Pencil and Bobin Tensegrity

I recently made an isohedron tensegrity from pencils and washers, where the outer net was tightened by changing the length of the pencils.

The annoyance was having to tie 120 knots. This project attempts to have a lot fewer knots by using sewing bobbins as nodes in a string net. The thread will be secured to the bobbins by wrapping around rather than tiering a knot.

12 sewing bobbins

Nylon thread

C.A. glue

6 coloured pencils

Cardboard

Painters tape

Make a cube out of cardboard with sides of 8cm.

Sharpen 6 pencils at both ends and attach them to the sides of the cube previously made with painter's tape.

Attach a couple of bobbins to the ends of a couple of pencils and wind some nylon thread between them. Stop the thread from unwind by applying a drop of C.A. glue. Wrap the thread to other bobbins in a continuous loop, adding a drop of C.A. glue to bobbins after a couple of loops have been wound on each bobbin.

Remove the cental box by removing the tape, squishing the cardboard box and finally cutting it free.

After removing the box, the network was tight enough and didn't need further tightening. If it had, a couple of the pencils would have been removed and replaced with slightly longer ones.