Full-scale 9ft giant koosh mockup for Ephemerisle

[mattbell]

The Dandelion (giant koosh) project has turned out to be more difficult than anticipated.  I ended up trying a variety of different techniques for putting the giant koosh together before finding one that works well and is reasonably fast.  The trouble with having to assemble over 200 noodles is that anything that has to be done once per noodle will have to be repeated over 200 times, so an assembly step that adds a minute per noodle will add three hours to the total effort. 

There were some other constraints that made the design difficult
- It has to be disassemblable.  Not many vehicles can accommodate a 9 ft wide spherical object.
- It has to be able to be assembled from the outside... lots of designs work fine until you have to attach the last module.
- It has to stand up to people jumping on it, pulling on the noodles, and causing other trouble. 

I've settled (for now) on a dodecahedral design, with 12 modules that will fit together to create the giant koosh ball.

Here's one module, with a closeup of the ratchet strap and lasercut board that push the noodles out to an appropriate angle.

 

By photographing it at a few angles and photoshopping it together, I can get a sense for the size and density of the full object.  Note that this is NOT the intended final appearance -- it only shows 4 of 12 modules, and the final version will have the current empty spots filled in.  It's an ugly photoshopping, but I was prioritizing speed over appearance.



It turns out the project will take more noodles than I originally thought.  My original plan was 120-144, and it just looks too sparse with that few noodles.  The new one will have 220-300.

120 is too sparse... this would have been 1/8 of the koosh:

Comments

[badgerbag.livejournal.com]

Impressive!!

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Thanks! BTW did you see if your marina had any roughly 8ft by 8ft platforms to test our game on?

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

- It has to stand up to people jumping on it, pulling on the noodles, and causing other trouble.

I've been wondering about this part of it since you first announced it. It doesn't look like something that could be climbed on, without messing up the art. Do you think it's really going to hold up?

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Ive tried putting my full bodyweight on the piece in both directions using one foot, and it's held up okay. The noodles bend, but not permanently. I'm sure repeated bendings will weaken the noodles, but I don't know how many bendings they can take before they break. Certainly single noodles take a good bit of abuse over the course of a summer when used by kids in pools.