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- Hacker News
- Very cool design but that tent looks heavy as hell and not at all wind resistant. The whole point of the poles in a dome tent is to provide force stretching the tent button (especially when staked down) to be drum tight. The poles being straight and then bent when assembled is the point.
That being said maybe this could make for some very cool different types of designs
by Melatonic - Just sell me the tent already!by fragmede
- My first thought is a better tape measure. Wouldn’t that be cool if it didn’t bend.by bilsbie
- Is any of MIT's stuff "open"?
Clicking around on news.mit.edu I see lots of cool ideas. Articles mention "the software allows users to...", yet I never see a link to actual software.
For example, I expected to be able to try that 3D-zipper generator they show in the video myself.
Edit: found something:
by IdiotSavage - It brings to mind satellites assembling themselves in space. Send up a tightly packed box of spaghetti and extrude it into the desired physical shape upon arrival in orbit. For increased rigidity, paint with a solar pumped laser to weld the links together.
- Extremely similar to a rigid chain actuator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigid_chain_actuatorby jml7c5
- Zippers are usually attached to something.
Is this design practical? What would it be used for? With this zipping mechanism, can anything be attached?
Edit: Apparently I stopped watching the video too early. They demonstrate some uses where at max only one of the three sides can be attached to something, and it is used to create a rigid structure rather than joining multiple surfaces. The most interesting use demonstrated (IMO), is a tent with no tent poles, but it doesn't look like it would hold up to any significant weather, and would probably take up just as much space and weight as tent poles.
by rationalist