Welding Tips and Tricks

I want to do a little fun project for "desk art". I want to make a geodesic type ball about the size of a softball. Much like a soccer ball looks but much smaller. I'm having trouble finding any calculations or design information. I'm thinking something along the lines of 5-6 sided pieces. I saw one design with 5 sided pieces but it had square pieces mixed in. I'd like to keep the pieces uniform so it would have no top, bottom, left or right. I'm thinking that I would make it out of stainless and weld with SB for effect. I think it would be pretty cool looking all polished out.

John -

I've seen something like this on Instructables, the woman who welded the project used Sketchup Make software to plan the shapes out. Can't find the link, sorry, but it's out there for sure. Will keep looking and post if I find it.



Kym

John, you mean like an orange peel template?

LtBadd wrote:John, you mean like an orange peel template?

I don't know what an orange peel template is?
I'm finding from an Instructsables project that I'll need 20 Hexagons and 10 pentagons. I also found a website for dimensions of hex and pentagrams. Next I need to find some scale-able diagrams, print them out and I'll make one from cardboard for proof of concept and for overall size. It will take me less time to cut and assemble cardboard than to do the math. High school was almost 50 years ago.

Instructables can be a good source of ideas/tips and I am also a big fan of CAD - 'Carboard Assisted Design'!

Looking forward to seeing your mock-up.



Kym

As a 'starter' or test object to keep things simple you could go for an icosahedron (20 sided polygon) that's only made up out of identical triangle sections:



(yeah yeah.. It's a D20... I'm a D&D dweeb.. )

To get hands-on experience with building these and at least not needing to worry about different shapes in very specific locations..

Good example of a deceptively easy but complex one is usually a soccer ball (football for us europeans and UK/AUS ) that's made up of a specific combination of 5-sided and 6-sided pieces in a specific pattern around the ball. Get one out of place and it won't come together as a spehere..

Bye, Arno.

This is what I'm wanting to build. My problem is finding the correct dimensions to get the overall size I want. Unless I can come up with the formula to figure it out I will pull a number out of my ear and start with cardboard models.

You're going to have one heck of a time jigging and clamping that to get tacked.

Farmwelding wrote:You're going to have one heck of a time jigging and clamping that to get tacked.

Tape. Tape it all together and tack it where able and cut tape for access until it's good enough to remove all the tape. Knowing what the outside finished diameter is supposed to be, the equator should be able to be formed fairly easily.