The “Surface Table” by John Barnard and Terence Woodgate is three-meters long — and just two-millimeters thick, due to its construction from carbon fiber.
There’s one tiny discrepancy in the description that gives me pause: Stylepark describes the table as “just 2mm at the edge”, which implies that it might be thicker elsewhere. But probably not!
I would love to play around with one of these. I suspect they’re still relatively fragile — no sitting! — but you could probably pick them up and move them around without issue.
Price: unknown, but surely a heap of Euro.
Established & Sons Surface Table [Stylepark.com via Kottke]
I bet this would be hell in a bar fight… How many stomachs will be sliced open for the sake of getting the bowl of gravy just out of reach…
My brother ran into a table when he was a toddler.
Had we owned this table, he would have been a fitting extra in Resident Evil.
A 2mm sheet of carbon fiber is extremely floppy. I doubt that this table exists. However, if I were to build it I would support the weight with flat carbon beams or a square section tube down the center.
I don’t see the point of carbon fiber furniture unless it is intended for use on dirigibles, space elevator platforms or world cup racers for the grotesquely wealthy.
no speaker transducer?
Carbon fiber composites are not flexible and would snap before you could see it bend.
In case of accident, buyer should get the guilt trip.
A table of that size that could not support sitting would be of little to no use to me as I would likely approach that level of weight in terms of things I would put on it
2 mm seems way too thin to me. Not because of strength, but because of flexibility. Even though carbon fiber composites can be stiffer than steel, the length/thickness ratio of this table is just too high.
To avoid actually working this afternoon, I did a quick analysis and posted it here:
http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2008/12/super-thin-table/
Given that one of the 2 designers is an F1 race car designer, they at least understand what you can and cannot do with the material. If it were just 5mm in the middle, I would expect that to be no problem at all.
20 years ago, I saw the part of a Navy Trident missile that transitions from the second to the third stage. It is a tapered ring, 6-8 feet across, a foot or so high, supports thousands of pounds under 4+ G of acceleration and vibration, and weighs about 25 pounds, perhaps a 1/4″ thick.
The table may well be a bit more than 2mm in the middle, but I would not be surprised if you can stand on it.