Q: Where is this located?
A: Second floor Lighting department area. Basically behind the 2nd floor drink/snack room. Please feel free to come by and see it.

Q: Where did you buy it?
A: I just called up the company that manufactures our cubes and simply asked for their accessory catalog.... No, actually I designed and built the whole thing myself. Yes, it was a lot of work, but I had fun doing it and am really happy with the finished results.

Q: Why a space frame?
A: Advantages of a space frame design:
- Very high strength to weight ratio
- Easy to transport and assemble on site
- Lightweight components made from lost cost material
- Simplified part manufacturing since many parts are the same
- Scalable and expandable as needed
- Common bolts used to securely lock components together
- Rather cool looking once put together!

Q: Can I hang from it?
A: No. No monkeys allowed! It would most likely easily support you if you hung from the proper points, but please do not hang from it. I do not want anything to happen to you or my space frame. One very important key to a space frames is to apply loads only to the "nodes", i.e. at the joints where the pieces come together. If a load is applied to the middle of one of the pieces it could possibly bend quite easily. Remember the individual pieces are light weight and weak. It is the way that they are put together (arranged to form lots of triangles) and loaded that makes the structure strong.

Q: How long did it take to make?
A: I worked on it for several weekends. I would guess that I put 45 hours of time into the project from design and concept work to painting and final assembly.

Q: How did you know how to build this?
A: Before getting into computer graphics I studied Architectural Engineering at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. The ArcE degree is similar in many ways to Civil Engineering, but ArcE's do not have to deal with highway engineering nightmares, nor will they ever be asked to design a cities sewer system. They do however have to deal with over enthusiastic Architects that want to construct buildings with 40 foot glass walls and no visible support system to hold the whole thing up. But I digress. While I was at Cal Poly our department designed and built a space frame structure to go over one of the entrance ways to one of our buildings. It turned out rather nicely and I learned some stuff along the way.

Q: Where did you build and make all the parts?
A: My family has a farming business located in the Central Valley outside the town of Gustine (about a 120 mile drive from PDI) That is where I built it and painted it. Between all the tools located there on the farm and the neighbor's welder I was set. I had told my dad what I needed in terms of material and he was kind enough to pick up the 10 foot length bundles of EMT and the 10 foot length of angle iron with his pickup truck.

Q: What is it made out of?
A: It is made of the metal, specifically 1/2 inch EMT. The bolts are 1/4-20 bolts, with fender washers both sides and a lock washer under the nut. The whole thing was assembled with just one 7/16 inch box wrench and one 7/16 inch socket wrench.

Q: What is EMT and what does EMT stand for?
A: EMT stands for Electrical Metallic Tubing. EMT is thinwall, unthreaded, galvanized steel. EMT is UL listed. It is typically used for protecting electrical wiring. The funny thing about 1/2 inch EMT is that the outside diameter is actually .7 inches. The great thing about EMT is that it is only about $1.80 for a 10 foot length, thus one of the major reasons I used it for this project. It's super inexpensive!

Q: How many feet of pipe did you use?
A: A total of 2,439.5 inches, or 203.3 feet. I bought thirty 10 foot lengths of pipe. I knew this was more then I needed, but as cheap as the EMT was, I figured I rather have extra then run out when I was trying to finish it up. I believe I had 3 full lengths left over. I also had a bunch of pieces about 20 inch left over because there was always waste after cutting the various lengths out of the 10 foot pieces.

Q: How much did it cost?
A: Adding everything up as best I can remember:

Q: How did you get it to the building and up to the second floor?
A: I brought it to work in the trunk of my car. It completely comes apart, with all the pieces except two being 4 feet or less in length. The two 68 inch pieces I stuck through the ski pass thur in the back seat of my Honda.

Q: Where did you put it together?
A: It was put together in the middle of the quad. It is exactly 8x8 feet and there was enough space in the middle of the quad to assemble it there.

Q: How long did it take you to put it together?
A: When it was put together as a test before painting it only took about 20 minutes! Space frames by their very nature are very modular so many of the pieces are interchangeable. Nothing is numbered. However, once it was painted I found out that the paint would scrape/scratch off very easily. So for the final assembly I really slowed down and was very care, therefore it took about 60 minutes.

Q: How much does it weigh? How did you get it up there?
A: I'm not exactly sure of the total weight, but I can lift the whole structure myself. That is the beauty of a space frame structure- it is fairly light weight for the area/span that it can cover. However, I did require the help of a Render Wrangler (always on duty and ready to help out with whatever the needs!) to put it up into place because it is a bit bulky and awkward to maneuver.

Q: What keeps it in place?
A: That is one of the coolest things about the design! Because the corner supports form a triangle within the cube walls it can not move horizontally in any direction. Its own weight holds it down vertically and it just rests on the top of the cube wall. It is not actually attached to the cube at all, but as sturdy as it is you sure might think it is!

Q: Did you plan for it to be that close to the overhead light?
A: Heck yes! I measured that dimension several times and checked my plan multiple times regarding that dimension. I give it one inch of clearance initially and later added another inch and a half because I knew I would be screwed if the structure did not fit under the light when I went to put it up in place. Later when I test assembled the whole thing I realized that I had not taken into account the thickness of the flattened pipe adding up, and at an 1/8 of an inch of thickness per flattened pipe, it does add up when you have 8 to 10 pieces stacked together. (I had considered the thickness of the flattened pipe so I would know what minimum length of bolts to buy, but I basically spaced on the other issue until after the test assembly.) So it came out having just about one inch of clearance between the top of the space frame and the bottom of the light. Whew.

Q: What will you do if they move you to another cube?
A: I did think about that a bit already. My space frame will only be supported correctly if it has three corners of a cube like the one I'm in now. Since only the back two cubes in a quad are arranged like this, I guess I have a 50% chance of getting another cube that would work. I guess I'll worry about that when that day comes. Or maybe... I'll leave it and build a completely new design.

Q: "Wow! I can't believe how sturdy it is! It's so strong!"
A: Well, that's not really a question, but a lot of people have said that.

Here's a cool web site I came across when looking up space frames on Google. This Korean company makes some very impressive space frame structures, and they have lots of pictures in their gallery section.
Uni-CONN: Space Frame Laboratory - http://www.uniconn.co.kr/main.htm