Product design- Cube slice

As a crystal or lets say diamond, a solid form is made of a repetitive elements of carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. In the same way any solid form is made up of a set of repetitive, each forms. So we started using a cube as the main form and slicing it down further into smaller forms

Instead of slicing down cubes from faces we started slicing it down diagonally to obtain different forms of tetrahedrons and equal pyramids.

As legos offer you different forms and sizes of a element in the same way we offer you the sliced down tetrahedrons and pyramids with the ability to attract and help in form exploration. As architectural design process the intial stage is that of form exploration stage, so the forms allow form exploration in architecture.

Cubes sliced futher into equal pyramids in different ways :

1.Cube into three pyramids :

2. Cube into five square pyramids

3. Cube into five triangular pyramids

4. Cube into six square pyramids

5. Cube into six triangular pyramids

Possibilities of form formation is more because they have a edge of 6cms in common which allow face to face snapping.

while the smaller cubes are 3cm*3cm*3cm which is exactly the half of the bigger cube.

Materials explored :

Cartilage sheet
File card
Ivory sheet
Copper sheet
Aluminum sheet
Laminated paper
Plastic sheet
1mm acrylic sheet
Photo mount board
Pine wood

Technique used to snap the pyramids together

Magnets and metal pieces

Basic technique to snap all the forms together is with magnets. This was done by following the coding method on each face which allows maximum possibilities of abstract formation.

But due to same poles coming together at the vertices there was a strong repulsion among these magnets and because opposite poles came together and magnetism being stronger than adhesive force the attract together

To allow the attraction with the other faces and avoiding the strong repulsion among them we used metal pieces as the third end

Magnet mechanism in the tetrahedrons and pyramids

Solids made of using two magnets and a metal head (washers) made in black

POSITION OF METAL HEADS ON THE FACES

Solids made of using one magnet and two metal head (washers) made in grey

FINAL PRODUCT

The kit offers 2 set of cubes each including 3 cubes of three different configuration i.e cubes sliced into three different tetrahedron.

These cubes are then colour coded based on their magnetism The black elements are the primary elements with more magnetic strength and the grey element are secondary elements with lesser magnetism