Week 3: Inflatables

Inflatable in real life

Big Mable is a towable raft that my grandparents had at their house. I got thrown off it many times when my grandpa was behind the wheel of his speedboat. It was pretty durable, I don’t remember it ever being punctured or ruptured in any way.

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My experiment

I haven’t stopped thinking about MIT’s Aeromorph, so I decided to try to make a balloon that folds into a box when you blow it up.


I found a template on their website to make a simple box and lasercut it:

It was hard to keep the mylar taped down with the fan on, but it came out okay. I then used the barbie iron to seal the edges better - it looked like air would leak out from the holes made by the laser cutter. I don’t have a video of this, but when I blew it up it didn’t work. I think I accidentally sealed the openeings from the middle square to the ones above and below, so the air had nowhere to go. I tried again just free-handing it with a sharpie.

I sealed it with the barbie iron and did my best to be as precise as I could. I cut it out and inserted a straw in one of the squares, and it kind of worked! If I had more time, I’d experiment with the laser cutter some more, I think part of why it doesn’t fold up completely is that the sides aren’t totally even, and the sealed parts are not lined up perfectly.