I feel I’d have to see it in action, on a use case, to understand its use.
There’s a video in the article showing a few, like pitching a tent and then taking it down.
That tent actually looks useful, if the zippers can hold up.
Immediately when i saw this is thought man this will revolutionise the tent game.
Then i saw the video and am glad they’re all over it
The video shows a robot with variable leg lengths where the excess is stored in a round drum.
Mickey Mouse eared robot legs is not something I thought I would see when the title of the post is: three-sided zippers.
Yes… Finally… The wait is over.
Link to video https://youtu.be/AWig98GVIno
I’m sure people have said similar things about inventions in the past that now shape our everyday lives.
Finally the time has come. Your primitive species has advanced to the point where we can now make ourselves known and offer you an opportunity to join galactic society.
I’m not cinical, but this is likely the 4th or 5th time someone has made a 3 sided zipper in my lifetime.
Article sort of goes into that a little bit, mentioning the origins of the idea and explaining how this one might actually be useful.
Hey, that’s pretty cool! I’d be super curious to see how other materials outside of pla (not particularly great for long term outdoor use) or tpu fare, especially with tools like metal printers becoming slightly more accessible.
Also, it might be worth cross posting to !3dprinting@lemmy.world, it’s always nice to see cool and bleeding edge use cases for the technology.
John Zip would be proud that his two dimensional coupler gained an extra dimension of utility today.
Thumbnail looks like IUDs
3d printable IUD! Who’s first?
Eh I already got enough plastic in my balls
to create items with “tunable stiffness.”
I’ve got an item with tunable stiffness for ya.
That makes one is us!
“William Freeman Ph.D., then an electrical engineer at Polaroid and now an MIT professor, saw it and submitted a novel idea: a three-sided zipper. Instead of fastening pants, it’d be like a switch that seamlessly flipped chairs, tents, and purses between soft and rigid states, making them easier to pack and put together.”
Interesting but useless.
If it’s durable and affordable, I can see the use for things like bags and tents.
Or more specialized stuff like a camera strap that can zip into a basic tripod.
Sounds like you haven’t pitched many tents before. Or, more importantly, taken them down. Worst part of camping is packing it all up.
Jokes on you… I’m pitching a tent right now… And sad lemmynsfw is gone
Thanks but it was really just a joke…saves link… I totally don’t needcto visit their or ever even view it…
Holy shit, so much fake shit on there, and most of it just ripped from other sites.
Uh, do you understand that these sites are link aggregators? Collecting content from other platforms is the stated purpose
Sounds like you haven’t pitched many tents before
It’s really not hard. Most people are just lazy or lack the ability to look at something for more then 30 seconds before becoming frustrated. I camp all the time, just spent a week out at a lake with 3 tents. All of them ended up back in their bags nicely, like they do at the end of every trip.
I camp all the time
I used to camp once or twice a year. You don’t develop the “muscle memory” to pack everything up nicely. So just just kinda throw it together meaning to sort it later. The next year you grab it and it’s still all fucky and it’s a huge effort to make it less so.
You’re right insofar as for someone who does it all the time it’s easy, but not so much for occasional users. To be fair that’s sort of the opposite premise than you were responding to. They would’ve been better off suggesting you either never do it or do it all the time.
Even for people who camp regularly, it’s easy because you’ve done it so many times. That doesn’t mean the process is ideal to begin with.
Point is even when I first started camping this was never really an issue because I literally took the time to just look at the tent and say oh it goes back together like this it’s really not that difficult of a thing for somebody to spend an extra 2 minutes to look at their camping setup and realize how to fold everything back up.
Well I would disagree there. I can’t even get a Christmas tree back in the box and that couldn’t be easier to disassemble.
No one said that it’s hard, only that the process could be improved.
Yeah, we (mostly) all pack things up fine. That doesn’t mean the process couldn’t be made easier.
tons of three sided joins on tents would benefit from this
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At a glance, I thought they arranged the zippers to say “smile,” but no, it’s just random patterns.
Very cool, thanks.
Have we come far, or gone too far?
Look, I don’t care how many sides it has as long as it doesn’t get stuck on everything.
