PVC adjustable fittings for custom angles?

[LarryBMIII]

I'm returning to Burning Man after a 15+ years absence. I'll be using my experience from previous years to create my pvc shade structure for 2018.

Does anyone here have experience with using adjustable pvc fittings, like these from Circo Innovations? Do they stand up to playa conditions?
https://www.circoinnovations.com/new-ad ... e-fittings

[lucky420]

Those are cool and now I know....

Thank you

[TT120]

Those are cool. I have no experience with them but my first thought would be that you will have to glue the PVC into those things to make them secure enough which would make teardown at the end of the week more difficult. You'd have to cut it apart which would make them a 1 use deal.

[Traveller in Time]

Seems to be connected with nut and bolt so they should be reusable.
The pitfall could be the friction area in high wind conditions. This might be the place where playa dust does some good.

[Popeye]

Those are Furniture Grade, which means lighter and weaker than schd. 40, the standard plumbing fitting grade. My first year I broke schd 40 and ended up without shade. I changed to EMT and something like this https://www.google.com/search?q=emt+structure+fittings and bend them to the angle I want (propane torch and a pipe vice).

Buy one or two fittings and see if you can break them with whatever a 60mph wind load would be in your application.

[Kenshiro]

I wouldn’t expect them to be as strong as most of the regular joints either just looking at them, and the regular joints are already more brittle than the standard piping.

Not to dissuade you because I don’t know what kind of loading you’re expecting to put on them but there are other ways to go about getting specific angles if you really need which may possibly be cheaper and easier to get ahold of to boot. I’ve used these 120-degree angles as part of the shade structure for my Shiftpod the last couple years.

[Popeye]

I wouldn’t expect them to be as strong as most of the regular joints either just looking at them, and the regular joints are already more brittle than the standard piping.

Not to dissuade you because I don’t know what kind of loading you’re expecting to put on them but there are other ways to go about getting specific angles if you really need which may possibly be cheaper and easier to get ahold of to boot. I’ve used these 120-degree angles as part of the shade structure for my Shiftpod the last couple years.

Ken: I'm real curious how you incorporated that into a shade structure. Care to show us a picture?

[Kenshiro]

Ken: I'm real curious how you incorporated that into a shade structure. Care to show us a picture?

Funny now I look I haven’t ever actually taken a picture of the thing fully-built. But here’s the top part of the frame when I was first sorting out how I was doing the top. As you can tell, not everything on the previous picture was actually getting glued together it was just sorta stuck together temporarily to help me eyeball the angles.

This is really the gist of it though only thing missing is the legs. The whole thing fits over the Shiftpod without expanding its footprint since my camp tries to keep living space organized.

[Popeye]

Ken: I'm real curious how you incorporated that into a shade structure. Care to show us a picture?

Funny now I look I haven’t ever actually taken a picture of the thing fully-built. But here’s the top part of the frame when I was first sorting out how I was doing the top. As you can tell, not everything on the previous picture was actually getting glued together it was just sorta stuck together temporarily to help me eyeball the angles.

This is really the gist of it though only thing missing is the legs. The whole thing fits over the Shiftpod without expanding its footprint since my camp tries to keep living space organized.

OK, thanks Ken. I had been trying to look at it as a full size piece. It makes a lot more sense now I know it was a mock up. A picture and a 1000 words, etc.

[LarryBMIII]

Thanks for all the advice and comments! Kenshiro - what are the elements at the top of the verticals, that the angled pieces fit into? Do they allow for "easy" release on tear-down? [Edit - I did some research, so I know they're pvc unions. Interesting!]

[Kenshiro]

Thanks for all the advice and comments! Kenshiro - what are the elements at the top of the verticals, that the angled pieces fit into? Do they allow for "easy" release on tear-down? [Edit - I did some research, so I know they're pvc unions. Interesting!]

They can make tear downs easier but with what I’ve learned since making this I would probably suggest avoiding them for most playa applications. If they get subjected to too much bending load the threads can get misthreaded after which unscrewing them becomes an atrocious and messy PITA. Plus they cost extra and I don’t think they’re as sturdy as properly telescoping different-sized tubes into each other, and finally they have these rubber grommet things that can fall out any time during disassembly/reassembly and if they get lost the things don’t seat properly. If I were to do this design again those things wouldn’t be anywhere on it...but for now they still hold well enough with how they’re loaded in playa conditions that I’m not taking the trouble yet to bother redoing it.

[LarryBMIII]

Back in 2001 I used male/female adapters to join pipes and then bent the pipes. I do remember that when it came time for teardown, I needed vise grip wrenches to unscrew the joints. For 2018 I intend to design my shade to use straight sections of pipe as much as possible. Any change of direction to be provided either by sections of pipe I've pre-bent, or something like the adjustable fittings. That way the joints have a reduced experience of threads digging into housings.