From: Patrick Salsbury (salsbury_at_sculptors.com)
Date: 03/21/00
Message-Id: <200003210845.AAA17867@bootstrap.sculptors.com> Subject: Re: ball connection Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 00:45:00 -0800 From: Patrick Salsbury <salsbury_at_sculptors.com>
Christy Beckham writes:
> If you are serious enough about this to develop the financing, injection mold
> ing is
> the way to go. Injection molding would be capable of handling the volumes yo
> u are
> talking about. The material I would try would be something like a HDPE (high
> density
> polyethelene) with UV protection or maybe a glass filled polystyrene. I woul
> d not
> use PVC, that would put you in a speciality shop, and increase the cost. Als
> o, there
> are many different materials that are less toxic than PVC.
>
> Redesign with supporting ribs instead of solid mass for molding.
>
Yes, I'm serious. I think the next step is to get some
prototypes made, and do a first house proof-of-concept. That's been
my goal for the past few years. Get myself one of these, show that
it's possible to live in an autonomous fashion, and with the extra
time afforded by not having to work a job to pay the rent/power bills/
etc., work on building more for friends, family, and folks here who
want to tackle Reality Sculpting full-time.
I figure if we can then get a group of us living
self-sufficiently, we'll be able to focus and produce some really
amazing things.
I've seen a glass/epoxy resin material, which is actually
molded into my little Photon LED micro-lights
( http://www.photonlight.com/ ) and it seems to be an almost
unbreakable material.
Unfortunately, epoxies don't seem to recycle
well, but I've long maintained that we should build long-lived
structures out of long-lived materials, so build houses from plastic,
glass, and metal, not wood. Likewise, don't build a single-use
"disposable" drinking cup out of 500 year lifespan plastic.
I'm not sure I completely follow the supporting ribs idea.
I have a few ideas, but could you post a bit more description or
detail about this?
Pat
Pat