More pictures here
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What kind of material the shiny stuff?
Is it something you could run a heat gun over to tighten it up over the
pieces a little?
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Mylar
Yes!, that is the next step.
But this is also a problem. I am planning on taking this down to burning man this year. Burning man has a normal high day time temperature of 99-114 F. Mylar starts to degrade and off-gas at 120 F (If I am reading the MSDS correctly). The mylar is inside an enclosed dome with little or no air flow, so I expect it to be hotter inside then outside.
So I am a little worried about it bursting in to flames on the playa, or more likely melting in to a puddle.
Acrylic would be the obvious choice instead of mylar but it would be prohibitly expensive as I would require 15x sheets of it (4x8’)
Egads! Unless the intent is a heat/sweat lodge, I’m thinking some
pinholes to vent may be a good idea
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You might need to make it vent during the day and close at night… could be rather nice in there at night
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Can you insulate the outside? Would that even help or just make it hotter?
This is awesome!!!
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I’m not sure.
But I do have some heat lamps and a heat gun, two remote temperatures sensors and a love of testing.
Time to do science !
I think you guys are probably right.
Excellent. Please report back with results.
AWESOME!
I must ask, is your real name Zarniwoop?
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.
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Just throwing this out there. How about [rustoleum mirror paint][1] on a cheaper acrylic sheet?
Mark
[1]: http://www.rustoleum.com/product-catalog/consumer-brands/specialty/mirror-effect
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Here is a time lapse of the construction of the dome
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Have you considered using polystyrene mirrored sheet? Its intermediate in impact resistance between acrylic and polycarbonate.
I don’t think that there’s a cheap way of getting the mirror effect you intend. Is there a geometric way of making a larger dome structure using 3 triangles per sheet as the base size without getting too crazy?
I have decided to create panels for the outside of the dome. I can create all the panels by myself but I thought that it would be fun to let other people design them too. See below for the design spec. No pay! you don’t get to keep the panels. I am getting them cut at maker labs, and I need them done by the end of april.
Pocket Universe - Panel design spec
The outside of the dome is boring, I would like to add some CNC cut panels to the outside of the dome to make it look better. I am opening up the design of the panels to a few friends to they could also create them.
There is no pay
I can not give you panels when I am done with them.
I don’t have anything to offer you in exchange for designing the panels.
Sorry.
More project information
http://blog.abluestar.com/projects/pocketuniverse.html
More images
The panels that I am working on and template files can be found here
Other people have made similar projects with similar CNC cut panels for the outside of the dome. The most remarkable version is probably the “temple” at burning man
https://templeguardians.org/about-the-temples/
Other examples:
The design tends to lean itself towards Islamic geometric patterns ( Islamic geometric patterns - Wikipedia ) and Girih ( Girih - Wikipedia )
Don’t feel limited to what other people have done, do what you want to do.
Due date:
I am going to start cutting the panels now, so the sooner the better. The last day that I can delay to is end of april.
Details
Birch plywood, 9mm (3/8”) 7 ply
Hexagon shape (6 sides) Each side is ~24.2 inches
File format: SVG preferably but anything will work including jpg, anything…
These dimensions have been selected so that I can cut two panels on each 4x8 sheet of of birch plywood.
Hexagon of 42 inches tall and ~48.4 inches from point to point. These numbers below are approximate but will give you a good idea of the shape and size of the panels.
This is a rough outline of where the panels will be mounted on the outside of the dome.
Will the outside panels be illuminated from the inside?
Will the pattern be cut right through the plywood, leaving
holes in the remaining material (which would then have to
remain a single connected component to support itself)?
Correct,
Correct
Correct.
This is an example of one of the panels that I created for this project. I plan to cut the other 15 panels this week
https://instagram.com/p/3FkLcag5d1/?taken-by=funvill
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What about Gila products?
It will give you nice effects if there is an outside backing, or if there was none. Daytime and nighttime would give different effects. This is the same film used for infinity mirrors. Maybe worth a thought? It’s cheap…