A mold is described for production of a molded element. The mold includes a first mold portion and a second mold portion engageable to define a mold cavity. The mold further includes at least one insert element having a textured surface and configured to create a first internal surface and a second internal surface opposed to one another in molded element. The textured surface may include a plurality of peak portions and a plurality of valley portions. The at least one insert element may be affixed to one of the first mold portion and the second mold portion, or is moveable with respect to one or both of the first mold portion and the second mold portion to facilitate demolding of the molded element.

A seat includes one or more cushions secured to a shell. The cushions include a 3D printed lattice of repeating cells. The cells may include nodes interconnected by branches. The nodes may be arranged in a cubic, parallelepiped, diamond, or other arrangement. The branches may extend directly between nodes or may be bent. The branches may extend from each node to an adjacent node that is closest to its point of attachment to the each node or the branches may be curved or bent to secure to a different adjacent node. The 3D printed lattice may include 3D printed barbs formed thereon that engage receptacles in the seat shell. The 3D printed lattice may be printed with a groove that engages a fastening structure on a cover or a separate fastening element. The cover may be a perforated sheet of material or fabric.

A cushion is provided with a unitary mesh of expanded thermoplastic resin strands. A weld is formed at least partially along the mesh.

In one aspect, a wide microporous film comprises one or more layers comprising a polyolefin, wherein the microporous film has a width of at least 50 inches and comprises one or more non-porous regions. In some embodiments, the microporous film is at least 55 inches or at least 60 inches. Moreover, in some embodiments, the non-porous region is located along a creased region of the microporous film.

A method of forming a cushioning element including forming a large cushioning element, and then dividing the large cushioning element into four equal smaller cushioning elements. The four smaller cushioning elements may be substantially the same size. Each of the smaller cushioning elements may be used as separate cushioning elements.

A foam seating article includes a layer of molded foam surrounding a hollow shell made of hard plastic. A fabric covering encloses the shell and molded foam. The foam seating article can take the form of a chair, stool, sofa, chaise lounge, bench or Ottoman. The hollow shell can be formed using blow molding, injection molding or by capping both ends of a tube with disks. Air pressure inside the airtight hollow shell prevents the shell from collapsing inwards under the weight of an occupant. Alternatively, the hollow shell of the seating article can be accessed through a removable lid. The seating article includes no wood or metal. The layer of molded foam includes sections of different foam types, such as high density (HD) foam, memory foam and latex foam. Molding foam around a hard plastic shell is simpler and less costly than making conventional metal or wood framed furniture.

A three-dimensional striped structure is provided which is formed by bonding continuous filaments in random in loops, has a longitudinal direction corresponding to an extruding direction, a lateral direction and a thickness direction perpendicular to the extruding direction, and is comprised of a polyethylene thermoplastic resin, a polyester thermoplastic elastomer or a mixture of a polyethylene thermoplastic resin and a polyethylene thermoplastic elastomer. The three dimensional striped structure has an impact resilience of not lower than 13 cm, a hysteresis loss of not higher than 34% and not lower than 13%, and a thermal expansion rate of 0 to 8% in the longitudinal direction before and after a hot-air drying test, and does not shrink during high-temperature sterilization.

[Problem to be solved] An object is to provide a method of efficiently producing even a subsidiary material having a complex shape corresponding to a resin body.

[Solution] The production method of the present invention includes, for example, a molding step of obtaining a molded material (m1) in which an irregular-shaped molded portion (10) is provided on a part of a flat sheet material by molding and an overlap-bonding step of overlap-bonding a notched portion (21) provided on an outer peripheral side of the molded material to obtain an overlap-bonded and molded material (m4) in which at least a part of the outer peripheral side is curved. Thus, a molding subsidiary material (M) is obtained which includes the overlap-bonded and molded material and is integrated with a resin body (R). The sheet material is made, for example, of a nonwoven fabric. The resin body is made, for example, of a foamed resin. When the resin body is provided with an inner cavity (air passage), for example, a through-hole corresponding to the inner cavity is formed in the molded portion. By separating the molding step and the overlap-bonding step, even a complex-shaped subsidiary material can be produced at low cost.

The present invention relates to a method for producing a support element for the human body, a support element for the human body obtainable by the above-mentioned method, and a molding unit for producing a support element for the human body.

A cellular cushioning system includes cells or support units arranged in one or more stacked arrays. The cells are hollow chambers that resist deflection due to compressive forces, similar to compression springs. The arrays are attached to one or more intermedial binding layers. The intermedial binding layer(s) links the cells together while allowing the cells to deform independently of one another. An external load compresses one of the void cells within an independent compression range without significantly compressing at least one void cell adjacent the compressed void cell. The independent compression range is the displacement range of the compressed void cell that does not significantly affect the compression of adjacent void cells. If the void cell is compressed beyond the independent compression range, the intermedial binding layers may be deflected and/or the void cells adjacent the compressed void cell may be compressed.