Magic

While we toiled away at the waterbomb folding, The Lovely Miss Darci (as she shall henceforth be called) tried her hand at another youtube tutorial: the magic ball. This we also converted from crease pattern to cad linework, and proceeded to laser cut. The results were quite nice-






Upon seeing the handicraft rendered by The Lovely Miss Darci, I was reminded of a project I had seen a few months ago from a student at the Bartlett, check here:

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/emperors-castle.html

By the way, that is the best blog ever. The project is epic, and really a magical way to think about a thesis, plus the model and graphics are breathtaking.

Our interests are more mechanical-

We plan to make a tectonic structure using the principles in this fold. We have broken down the folded surface into its triangular elements, and have tracked down a "living hinge" to provide the folding quality.

Problem number one:

The hinges have no memory and very little directionality (pictures and links to the hinges later). The tessellation wants to unfold as the hinges strive to right themselves, returning to their flat or open state. We needed a counter-force. For this we devised a simple tension toggle and built a larger, component-based model. We are enjoying the primitive quality of the whole thing, and hoping that its eventual manifestation will, at first glance, appear somehow complex, but upon closer inspection reveal a relative simplicity and economy of means.