With our method decided, we began construction of the dome.
during construction, we encountered some issues with our chosen method and some mistakes were made. however! largely our design worked very well and our chosen method was followed almost perfectly. Construction was also cheap and relatively easy. The most difficult part of construction turned out to be the cutting and drilling of the PVC pipe, it was not necessarily challenging, but it was indeed the most time consuming portion of the building process.
during construction, we encountered some issues with our chosen method and some mistakes were made. however! largely our design worked very well and our chosen method was followed almost perfectly. Construction was also cheap and relatively easy. The most difficult part of construction turned out to be the cutting and drilling of the PVC pipe, it was not necessarily challenging, but it was indeed the most time consuming portion of the building process.
The above photo shows the beginning of our construction, with the first pentagon section and all its struts cut to length. We cut and finished one section first rather than all the pipes at once, just to ensure that our method was sound and we were not going to encounter any major issues. (the first pentagon section can be seen on the ground in the above photograph).
In this next photo of construction you can see that the method was working well, and the pieces were fitting together nicely. At this point of the build we were very proud of our construction method, as we could already see the structure beginning to bend and attempt to form a circle or dome shape. However it was at this point where we made a mistake that should have been avoided.
The above photograph is an example joint from deans research. Note how the zips go through holes in the small pipe, and also holes in the larger center pipe. Unfortunately, our drill proved too difficult to drill though the thicker center pipe, but fortunately the zip ties fit perfectly around the larger center pipe meaning we did not have to drill the hole in the pipe.
Feeling blessed, we moved on with construction.
The above photo shows the structure of the dome almost complete. The edges of the dome had to be pulled out so the dome reached its intended radius of 1 meter . At this point we discovered how spacious our design was, and we were very surprised. At this point you can also see the unfortunate affect or our zip tie drill error. The joints twist in a way they shouldn't, meaning the structure was weaker in some areas, however the overall design was not affected too heavily by this mistake.
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