Qball, 12 Curved Strut Tensegrity

Read here about a 12 curved strut tensegrity, released for 3-D printing.

Overview

"Qball" is the name Benoit gave to his 12 curved strut tensegrity. Inspired by "Penultimate Modular Origami" by James S. Plank, with a new Rapman 3D printer and some polylactic acid plastic, Benoit "twitsed" a cube into a cuboctohedron, and used this as the basis for his structure. He defined a set of interlocking curved struts, six convex and six concave, and printed them. Qball was published Nov 1, 2010 on Thingiverse [1].

Benoit wrote: "The deal is to hold rubber bands tight to prevent them from ripping. These connectors are designed for thin rubber bands about 1.5mm thick and 12cm long, could be more or less. For mounting, you can look at the photos on the black towel, it's quite easy. You need 6 convex bridges, 6 concave bridges, 6 rubber bands and your 6 fingers."

3D File Download

The Mekerbot zip file is available here: File:Qball makerbot thingiverse files.zip

Image Gallery

Links and References

[1] Thingiverse link to Qball files: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4645

For other 12 strut tensegrities, click here .