finished furniture but if you come up with a useful piece of furniture using this approach let me know so I can recycle this idea! that’d be awesome.
Let me know what you think about this design and opt-in at the bottom of this page to get notified on future models.

📅 Update 2021-02-24 – Massage headrest 4 sale in Europe – Check out the new post here.

📅 Update 2024-11-24 – I just came up with a “spin” to recycle this design! It will be called “Shift” which is primarily an adjustable height stool with the option to switch the top for the headrest cushion support (and maybe other functions? suggest below! 👇). That plan will be for sale and I’ll post about it soon.