1d to 3d

Display at Bridges Eindhoven...

 

included this 1d to 3d dodecahedron

My setup on the opposite side of the hall.

Some art inspiration from England......

and from home. I took this photo to finish an article I have written.

Septagonal face in 3d printed jig.

Hexagonal and Pentagonal faces

Everything including a pentagonal face construction from spokes.

The flower shaped jig was a first off attempt, Bit of a problem there, the floback clip would need to be removed through the wooden assembly.

New materials

Soaking sticks for the 7 sided figure. Soaking makes them more pliable and so they can bend more without snapping.

Hi

Recently I attended the Bridges Maths and Arts conference in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. It was great and I will report further in other posts. But for now I'm reporting on some Bridges inspired stuff.

Next to the main Bridges conference hall was an informal poster area where I set up camp at a table to show and discuss some of my 3d printed things.  I was intrigued by some of the displays including one of (basically) one dimensional wooden blocks transformed into a dodecahedron. Unfortunately I didn't get the contact details of the gentleman who had made them. The work was made simpler by connecting the pentagonal faces at the midpoint of sides instead of at the dodecahedron vertices. Also a young relative in England made some intriguing related artwork!

On getting home to Melbourne, I started working on similar 1d to 3d constructions and plan to ferret around in the maths of the things soon. To make the 7 pointed star shown above, I needed to cut the craft sticks I had in 2 parts lengthways, soak the sticks, and also assemble them on a 3d printed jig.

Since then I have sourced some better craft sticks. On a trip to Northcote Plaza for a haircut, shopping, lunch and banking I also bought (hooray) some coffee stirrers which to me are just longer skinnier craft sticks. Their full name is "Premium Quality Eco Wooden Catering Coffee Stirrers" (!) Anyway with these it should be simple to make more models and more elaborate models. Hopefully by next week I can report on some 3d constructions,

Regards Steve Nurse  

 After a bit more work (ok its not work, just mucking around with the craft sticks) I have managed to make 2 of the platonic solids, the tetrahedron and the octahedron using 6 craft sticks per side. The inner circle of 6 stick crossings is glued to hold the shape together while the outer circle of crossings is left unglued: these crossings clamp onto cardboard which forms edges.

I've made a spreadsheet which works out the geometry of the faces based on the length of the  craft stick, the number of sides in the central polygon, and which stick ends coincides. From that spreadsheet its reasonably easy to draw and guess the feasability of various designs.  I'm not sure what I'll make next.