Tensegrity Xbox and PlayStation table

Summary:

Do you need something that can hold your drink and look cool at the same time? This table is exactly what you are looking for. The combination of the Xbox and PlayStation logos make it a perfect table design you can use until your drinks run out or you feel satisfied. Its 13.0cm x 13.5cm x 13.5cm size is perfect for taking it everywhere you need it. You can even use it as a nice desk decoration!! For this project, I worked in collaboration with Andrew Liu and Muhammad Adnan and you can find their pages linked below.

Andrew Liu's page

Muhammad Adnan's page

Fishing line

Hooks

Lesson Plan:

My partners and I were tasked in creating a single semi-complex custom tensegrity table that showed our understanding of the Solidworks features. We had to collaborate and work together to create this complex design. 

Parts list: 

• 1x Xbox Logo
• 1x PS Logo
• 2x Lightning Bolt
• 2x Eye Hooks
• ~54 cm of 40lbs Fishing Line

Assembly instructions:

Tools needed - Hammer, Pliers, Nippers, Small Phillips head screwdriver (to make holes), Ruler, Pencil, 8 hooks, and 2 pairs of strings. 

Hooks                                       Strings

1. Using nippers, make way for the hook to go in the lightning bolts.

1.  Hold the hook using small pliers, and hammer in the hook until it stands 

1. Then rotate in using pliers, or simply using your hand so that the hook is completely in the lightning bolt.

1. Fit the lightning bolt into the PS4 logo by wiggling it into the hole

1. If either lightning bolt does not fit, sand it down using sandpaper
    

1. Once the sizes matches, push the lightning bolt into the hole

1. Take a string about 23cm long, run it through one of the holes in the Xbox logo and tie a figure 8 knot at the top

• Instructions for the knots
  • Pass the tail over itself to form a loop. Continue under and around the standing end. Complete the knot by passing the tail down through the loop.

1. Tie another end of the string to the corresponding PS logo hole
2. Repeat steps 6 and 7 on the other two outer holes on the PS and Xbox logos

10) After the hooks are in, in both lightning bolts, take a string of about 6cm long, and run it through both hooks. Then, tie the two ends together using a square knot until there is 1-1.5 cm of vertical distance between the two knots. 

• Instructions for Square Knot
  • Hold the end of the rope in each hand.
  • Pass the right end over and under the rope in your left hand.
  • Pass the rope end now in your left hand over and under the one now in your right.
  • Tighten the knot by pulling both running ends at the same time.

A video for the square knot is followed. 

11) Once all 4 strings are tied, tighten all of them equally so that they are all in tension. The Xbox logo should be parallel to the PS logo, and all of the strings are vertical so that the holes line up. Your final model should look something like this. 
 

 Design Choices:

Our first step in the design process was figuring out what we were going to design. We started off by using google drawing to create a basic sketch of what ideas we wanted to create. 

Our next step in the process of making this tensegrity table was making our original sketches. My partners and I evolved our idea from cones into making solid logo bases. We make a full sketch of the final design

After we made our original sketch, we moved into designing each of the individual pieces. We sketched each part in constraint boxes that would correspond to the same size boxes on Solidworks so that it was easy to transfer the drawing to the software program. 

After finalizing the sketching and getting them checked by our instructor, we transferred all of the sketches into Solidworks. We created step-by-step instructions on how to make all of the parts.

My teammates and I worked countless days making progress on our sketches. We slowly moved our sketches from paper into the online program.We all contributed to making each one of our parts. 

When we were done designing our parts, our instructor gave us some aesthetic tips. He recommended making the lightning bolt look more appealing, so he helped us add a design to make the lightning have an inside engraving that added more dimension to the whole structure. This also helped save filament.

After our parts were finalized, we were cleared to move on to assembling our parts in Solidworks. We opened up new assemblies and started to move all the pieces into one structure.

Our parts fit perfectly, and they were ready to be printed.

Once the parts were printed, we were ready to assemble. We followed our assembly instructions to assemble our parts into making our Version 1.0 tensegrity table.

One of the first problems we encountered while assembling our tensegrity table was that our lightning bolt peg was too big, and was not fitting properly into the Xbox logo. For the time being, we just sanded down the peg of the lightning bolt so that it would fit but we knew we were going to have to make a change in Solidworks to improve the design.

The second problem we faced was that our structure was too big. We had to scale it down 0.75% to make it smaller. Also, our Xbox logo was very heavy due to it having a large size. While we were scaling the whole table down, we realized we could also remove some filament off the top so that it wasn't very top heavy and wouldn’t cause problems.

The third problem we faced was that the hooks were not very strong while in the holes. We had to hot glue a lot of the holes because the hooks kept on coming out. We didn't like how this looked and affected the aesthetics so we decided to make a big change in Solidworks. 

After we completed assembling Version 1.0 of our design, we listed out all of our problems. We thought about possible solutions to these problems and wrote them into a document. These problems were a goal to fix and improve on in Version 2.0. 

The first change we made was to make our pegs fit into the Xbox logo better. This would eliminate having us sand down the lightning bolt before we inserted it into the Xbox logo. The solution we came up with was to add a 10mm chamfer around the edges of where we had to insert the lighting bolt into the xbox logo. This way, we would have more space to insert the lightning and clear more room for the peg. This minor change in creating more space for the peg helped us a lot as we were able to insert the pegs properly without issues.

The second change we made was to scale down the model 0.75%. This made the model more sleek and filament efficient.

As you can see, the model on the right it 0.75% smaller than the one on the left

The third change we made was to make the Xbox logo less top heavy. In Version 1.0, the Xbox logo was causing us a lot of problems due to its mass being larger than the strings could handle. We removed some of the filament from between the edges of the X and the end of the logo. This used way less filament, and led to a way lighter Xbox logo. This solved our problems with the Xbox logo causing tilt to the top of our design.

The final change we made but the most important change was to replace the hooks with holes on the outside rim of the Xbox and PlayStation. We had lots of trouble installing the hooks on the edges and it was damaging the aesthetic look of the project. We thought that eliminating the hooks would lead to a more clean knot on the logos. Instead of hooks, we had holes that went straight through and we could tie a knot in. This made it easier to tie knots and also more visually pleasing. We decided to leave the hooks in on the lightning bolts because we thought the crossover of no hooks and hooks would look nice. Implementing these holes on the edges greatly improved the overall assembly of the project.

Once all of these changes were implemented, we were ready to print out our Version 2.0 parts.

When all of the parts were printed and ready to be assembled, we followed our enhanced assembly instructions to assemble the Version 2.0