I will be bringing the dome to
I have uploaded more pictures here
A video with some random string of LEDs running inside.
Its hard to take a menaningful picture of mirrored surface.
Now I have to make a choice
The mylar while cheap is not the best material for this project. its not 100% reflective, does not react to heat well, and scratches easy. At about ~175 F and it will cloud and shrivels. Not a good feature to have when I am taking it to the desert. (Burning Man)
Mirrored acrylic is the obvious choice for this project but it costs too much. anywhere from $100-$250 a sheet depending on quantity and location. Its also heavy and tends to shatter under stress
Currently the structs are 6ft long each, A sheet of coroplast or mirrored acrylic is 4x8 feet. I can’t make a 6x6x6 triangle out of a single 4x8 sheet and you need to combine to differently cut sections out of the 4x8 sheet to get it to work.
I have 6x sheets (4x8) of mirrored acrylic. With these sheets I could cut down the size of the structs to ~4.5 ft (height of the Equilateral Triangle will be 4ft). This would give me 3 panels per sheet, and I need 15 panels for all the sides for a total of 5 sheets of acrylic.
The problem is that the dome will be considerably smaller. The current dome could easily fit 6 people in it, while the smaller dome would only be able to fit 2 people in it. (although it would fit in my apartment!)
So my choice is to shrink the dome down and use mirrored acrylic or keep using the mylar and use a swamp cooler in the desert to keep it from melting.