Bamboo skewer building set

thingiverse

This 7-way connector features six radial ports and one through-hole, designed for use with common grocery store bamboo skewers (around 4mm diameter, approximately 12" long). Originally created for the chaotic "crowd-sourced accretive sculpture" at the 2013 GeekSpark during Raleigh NC's SparkCon arts festival, these connectors can also be employed in constructing regular or semi-regular polyhedral models. The vinyl joints allow flexibility to accommodate a wide range of angles and multiple skewers emanating from each vertex, up to six plus the hole. Note that the closeup image is from an earlier iteration lacking the central hole. To assemble, print connector plates and slide 1/8" ID vinyl tubing on the six legs. Trim the sharp points on skewer ends. Depending on printer tuning, no reaming of the central hole may be necessary. Skewers come in two sizes - 3mm and 4mm diameter; resize connector if using skinny ones. Adding a taper to stick ends using a pencil sharpener can ease assembly. Varying stick lengths based on ratios of square root of 2 or phi introduces intriguing possibilities. During disassembly, maintain tubing on connectors rather than skewers for easier rebuilding.