Eh, having had both types apart there is very little difference the motor just replaces the handle. The rest of the mechansium is very similar, channel attached to the bottom of the glass, one or two arms with rollers in the channel, quadrant drive from the handle/motor to make the arm(s) go up/down.
I think there are recirculating ball drives and worm drives but they strike me as even more complicated.
For something like a chair I'd agree, cars tend to use custom motors simply 'cause of the scale of manufacture.
Car seat motors may well even be indentical to the original - a surprising amount of stuff gets shared around. Ford's seat-height knob once appeared on an operating table.
Mabuchi for example, spits out billions of DC motors to almost any spec you want. From toothbrush to a golf buggy. Its not hard to fn one of similar power and voltage rating, and its not usually that critical either.
The four Goldberg brothers, Lowell, Norman, Hiram, and Max, invented and developed the first automobile air-conditioner. On July 17, 1946, the temperature in Detroit was 97 degrees. The four brothers walked into old man Henry Ford's office and sweet-talked his secretary into telling him that four gentlemen were there with the most exciting innovation in the auto industry since the electric starter. Henry was curious and invited them into his office. They refused and instead asked that he come out to the parking lot to their car. They persuaded him to get into the car, which was about 130 degrees, turned on the air conditioner, and cooled the car off immediately. The old man got very excited and invited them back to the office, where he offered them $3 million for the patent. The brothers refused, saying they would settle for $2 million, but they wanted the recognition by having a label, 'The Goldberg Air-Conditioner,' on the dashboard of each car in which it was installed. Now old man Ford was more than just a little anti-Semitic, and there was no way he was going to put the Goldberg's name on two million Fords. They haggled back and forth for about two hours and finally agreed on $4 million and that just their first names would be shown. And so to this day, all Ford air conditioners show - Lo, Norm, Hi, and Max - on the controls.
i would imagine a new mechanism would be needed, as the manual chairs have springs and counter balance levers all over the mechanism, along with a lock when it is closed up,
the electric models just use the motor to position the mechanism,
A friend had to junk their old electric one as the gears stripped, it use nylon gears and the orignil maker was no longer in business (Probably ran out of crap nylon gears.)
If it is only the motor and not the mecanism, it could well be some standard motor, one would need to extricate it without all the spings and bits flying all over the room. I have to say when I saw the innards of one of these devices, it put me off them for ever!
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