MSRaynsford

Once the corners were tested and proven to work I was able to proceed in making an extra large version of the stellated dodecahedron. It was a bit of a rush because it is headed to Solfest  this weekend but if you're there you may well see it. I built it so quickly I had enough time to take it to Bristol Maker Faire .  Even though each star was cut from a 600x600mm panel it still feels a little on the small size. The original looks teeny next to it but I'm secretly hoping we'll be making a much larger one at some point in the future (even if that one can't be laser cut)

Things were a bit hectic last week before Vale so I don't appear to have any construction photos of this item but it's 5 layers of lasercut LD45. The nut was made by wrapping a detailed piece of foam around the bar. The whole thing was plasti dipped instead of latexed so it came out a bit harder than desired but it's not like I actually get into combat at these things anyway.

Andy from Travelling Light Circus saw my stellated dodecahedron  at Manchester Makefest and he decided that he wanted a much bigger one. So I got to work straight away proving that I could make a corner joint for a star that was 4 times bigger. I used a 3D model to figure out what the angles should be and I used button hex bolts to reduce the amount of tinkering members of the public could do to it. I used a T-Slot joints to hold the stars onto the framework. One thing that has always bugged me about T-Slots is the way the nut can fall out of the slot, to overcome this issue I made the nuts captive with another piece of wood. The nut outer is glued into place in the T-Slot so there is no way the nut can fall out, particularly useful when the joints are going to be at all sorts of funny angles in the star.

This is the third iteration of resource storage for Vale LRP . This time round I built enough storage for all 4 types of material and added some extra space for coins and mana. The 4 large trays are specifically designed to hold each type of resource, each with 5 columns because there are 5 different resources of each type. They all sit on top of a tray which has a lip to hold them all together, also in the tray are 15 separate compartments which can be used to hold the different kinds of mana and coins (crystals) which are used in the game.  I initially wanted to build them all into their own box and while I'm not ruling that out at the moment the box would need to be sturdy enough to have someone sitting on it and that's the part I'm worried about.

I was inspired by George Hart  to make some kind of large sculpture that could be assembled at a maker faire maybe with half a dozen people helping to build it. I designed this one on a 3D model, it's made from 60 identical pieces that all interlock. The main issue is that it doesn't take photo easily. We went to Manchester Makefest and made one from corrugated card that was 5 times larger, it took most of the morning to assemble, we made a second one that was a mirror image but then we lost all the photos we took of it. If you were at Manchester Makefest and you happened to get a picture then we would love to see it, otherwise this is destined to remain a single dull post. The sphere itself was pretty easy to build (even with a hangover), I'll happily share the file if people are interested. If I were to do it again I would try to find away to add another linkage between the parts, this whole thing feels a bit like a ball within a ball and it could do with a few m