Makerbotted clips under test on San Francisco Bay Bridge!
I’ve previously posted about my work on scanning a bridge cable and designing an LED attachment clip for the Bay Lights project. Well, last week we put up a test strand of LEDs, using Makerbotted clips! The idea is to test the clips for strength and resistance to weathering, before moving ahead with the full scale installation!
LED lights being installed
It’s been really interesting designing this, using the Makerbot has allowed multiple iterations of the design really quickly. As you can see in the following picture, the clip protects the main LED data cable from stress, and anchors the LED nodes firmly on the cable.
Close-up of a clip in use
By using silver plastic, the clips are basically invisible once installed.
The test strand of LEDs, all in place
| Tagged with | art, bay bridge, bay lights, san francisco | 4 comments |
4 Comments so far
Andrew
This is truly exciting.
Miles
This is an awesome project! Great to see it moving forward with the help of a MakerBot!
What is the spacing between LEDs? It can get pretty gusty on the bridge (50+ MPH) and the gusts can cause additional vibrations. I’d hate to see strands ripped off by wind getting beneath them or vibrational stress. Might be prudent to add strapping (zip-ties?) between LEDs to mitigate this.
Gian Pablo
The zip ties being used are PVC coated steel, so they should hold up well! The clips are meant to act as a buffer between the zip ties and the LED cables, and to anchor the whole assembly so it doesn’t twist (they have a curved base that engages with the cable). In any case, the test strand will be up for a while, so we’ll find out how it works.
ericsoco
nice! didn’t know you were working on this, GP. next time you’re in would love to hear more about it.