I’ve had my Aeron chair for maybe 6 years, and it’s the best office chair to ever cradle my butt.
Unfortunately, the armrest locking mechanism can only be described as a design failure of galactic proportions. After several hours of use the armrests loosen and fall. I suspect they used the weird wheel/gear armrest lock so the armrests could be finely tuned instead of being locked into fixed stepped heights.
Whatever the designer’s intention, the armrests eventually slide down, and the locking mechanism is a real pain to tighten. It feels like you really have to crank hard on the lock wheel, but this is impossible because it affords you so little leverage. Ugh.
In keeping with the Hipster PDA lifestyle, i found a fix using… index cards.
Just cut 4 index cards to the desired height, stack them one on top of another, fold them over into a tight flat column, and stuff them into the armrest adjustment trough.
I tried using a dowel for this at first, but it didn’t sit in there properly. Index cards are just flexible yet rigid enough.
Index cards are quickly approaching duct tape as my universal solution for all problems ever.
4 Comments ↓
You don’t have to rig your Aeron chair like that. The problem with the wheel is that you are not getting full rotation and it needs to be lubricated, then it will tighten properly. If that doesn’t work, go to chairmd.com the Aeron repair people and if your chair has a warranty sticker you will get new arms at no charge. Hope this helps…
Thanks for the info Marc. I’ll keep chairmd in mind if my chair gets worse.
i love this type of adhoc engineering for expensive items. such as rubber o-rings in shuttles. such irony
Admirable ingenuity!