After months of collecting detergent bottles, experimenting with connectors, heat-welding plastic nodes, printing prototypes, and testing assemblies, we built our first Flex.Node geodesic dome.
At this year’s Angewandte Festival, we presented the project to the public for the first time. Over four days, visitors could not only walk inside the dome but also explore the development process behind it.
We constructed a quarter dome using detergent bottle Flex Nodes and PVC pipe connections. The prototype consisted of 20 nodes (60 bottles), 25 PVC pipes, and 50 3D-printed ABS connectors.
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Following the insights from our tension tests, we shifted our focus towards redesigning the bottle cap as a connection element. The aim is to develop a 3D-printable cap that allows pipes to be inserted and fixed, enabling the construction of stable systems.
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Before proceeding with the construction of a detergent flex-node system, we conducted a series of physical experiments to evaluate which parameters perform best under tensile forces. The goal was to identify the most effective combination of cone geometry and pipe cut configuration.
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Based on the specific potentials, we sketched potential use case scenarios for three different patterns.
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Besides varying capabilities for adapting to form variation of constituent parts, the surface-based bike-frame aggregations we studied previously, also have different bending flexibility.
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In this study, we explore how to create a simple connection system between the detergent-bottle nodes and PVC pipes. The aim is to develop a connector system that:
