When using furniture items and in particular office furniture such as desks or work tables, it is necessary to hook up electronic devices. For example, peripheral devices of computers such as monitors, keyboards, and computer mice are typically set up on desktops, whereas the computers themselves are set up under the desktops and the power supply is routed along the floor or from below. The power cables and communication cables are therefore frequently routed from below to the furniture item, for example to the desktop.
As the number of devices hooked up on the furniture item increases, it becomes harder to rout the cables on the furniture item in a neat and orderly fashion. Arranging and bundling the cables in a tube or conduit and routing the entire sheathed cable bundle on the furniture item is known to the prior art.
Irrespectively of wiring, height-adjustable furniture items have also been known for some time, in particular as workstations such as height-adjustable desks. The possibility of adjusting a work surface of the workstation in height; i.e., vertically, permits the workstation to be ideally adapted to the body size of an individual working at the workstation, which can be an important prerequisite for an ergonomic working posture.
While in the past a height adjustment was often only possible to a relatively limited extent, with the aim of compensating for size differences within the range of the statistically relatively small standard deviation of body sizes of sitting adults, desks with extended height adjustability, which when needed make it possible to work while standing are very popular today. Since prolonged working while standing may be perceived as unpleasant and/or tiring, it is important to be able to adjust the work surface between heights that are suitable for working while standing and ones that are suitable for working while sitting quickly and without complications. In particular, a frequent adjustment of the vertical position should be possible without any problem.
However, the aforesaid routing of cables in an orderly fashion is more difficult in such height-adjustable furniture items. So that neither the height adjustability of the furniture item nor the accessibility of the devices hooked up thereon is adversely impacted, the cables must be long enough to reach the furniture item in the highest possible setting thereof. Accordingly, relatively long cables are typically used for height-adjustable furniture items. However, when the furniture items are lowered or when the furniture items equipped with such relatively long cables are not in their highest position, then the cables, which may be grouped in a cable conduit, generally run in any direction. The cables may in particular dangle to a certain extent, which makes it difficult to organize the cables and is annoying to a user of the furniture item or desk. Furthermore, repeated height adjustments may cause the cables to fold together a different way each time, which can lead to a tangling or a kinking of the cables. The cables may be damaged as a result.
The problem addressed by the following invention is therefore that of proposing a mechanism or system with which cables are routed in a neat and orderly fashion on height-adjustable furniture items in every height position.