RedCorner

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Comment by martyn hogg on January 24, 2014 at 11:39am

Yes, the volume of the connectors are influenced most by the diameter of the struts. My target was a 4m diameter dome so I'm going to look at the connector volumes for 25mm diameter struts and 40mm struts and maybe look at ways to remove some volume without compromising strength. It's guess work at the moment as to what will be strong enough... I guess I could simulate something but probably best to just make something and see what happens!

Comment by Nick Tyrer on January 24, 2014 at 8:57am

Fair enough. I suppose it worth keeping in mind that scaling this up, the spans of the dome increases much more than the size/volume of the connectors. You could simply double length of each beam/member, dependent on strength of print/to self weight of structure.

Comment by David Stasiuk on January 24, 2014 at 1:17am

Thanks for the explanation...great work!

Comment by martyn hogg on January 23, 2014 at 5:05pm

Thanks Mr. Wood, I will contact them for a quote!

Nick, I will look up digits to widgets too! There are over 100 corner parts because I split the main 3 types in half after realising it would probably be impossible to assemble otherwise :) Volume of each part for just a 1m dome is about 90x90x20mm. You'd probably lose your job if you tried printing them in the office, but thanks for the thought!

Mr Stasiuk... firstly, a huge thank you for your help... I'd been trying this for months and months but your help was the light at the end of the tunnel! The reason my meshes wouldn't boolean was thay they were not closed or manifold. I didn't have the PullVertices component you used to get the cylindrical holes to fit to a size so I tried not joining the cylinders, smoothing the rest and keeping naked edges fixed so I could join them together after smoothing. I think this left me with a non-manifold mesh with holes in. Also, under closer inspection, my panel meshes had holes in them! Eventually I created the same PullVertices effect by working out the distance and direction of the mesh vertices inside the cylinders, from the cylinders and moved the vertices... I really didn't understand how the data structure moved only the points I wanted, where I wanted them but it worked and thank you again for giving me the logic to re-create. Once all my meshes were in order then Rhino handled the booleans (my laptop would not handle trying to do all these ops inside GH so I finish them manually in Rhino - Adding the pane slots, adding the M6 bolt and nut cavities and splitting the component using the panel plane intersections).

Mateusz, they have different pricing structures... a handling fee, cost per cm3, lower price per additional print, price for total bounding box volume, etc etc... its like comparing mobile phone tarifs! Some really want to help you find the best way though, so I'll find a way!

I'll add some rendered dome assembly photos tonight and hopefully one day some photos of a real build!

Thanks again to everyone that offered help and advice!

Comment by David Wood on January 23, 2014 at 11:32am

Try requesting FDM printed parts from 3D Creation LAB in Stoke.

Comment by Nick Tyrer on January 23, 2014 at 2:35am

Martin, sounds cool. Have you tried digits2widgets? i have found them quite reasonable in past, they print in nylon which is pretty sturdy. They also can print in 'baskets' which is ideal for lots of individual pieces, they don't add any surcharge.

How many are there? and what is the average volume of each print? if its not too outrageous i might be able to print them at my office for you (london)

Comment by David Stasiuk on January 23, 2014 at 12:30am

You got it! I'm curious to see how you got the booleans to work.

Comment by Mateusz Zwierzycki on January 22, 2014 at 4:38pm

Don't they calculate the price based on bounding box ?

Comment by martyn hogg on January 22, 2014 at 4:07pm

Finally worked out how to get closed manifold meshes that Rhino Boolean Split worked on. I can now generate everything from just the input lines and then do boolean splits in Rhino to remove the slots for the panes, the bolt hole through the model and then split it into 2 halves based on the intersecting pane-planes... First 3D print quotes for a complete geodesic domes worth of corner pieces... £1000 from iMaterialise.com and €3000 from shapeways.com and this is for only a 1 meter dome :( Might have to go back to the drawing board to remove some material!