Steamball

[papersmithforge]

Once upon a time I watched a brief portion of Steamboy. I was intrigued by the steam ball and had an idea for a redesign of it. So following is a pic of the concept art. It's solely the base, as I envision it as a sort of steam propane tank. I've yet to design the handle/valve/gauge and other such components, but I figured someone might enjoy the build.

[papersmithforge]

Here are the pictures of the real world assembly, or at the very least its approximation as paper doesn't lend itself too well to doubly curved surfaces.

• Individual structural unit
• Full assembly with structural unit removed
• Assembly with darkened backing to cover interstitial voids
• Underside of exterior plate
• Outward face of exterior plate
• Riveted plate

This model also lets me experiment with two concepts I hadn't tried before: tabless gluing for the internal skeleton, and glueless tabs. I'm not sure if these tabs are used elsewhere by someone, I sort of contrived them to avoid the hassle of gluing. I recognize though I might've just designed something myself that someone had already thought of. I call them zipper tabs as they are sort of woven and held in place by their trapezoidal shapes.

[papersmithforge]

I applied the steam emblem to one of the plates to see how it would look. I used Rhino's Smash command thinking it might unroll it well, but I'm not very satisfied with the results. It appears to be stretched vertically. So I think I'll revise it to unroll points on the surface to determine where the end vertices of the emblem should lie and then scale it accordingly.

[papersmithforge]

I've applied all the plates (haven't affixed all the rivets though), and placed the "pedestal" for the ball. However, I'm dissatisfied with the pedestal's overall look. Unsure whether it's too tall, the holes aren't large enough, maybe conical as opposed to cylindrical with the bottom flaring outwards? Perhaps it needs a different design? I'm open to alternatives and suggestions.

[opalmox]

for the pedestal, I would think smaller and more conical, with the base at about 2/3 of what you have now, and tapered somewhere between 60 and 45 keys.

[Art Deco]

I always enjoy innovative "paper engineering", your use of interlocking "glueless" tabs is quite clever! Well done!

[papersmithforge]

I did a simple line render of your suggestion opalmox. It does look better, but it makes it feel like the sphere is on display, rather than a machine of sorts. I also included an alternate render where I've affixed 5 handles onto the lower portion of the sphere. I think I'm favoring it like this, but I may change the handle design to some marine shackles. That way how it would rest on a pedestal would be adaptable for the structure it would be affixed to. Some tension cables running from the shackles to anchor points and such.

Thanks for the praise Art Deco. I guess it's just like a tongue and slot that you see on some cardboard packaging, the nice thing is that while you still cut the same number of triangular tabs the assembly is far quicker since you don't have to wait for glue to dry. Though the stitched seam lines might not be as appealing to some.