Prototype cargo pad

Aug 04, 2010 23:24

For those who have been following the design process over the last several years (and the last one in particular), you may have noticed a large orange rectangular section in many of the pictures. Previously, this was just one, and then two, and then four plain orange rectangular prisms (or plates) with the occasional decorative symbol. They were placeholders, because I hadn't figured out exactly how to connect everything together given the multiple engineering constraints:

- the pieces had to be able to lie absolutely flat in a large rectangle shape. No hinge pieces sticking up anywhere.

- the pieces had to be able to lie absolutely flat when one half was folded on top of the other half, and there could be no hinge or connector parts which stuck out beyond the actual rectangular plates themselves, even at the hinged end.

- likewise where the outer plates connected to the inner plates.

- when considering the entire structure as two half-plates, they had to be able to fold either way - plate one on top of plate two, or plate two on top of plate one, while both of them remained somehow firmly enough connected to the main block of the toy that they could not fall off - despite each being able to move at least one plate's thickness away from the main block when they were the "top" plate.

- the connection point to the block had to be able to slide up and down the length of the block pretty much the whole way.

- the half-plates had to be able to flip around to show either their top side or their underside in any configuration - again, without actually disconnecting from the main block.

The compromise solution I arrived at was this:


Its only fault is that only the orange sections can spin around to display their back - the white sections are relatively fixed (although their backs are displayed when the appropriate half of the pad is folded over). This means that I'm always going to have the centre section being a different colour from the outer sections at times (given that the outer sections can show their front or back, and those are two different colours in order to increase display options).

Maybe I could paint the centre section in stripes, or something... at least then it'd always be half-matching.

And yes, there are ways to get the mismatching section down to a much smaller area which doesn't reach all the way to the sides of the pad. However, that needs more joints, and the effect isn't really all that much better - you just get a circular, rectangular, or hexagonal 'patch' in the centre of the pad instead of a side-to-side stripe.

Although, hmm, a circular or hexagonal patch of black might make a suitably simple detail. It'd work both in the middle of the orange pad and a sea of white, too.

Huh. Maybe an octagon...


This shows before and after the panel spin along the long axis, with orange on one side and white on the other. It's a ten-part design instead of eight, but does allow for non-stripy colour options. It's larger to show how the octagon is broken up internally.

hobbies-design, reactions-accomplished, creative, hobbies-toy-design

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