Download 3-Strut Spring Tensegrity Fractal

This is a logical extension of the below listed spring tensegrity. With long enough struts and wires this structure could be repeated in any of three directions ad infinitum. I have also built one of these from dowel, piano wire, aluminum tube and zip ties. The next step will be to create a modular single unit like the one listed below using nickel-titanium memory wire so the pieces can be assembled into any desired shape one unit at a time. Depending on the strut-length and wire interval, the structure can exist as anything between nearly-cubic and extremely rhombic.

Download 3-Strut Spring Tensegrity

This is an interesting new adaptation of Buckminster Fuller’s tensegrity structures that uses spring wire and struts instead of tendons and struts to make a structure that supports itself. It will not carry load like a true tensegrity will but may have other interesting conceptual applications. The animation is demonstrating a range of potential structures created by driving some parameters with an adaptation of Fuller’s twist angle theorem for determining the twist angle of an n-strut tensegrity.