Explorations

After building a relatively large number of tried and tested icosahedra and octahedra, which so far exceeded the demand by far, I went back to the fun of exploring other shapes and build methods. Floating Spell is an adapted pentagonal prism, with the top struts connecting across the center.

Floating Spell (20 struts)

Five Elements creates different views from each angle, with two of the twelve pentagonal corners appearing copper from the outside, and black from the inside. Each strut looks basically identical, nevertheless a variety of pattern appear throughout the structure.

Five Elements (30 strut tensegrity icosahedron)

12 Meridians belongs to the recycling projects among my latest explorations. After deploying the centrally joined corner tendons, I rebuild a dodecahedron with black and white struts, which failed to impress me in its first incarnation.

12 meridians (30 strut tensegrity dodecahedron)

Balanced Infinity is a 12 strut cube with centrally joined corner tendon, and elastic string for the tendons along the edges. The model feels very floppy, yet when handled gently balances on each of its eight corners. It can go through quite some interesting before losing balance.

Balanced Infinity (12 strut tensegrity cube)

Star Icosa stems from the ambitious idea to build a 30-strut icosahedron entirely with non-elastic string. So far, my attempts usually lacked the precision in tendon length for satisfying stability in 30 strut models. The star connected corners looks especially interesting under UV light.

Star Icosa (30 strut tensegrity icosahedron)

Redfaced Revisited is another recycling project. The original Redfaced had transparent elastic tendons, It has a cuboctahedral shape (Vector Equilibrium), and handles nicely.

Redfaced Revisited (24 strut cuboctahedron)

Polar Symmetry belongs to the experiments with scaling up. Although the nylon string has only little elasticity, the model can collapse on itself and bounce back.

Polar Symmetry (6 strut tensegrity icosahedron)

The next three objects a variations of the same structure, utilising central corner joints. Green Bridge shows the pure concept: 4 20cm struts rising near vertical, two 30cm struts crossing in the center along a horizontal plane. 

Green bridge

Fiercely occupied uses different colours for the different tendons, and has a Pokemon as inhabitant.

Fiercely occupied

Gargoyled Tetra is also inhabited by a Pokemon, and also outlines a tetrahedron with the four orange tendons in its center. The tetrahedral pull towards the center contributes to the overall stability.

Gargoyled Tetra

After finding some many 'merging' structures in my latest tensegrity experiments, I revisited also the idea of the merkaba. The study has some flaws to it, yet it would like see a much larger build to dismiss this concept.

Merkaba study