Self re-enforcing geodesic

So this thing is never coming apart, like ever. It’s designed so that once everything is positioned and snaped into place it becomes self re-enforcing and is incredibly difficult to pull apart.

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Tell that to a 2 year old. :grin:

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May have had to grit teeth while assembling also!

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Very cool!

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I’ve known some :dog: :dog2: :wolf: that would like to put your claim to the test.

Awesome project!

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Awesome design!!

But metal fabricators and 2 year olds will have it apart in no time. :slight_smile: It may not be useable again if the metal fabricators get to it before a 2 yr old though. :smiley:

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Very nice!

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Awesome Design!

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Ha,… I’m quite certain that it will survive contact with any 2 year old. In fact, short of taking a hammer to it and smashing it to pieces, it’ll survive contact with all but the most determined adults.

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Very nice! Looks like it’s based on a 2V geodesic?

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Your own design?

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Yeah, that’s a great looking design! How long does it take to assemble? :grinning:

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Yes, my own design. About 20 min to design, 12 min to cut, 20 min to weed, 20-30 min to assemble. There’s a very specific order to the assembly. It won’t go together if you do it in the wrong order.

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I feel as though, because of the complexity and the challenge of not being able to take it apart, you really should put something in it and make it a game. Essentially you’ve made a puzzle and if something were inside of it you could have a lot of fun watching people attempt to open it. It would be even better if it were like an easter egg with $20 in it but only you know that so people are either tempted by the mystery, or don’t bother with it because they can’t see the actual prize.

Really cool design, thanks for sharing!

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When I built things like this, it’s not even a puzzle. The way I make mine, the slot tolerances are so tight that it frictions together in a way that is not easy to undo. I think on top of that, the resins from the wood act as an impromptu glue, but I can’t say that for sure.

Maybe @anticzcom has a different theory about why it locks so tightly, his design looks like it may interlock and hold itself together in a more mechanical way than mine do.

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Yes, it’s mechanically self re-enforcing. There are 2 independent interlocking structures (you can actually build them separately). Any internal or external pressure along a strut or hub on one structure, transfers into the joining structure and vise versa. So if you pull against a strut the force is transferred laterally around the object.

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That’s dang nice stuff there. Can you talk a little bit about your design process? 20 minutes to design feels like application of well-practiced theory, so I’d be super interested to know more about where you were starting from and how you went about turning it into a cutting layout.

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that thing would make some cool patterns if you rolled it around in paint/ink/snow/sand/stuff…

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I’m a 3D artist with 2 decades of design practice. Designing something like this a fairly trivial for me. I had the idea after seeing a SEM picture of a piece of pollen yesterday afternoon, envisioned it in my head, calculated the angles while driving home, drafted it before dinner. Cut and assembled after putting my son to bed. I know that’s not at all helpful but it’s just intuitive for me at this point. My brain just barfs stuff like this out.

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Maybe I’ll make another one tonight, fill it with peanut m&m’s, and see how long it takes my son to get it apart without smashing it open.

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