Parade Of Domes 2009

[robotland]

Wow...I let the P.O.D. thread slip wayyyy back into the background!

Just finished a new dome prototype...El Cheapo Dome, made from black 3/4" irrigation tubing. Total cost, with hardware, (some recycled) was thirty bucks for a 10' diameter structure. It's not climbable, but will support a shade covering and is crazy light! You need to straighten out the tubing before the build and it wants to retain some amount to curve so the result is a kind of pillowy-looking hemisphere.
The idea is to make an art fair booth that's as different from the identical white structures traditionally used for such things. This will ultimately be an all black plastic structure with a gateway made from an old bedliner and decorations cut from the plastic wheels of PowerWheelz cars. The sides of the booth will be sections of above-ground pool heater lining.
Look for me in Bronson Park here in 'Kazoo this June, and I'll be dragging it along to Lakes Of Fire later that same month.

[Toolmaker]

In tune with this years theme I've been trying to come up with the perfect "connector". Machining from solids is cost prohibitive but seems to be fine for a "permanent" dome. So far the best I've come up with is to weld tubes for strut "sleeves". This is a little bit of a pain in the ass since it requires a jig to have the "sleeves" nice and neat and angled properly. Using pins and wire to hold in place for final assembly seems to work for non load bearing shade needs. Another similar idea was to use rods to slide the struts onto, these being welded in a similar fashion. I was having weld failures under load so I went to the sleeve idea and got better results. My current idea for this week is to make plates that get bolted together and the struts slid into them. The mating plate would also have a radius so after they were mated you'd have most of the diameter to clamp onto the strut. This methos is also gonna use a pin to hold struts in place or wire for a quick and dirty setup. My best so far has been the connectors machined from a solid I'm thinking maybe I could have a cast solution with this design but I can't afford to prototype and test a casting for strength.

[mdmf007]

..... This will ultimately be an all black plastic structure with a gateway made from an old bedliner and decorations cut from the plastic wheels of PowerWheelz cars.....

wont it become am oven in the daytime? black plastic that is.

[Ugly Dougly]

I pulled the starplates kit out of storage, looks like worms ate some of the optional templates!

[Bob]

...the perfect "connector"...

This one used aluminum pipe & cast silicon bronze connectors.

http://pic.templetons.com/cgi-bin/imget ... g_4455.jpg

http://pic.templetons.com/brad/photo/bm03/art/

[robotland]

..... This will ultimately be an all black plastic structure with a gateway made from an old bedliner and decorations cut from the plastic wheels of PowerWheelz cars.....

wont it become am oven in the daytime? black plastic that is.

I suppose that I could have been more specific...the structure is black plastic, but the covering will not be. (Mesh, perhaps with some colorful plastic stoplight or automotive lenses for pretty.)

Whole thing's WHITE, right now...we got a surprise Spring snowstorm that'll put dome puttering on hold for a coupla days.

[robotland]

Okay....snow's almost all gone and I had to get out and play with the design some more. I've discovered that the irrigation tubing longs for its old, coily shape more than I'd bargained for and I have installed an equator of 1/2" EMT struts to help pull the dome out a little. I'd hoped to avoid using much metal but it's still vastly lighter than a conduit dome.
The irrig pipe makes the joints thicker, which throws off some of the dimensions. Even squished down under nuts, bolts and washers the plastic is twice as thick as a flattened conduit strut-end.
...looks like this project is going to be very theme-compliant...it's evolving rapidly!

[Generic Anonymity]

My school has a club that attended the festival last year. They built a geodesic out of wood.

It was set up on our campus for a few days this week. It's by no means light, but it's a neat process putting it together.
Each triangle is its own piece and they get attached with hinges. They're sorted by row and number when it's not assembled, and it takes at least 6 people to put it together.
I think this year it'll be decorated to look like a sunny side up egg, instead of the painted canvas peeking out from under the green in the pic.

[robotland]

A beautiful Michigan day, and I get to be Man On The Land for ALL of it! On the docket- Replace ALL the black irrigation pipe with 1/2" conduit. I've determined that while it's sound enough structurally to hold a cover, using it for short-term projects is too much of a pain. The flexing of the pipe makes assembly MUCH more frustrating than the conduit model, and in the early morning of Art Fair when I don't have a pot of coffee in me yet I can predict that it will make me grumpy. Oh well. A fairly cheap lesson- And it'll do for a treehouse dome.
The Art Fair model now has five conduit legs made by bending standard 10' lengths of 3/4" EMT into narrow triangles and flattening the ends like normal struts. These then get bolted to two adjacent vertices along the equator of the dome, and supports connecting the legs to each other will keep them from popping out or pulling in. Pretty stable, but I wouldn't use it on the playa! Should attract attention in the park, though...