3DD Building A Bridge

10th September 

For this task I had to design and make bridges out of paper to see what shapes work for the structure and layout.

 

For the next task, we were put in a 7 group to produce a 3D bridge that would hold up a motcontrol car that would be driven sussesfully over the bridge without falling off, we were given 10 pieces of cardbord, elastic band, bandboo and tape. The bridge was restricted only being allowed to have two pillars that would hold up the weight of the bridge and the toy car,among this the bridge needed to be tall enough that a table (boat) could slide underneath it and also hold up a heavy brick which would be placed in the middle of the structure without breaking.

We firstly collected all of the small paper bridges that we made earlier to see if we could combine or use these elements from the designs for the 3D structure. We came to the conclusion that the cardboard needed to be curved so the middle part of the the bridge would be the tallest area so that the table would slide through sucesfully. Another feature that we agreed on was to use a pyramid shape on each of the tables.

For the first part of the structure we had to tape the pyramid shape to the table so it was secure enough for it to stand on its own so that we could create the other parts of the bridge.

Remembering that we could only use two pillars to hold up the. Bridge we decided to use two bandboo sticks tapping them together so that this structure would be stronger than if we only used one bandboo stick to hold it up. After taping the individual sticks together we taped up the three exciting bandbox together to create a pyramid shape so that it would be rigid so that it would support the weight of the micanical card to drive over the top.

After the pillars was made we had to think of a way to connect one piece of the cardboard to the three points on the pillar. We came up with the idea of percings three holes through the cardboard so that would slot in place and provide extra support. To hold up the cuvred cardboard we used extra bandboo sticks along the existing bandboos.

 

Once we attached the extra bandboos to the pillar we had to tape another piece of cardboard to the exsisting piece of cardboard which was attached to the pillar. To add extra support  which would hold up the carsboard we attached another bandboo sticks to the exsisting bandboo stick, we did this for the entire bottom part of the card.

Then we taped up the bandboo to the cardboard.

For extra support and security we used another technique to attach the bandboo to the cardboard. E tape acted like a piece of string creating two holes either side of the bandboo so we could pierce the tape through and to tie it up so that e tape we taped down before wouldn't peal off.

After doing the same techniques and creating another pillar for the other side we decided it would be best to turn the bridge the right side up to see how the structure of the  bridge would look.

Once we attached the pillars to the floor we attached another piece of card to the tables to connect the bridge to either side.

After tapering the bridge, we then added extra support with elastic bands so there would be less tension on the bandboo sticks so the motcontrol car was drive safly over the top.

This is what our bridge looked like.

These are what the other bridges looked like.

The table was able to slide through the bridge without breaking it. The bridge was sucsesfull to hold up the brick. the brick didn't break the bridge at all but slightly miss-shaped it.

I have learn that a particular design is very important to the kind of materials that I would be using as my paper design wasn't sucsesful with that particular material.

The task of constructing the bridge was very challenging in some ways as in case of members of the group weren't cooperating with the give task making it difficult for the other members of the group.

The ways to improve the bridge was if we could create an 'A' shaped structure (from bandboo) for the middle part of the bridge so that the structure would be more rigid and even though the weight of the brick didn't break the bridge the structure could perhaps hold up the brick without bending it.

If I would do this task differently made sure the group was more organised and to plan out what part f the bridge would be made first and how long it would take to product this would be for the other parts of the structure also.