From: Charles J Knight (c.knight_at_juno.com)
Date: 03/05/00
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2000 19:50:44 -0800 Subject: Re: ball connection Message-ID: <20000305.195049.-289589.0.c.knight@juno.com> From: Charles J Knight <c.knight_at_juno.com>
> not to make it hard for hobbyists.) Too often, I think that much of
> housing technology hasn't really advanced because there is so very
> much craft involved in building. Especially in domes.
> Yeah. As noted, it's really not designed for us to do on a
> small scale. It's designed to hand to a manufacturer and say "I need
> 10,000,000,000 of these in the next year. Can you do that?"
I had a thought about materials. You've designed a rigid connector
with a flexible joint. What about making a flexible connector with a
simpler joint? We know that a flexible connector works, based on
models we've built, usually from aquarium tubing and skewers.
Here's my idea...
A rubber disk, that would work like a tinkertoy connector. It would
be the ultimate in simplicity, and easy to cast. The rubber would be
fairly rigid, but bend enough to conform to the needed angles. And it
would give enough friction to hold the struts in position, without the
need to "clamp" individual connectors, etc, around the strut ends.
It'd be almost foolproof...after all, we don't want the house to fall
apart because of careless assembly.
I just have this image of someone forgetting to tighten down the
connectors, and one side buckling inwards.
It could possibly be made from recycled rubber -- recycled tires?
Or, perhaps, some flexible polymer...shouldn't be too hard to figure
out the details.
Just a thought...
-- Chuck Knight
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