Marty flew to Atlanta, GA to help oversee the build along with George Hart, the designer of the sculpture.
Congrats and thanks to George and the participants at Construct 3D 2018 at the Georgia Tech Hotel and convention center for completing the build. And thanks to all the Builders out there for printing and shipping so many parts!
Additional thanks to:
See Marty's blog post about the build for more photos!
The We the Builders team is proud to present our sixth project, the Zonodome, designed by mathematician and artist George Hart.
George Hart will be leading a massive community building project at Construct3D. Hart is an expert at modular mathematical structures that can be put together by large groups of people, and has constructed numerous community builds at other events, such as the neutrino-inspired SNO-ball he built at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Similarly, he also built an elaborate six-foot Erubescence construction with students in North Broward Preparatory School in Coconut Creek, Florida.
Here’s what these sculptures looked like completed:
The two sculptures above were made from a large number of intricate laser-cut wood pieces connected together with simple zip-ties. At Construct3D, Hart is going to do something a little different. The main building pieces will be simple wooden dowels, but the connectors will be complicated. In fact, they will be 3D printed!
Hart will use mathematics to design 3D-printable connectors that hold wooden dowels at exact angles, calculated to come together into a 9-foot-high dome spire.
Here’s how he created it:
“The structure is based on a 16-fold polar zonohedron shape, oriented with its symmetry axis vertical and truncated to remove its bottom three-and-a-half rows of rhombi. The vertex coordinates are determined by creating the arrangement of 16 "umbrella ribs" which meet at the top of the structure, then calculating their many possible vector sums. The form of each 3D-printed node is built with constructive solid geometry techniques---taking the difference of a sphere centered at the vertex and four cylinders that point to neighboring nodes, then making a planar slice to give a flat surface that sits on the build surface.”
The Zonodome sculpture will require 193 printable pieces (we are printing 230 for safety!), which is between the 198 parts used to produce Ben Franklinstein a.k.a. Distributed Ben Franklin and the 110 parts to produce the Bust of George Washington. But in this case the resulting structure will enclose a larger volume than all of the We The Builders projects created to date, rolled up in a ball!
Not only will The Zonodome be the largest sculpture we have created, but it will be produced using the smallest amount of plastic. Even with the addition of 416 thin 3/16” wooden dowel rods, the entire sculpture may also prove to be lighter than the smallest We The Builders sculpture as well. (This depends slightly on the materials used for connectors!)
Now we need your help to bring it to life! In the weeks leading up to the Construct3D event, We The Builders participants will be able to sign up to print one or more of the 230 connecting pieces that will be collected for producing the sculpture. You will also be able to customize and personalize your printed pieces so that your individual personality, school, or organization is represented in the final sculpture.
Our goal is to have all of the parts ready to assemble by 7:00am Saturday morning on October 6th as a project that all attendees to Construct3D 2018 can take part in the assembly, led by artist George Hart.
We ask that you use these settings when printing your Zonodome parts:
Printing without support worked fine on all of the printer models used when testing the parts. We will ream out any drooping material in the holes with a 3/16” drill to make sure all parts are perfectly interchangeable. Pips inset into the base of the parts identify which type has been printed, while the bump on top of the connector indicates which side is “up” in terms of the final construction.
The flat base of the parts (the part that will be inside the sculpture) is very small. Instead of marking the part number on the printed parts themselves in sharpie as has been the request for previous We The Builders projects, we request that you bag up all of the parts that you print in a ziplock bag -- and use a sharpie to list out the parts number on the bags themselves. (For example, if you print c0113.stl and c0410.stl, you would write “c0113, c0410” on the the outside of the bag.)
Make sure the ink sticks to the bag, or in a pinch write on a piece of paper to put into the bag if you don’t have suitable permanent marker. As we receive the parts, we will check them off the parts list and distribute them into the prep-box of each connector type to be drilled out to prepare them for the assembly process.
With bump on top and the pips to identify the connector type underneath, we have all we need to prepare the model for assembly. So we are letting your color palette and material palettes run wild!
We only ask that you consider these three factors when selecting your material:
We love having our builders send us parts in all kinds of diverse materials. Our past projects have included parts made from ABS, PLA, PHA, wood, resin, metal plated, UV reactive, bronze filled, glow-in-the-dark, and multicolor dyed and filament-swapped parts. Feel free to use whatever materials you want, but please make sure to consider these three steps!
You can get started by clicking on the "Give me a File to Print" button below. Print your part and send us a photo, along with the dimensions. If it looks good, ship it to us, or grab another part and print some more!
Check out the How it Works page for the full breakdown.
As a second step for the enterprising designers among those participating this year, we invite you to customize connector types c01 - c08 by extending, sculpting, marking, and otherwise transforming the top surfaces. This opportunity is optional, and can be a lot of fun. Use the software you prefer, the materials you prefer, but follow these simple rules:
The Rules for Modifying Parts
Unlike any of the previous We The Builders designs, this project uses dowel rods instead of glue to connect all of the parts. The rods aren’t just a means to an end, they are inherently a part of the design -- and a technique you can use on your next project.
One of the interesting features to this design compared to many other geodesic domes and other models is that the majority of the structure uses the same rod length, expressing the complexity of the design via the precise angles and planning for the connectors themselves. And the entire design scales to suit the length of the rods!
The Zonodome uses around 416 rods. For ease of handling and to permit a margin for each connector to approach each other, it would be possible to create the entire structure with a rod-length of six inches or a little less, producing a smaller much denser structure.
At Construct3D 2018, we will be producing a version of the structure with approximately 12” rods that will result in a large, strong structure that can be easily assembled by hand thanks to the flexibility of the 3/16th” dowel rods. (The sixteen horizontal dowels along the floor are trimmed to slightly shorter -- 90% of the lengths of the others.)
Should you want to attempt to make projects like these yourselves, there are a number of places where you can obtain good quality 3/16” hardwood dowel rods, from local craft stores and hardware stores to large online hardware sources such as McMaster-Carr. We found a craft source online that offered large sets of dowel rods pre-cut to 12” length, but could also have purchased batches of longer stock and cut them down to 12” length on site. When choosing the lengths and diameters to use for your design, consider that there is a tradeoff between length (shorter tends to be sturdier) and diameter (thicker can be stronger, but is also a lot heavier).
We The Builders brings together 3D printer operators from all over the world to create sculptures that inspire makers. Our sculptures have toured maker-related events of all sizes around the northeastern United States, from local STEAM education events all the way to the White House.
Find out more, join the discussion, and share photos on our Facebook Page or on Twitter #WeTheBuilders!
At the end of the Construct3D conference, the project will be disassembled and donated to the We The Builders project, so that George Hart’s installation can be reprised again in the future should there be an opportunity.
George Hart is an interdisciplinary sculptor, mathematician, computer scientist, and educator. A former research professor at Stony Brook University, George is a pioneer in using computer technology and 3D printing in the design and fabrication of sculpture. Examples of his artwork can be seen M.I.T., U.C. Berkeley, Duke University, Princeton University, and Stony Brook University. He has developed original education materials to incorporate 3D printing into the high school math curriculum, and has helped many teachers bring this work into their own classrooms. George is a co-founder of North America's only Museum of Mathematics. As chief of content, he set the "Math is Cool!" tone of the museum, and spent five years designing their original exhibits and workshop activities.
Construct3D is an academic digital fabrication conference with a primary focus on 3D printing and design. Teachers, practitioners, technologists, designers, students, and academics from K12, higher education, libraries, and makerspaces will come together for the 2018 edition of the conference at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia, to share their experience and learn from the community.
This year, Construct3D will have three major keynote addresses, including Larry Rosenstock, CEO of High Tech High Charter Schools, Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg from the design studio Nervous Systems, and mathematical sculptor and 3D pioneer George Hart.
Register for Construct3D now and reserve your hotel room at a special conference rate. Check out the preliminary Construct3D schedule for an overview of the talks, workshops, and events. We'll see you there!
Our thanks to all the individuals who are making this project happen!
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