3 Plane Connectors for KNEX
Hello Everyone!
I'm completely new to reddit but I figured you all would be able to give some pretty great advice. Sorry if this post gets long, please bear with me. I hope you'll find this interesting.
So, I was going through stuff in my garage and found a bunch of KNEX that I hadn't messed with in years. I considered selling them, but they sparked my interest, so I started building some random things to relive those old memories. After a bit I decided to make a basic cube and was honestly pretty disappointed. It turned out looking a lot like this picture I found online:
I was really disappointed to find out that there isn't a piece that works nicely as a structural corner for a cube. I have seen designs that have a rod going through the hole of a right-angle connector, but those provide no strength. I did some research on this problem and haven't found any good solutions, whether from original KNEX or from custom pieces that hobbyists have made. So, since I have a 3D printer, I decided to give a go at creating a solution. After a bunch of failed designs and head scratching, I ended up with a design that requires 3 identical pieces. When 3 of these pieces are assembled together (no glue or anything) this is what they look like:
And when used as the corners of a cube, this is the final result:
Sorry these images seem really large; I have no clue how to make them smaller.
Anyways, this is basically the exact solution I was looking for as these corners are incredibly strong (made of same ABS material as original KNEX) and serve as perfect corners while providing connection points on all 3 planes, rather than just 2. You can see a regular tetrahedron is also created from the red rods as well, which is very interesting (I don't think that is possible to make with regular KNEX).
They are completely physically locked together and cannot come apart from pulling forces aside from those which break the pieces or bend the locking tabs. This is a huge advantage over the original KNEX 3D connectors which slide apart easily (I saw a post about this not too long ago). That being said, these pieces can still be easily disassembled by lifting the locking tab with your fingernail or a set of tweezers (I recommend tweezers).
Expanding upon this idea to include other types of 3 plane connectors, I ended up with a total of 4 unique pieces. These pieces can be combined to create basically any type of custom 3 plane connector. Some very common examples are shown here:
And yes, that connector on the left has all 18 connection points. It offers some very perplexing geometry:
See how it allows for 60-degree angles from only 45-degree angles? I thought that was pretty fascinating. Here is another example of a very strong and clean looking structure made using my custom parts which showcases even more possibilities:
Please let me know if something like this has been done before as I don't want to steal anyone's thunder. However, is this something you would like to experiment with? Or is it not cool because it isn't original KNEX. I'm considering this as something I could sell and was wondering if there was any interest in the community. What would you be willing to pay for a piece with these capabilities? Sorry I just saw the post about avoiding using this channel to sell things, but I'm very curious to hear what you experts have to say!