Tensegrity sculpture with 3D-printed beams

Ryan Meuth of Phoenix, AZ, wrote in to share his tensegrity structure.

This weekend I built a tensegrity structure as a demonstration of principles of balancing tension and compression in structures for one of the courses I’m teaching. I’m fascinated by the aesthetic of these structures – all triangles and edges, but somehow magical as your brain tries to wrap itself around why the solid supports seem to be floating in air, and the structure is still standing.

I found a couple of excellent pages documenting how the structures work and are assembled, and I used my school’s 3D printer to make 12 struts. The resulting structure is surprisingly sturdy, and the fishing line is somewhat transparent, adding to the mystical effect I was trying to emphasize.