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The Making of

To prove to ourselves we could process the struts as required, we built ProtoDome, a 16-foot diameter, 2-frequency dome.  Once we were confident we could finish what we were about to start, we bought our first batch of 80 10-foot lengths and started work.

Our first day we quickly realized the joy of having a nice sized work team.  We had a team of two unbinding the conduit, measuring and marking where the cuts would take place, and another team of two making the cuts.

The cut struts were then moved to the smashing station which was manned by another team of two.  The team smashed just one end of each pipe (for the time being) using a Harbor Freight 1 ton arbor press to which we attached a "cheater bar".



After one end of all the pipes had been smashed, we changed the jig out to smash the other end.  This new jig ensures that the second end is crushed exactly parallel to the first.



After the smashing was complete, it was time to drill 524 holes.  To do this, we borrowed a drill press and created a jig so that we only had to measure each hole distance once.



Drilling is fun.



After knocking all the holes out, we used a bench grinder to grind down the ends of the struts.  This was a long process, but was well justified.  In doing so, we removed the flash created during the initial cutting of the the pipe, helped to prevent injuries from handling the pipe, and minimized the chance that a parachute or tarp could snag on the edge and start to tear.  Ultimately though, this step is optional; dozens of domes have gone up and gotten covered without this step, but we wanted to err on the side of safety on this investment.  Here's the grinder we used.



A close-up of the struts after grinding, with a not-yet-ground strut on the far right:



With the struts ground down, it was now time to bend them.  The 4-frequency design calls for each strut to be bent to about 8 degrees.  We set up the press and a board to mark on and measured 8 degrees from the crush point using a yardstick and a protractor.  One person would put the crushed end in the press and apply pressure, and another would apply upward force on the strut until it was parallel to the marking on the board.  Flip ends and repeat, 262 times.



The last step to processing the struts was to paint each unique strut length a different color to make building it a snap.  We used Rustoleum spray paint and followed the colors on the desertdomes.com build diagram.



The colors are pretty but they require around 3-4 coats per color to prevent there from being any "dead" area when trying to bunch the pipes together like this and spray across them.  Also, during transport and loading/unloading, many of the pipes scratched against each other which admittedly affected the paint, but I'm not sure that can be eliminated.  Note also the ends of our green and blue struts had not been painted because we hadn't yet finished grinding them down.



Thanks for checking out how Domus Noctem was made.  You might also be interested in how it's assembled.

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