Page 21 - Станочный парк английская версия

INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY

Flexagon grids: dynamic forms of the future

Design Engineer Alexey Ivchenko is the author of the idea of a spatial mechanical
structure that does not include parts of elastic elements, but has plastic properties due
to certain combinations of solid elements, the so-called reversible loops (double-acting
hinges or tetraflex carriages). Such a structure can be set to restore its shape, subject
to external mechanical influences. The author called his invention "Flexagon nets". They
can serve to transmit wave motion. And if automatic control is applied to the structure,
then through the assignment of various state modes of its nodes (reversible loops), the
structure can lead to a change in the spatial shape, to transformations, with possible
fixing of each of the configurations. Aleksei Vasilyevich hopes that his invention will
arouse interest among the readers of Machine Tool Park, since it opens up real prospects
for creating a wide range of dynamic objects of aesthetic and utilitarian purposes,
and may find useful practical application. Of the obvious areas of implementation -
mechanical engineering, robotics, architecture, art and design

Before delving into the technical hidden surfaces that become visible
justification of the idea proposed for after previously opened surfaces became
consideration, I would like to draw your invisible. This toy is called a flexagon. One
attention to the fact that in our creative of its varieties is tetraflexagon, and, in
development of geometric forms, in turn, a variety of the latter, consisting of
assimilating them to our utilitarian and three surfaces, is tritetraflexagon. We are
aesthetic needs, humanity in our days now focusing on it, for clarity, discussing
has come to a civilizational moment of the subject by proposing in Fig. 1 is an
the practical implementation of the idea illustrated diagram of its manufacture (a -
of transforming our the shape of things. front, b - back side of the scan). Having
Having technologically ensured the mass turned out the made "booklet" according
introduction of such objects in our everyday to the presented principle of action in fig.
life, we will receive a radical visual change 2, we find that the squares with the units
in our reality, its surroundings. However, I
don’t want to refer now exclusively to the
"images of the future" listed by the science
fiction and futurology department, but I
intend to reveal the secret of mechanical
structures that are capable of spatial
changes, on the principles of which the
future can find its new engineering and
design embodiment.
We will talk about "flexon nets"
or, in another name, about "reversible
mesh structures". First, we will define
terminologically. What is a "flex"? An
explanation will be given when in a special Fig. 1. Scheme of manufacturing tetraflexagon..
way a folded sheet of paper, which has

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