Images:
Summary:
Entering the world of tensegrity and the endless possibilities of designs and functions that could be made possible, my partner and I decided upon a more decorative tensegrity structure that adds an aesthetically pleasing element. Parts of our design that were crucial for success was to have enough support so that our structure would not tilt to one side or collapse if too much weight was placed upon it.
The Terrific Tensegrity Table functions as a table, yet miraculously appears to be floating somehow. Standing at around 30 centimeters tall, the table is as functional as it is mind-boggling. This project wouldn’t have been possible without the infamous NotApplicableProductions, who brought creativity and a keen eye to the table. Fishing line and hooks are necessary to complete the assembly.
Our client outlined his expectations and criteria with the following constraints:
Parts for printing:
Tools for constructing assembly:
Assembly Instructions:
Once the hot glue has dried, shave off any excess glue and resume screwing in the hook.
Parts List:
For our Tensegrity structure, we will need two base supports and two supports to construct our magic Tensegrity table.
Design Choices:
How our idea started was from gathering information from the site printables.com and combining our ideas together to create a tensegrity structure of our own. Compromising on simplicity and having a little bit of a challenge, one of our main concerns was stability on both sides of the structure and not having one side be able to be pushed over if a stronger force acted upon it.
From the beginning we looked for abstract ideas that encompassed both of our ideas into the project and took pen to paper to create our ideas into reality. Inspiration came from the site printables.com and me and my partner prioritized simplicity with a strong base because we considered the longevity of the structure being held up by fishing line over time. The first day of Solidworks was a success as we drew our design and smart dimensioned everything to match our dimensions on paper. Day 2, we extruded our designs on solidworks by 0.10 centimeters without worrying about the stability of our structure. Our ideas that we wanted to include were adding our initials, making arrows on the support pieces, and extruding lines that intersect one another for the bases. At first, we printed out our pieces extruding cut 8 holes(4 holes on each leg of the base) and had to hammer using a drill bit, careful not to hammer too hard and split the pieces apart. Once the hooks were screwed in, we intertwined the fishing line to construct our tensegrity table.
Problems that we ran into was that when our pieces were printed the first time, the plus sign and our initials were smudged and were not lined up properly. Other than that, the fit between our support pieces and the hole for them fit nice and snug.
After fixing the negligible initials, we printed our tenseigrty structure 2.0 in new colors which made one base red and the other blue while the supports were both black. The final thought process for the colors included wanting to make our table stand out and that these were our favorite colors in general.
NEW vs OLD PICTURES:
New (in support structure)
Old (in support structure)
Old (in bottom base)
New (in bottom base)
The author marked this model as their own original creation.