Search

Building on a Large Scale

Kyle Fertig
Jan 13, 2017
2 min read

Even after the STEMposium ends, there is still a week before university classes begin. Because I have no high school classes this week, it was the perfect time to begin building pieces of the loom. With four foot walls and a 32ft footprint, the loom would have to be taken from the engineering room to the church in pieces and assembled, later, at the church. Using the information gathered from the small loom model, the front loom wall and the stationary back wall was created in three days of working in the engineering room.

The front loom wall was cut to 4' x 3' using (1/2)' thick plywood. Because the wall simply holds up the string, in order to save weight, the middle was cut out and replaced by black foam. Seven thin slices of PVC were also cut in half and glued along a thin piece of plywood four feet long. This will later be hot glued to the top of the front wall in order to help keep the string from overlapping with each other. Finally, a base was made for the wall by sandwiching it between two 2x4 boards on another piece of plywood. This will later be nailed down to the base plate of the loom itself.

The stationary back wall was made with the same plywood as the front wall. A 1.5' "U" was cut into the bottom to make legs that could be sandwiched similar to the front wall. Slots were cut three feet tall and ~2 inches wide throughout the width of the wall, interchanged with holes. This means that the wall is about 4.5' tall from top to bottom. In order to make the heavy wood lighter, slots were cut above and below the holes and filled with the same foam used in the front wall. Two separate bases for this wall were created similar to the front wall. These bases will allow the stationary wall to slip in and out in order to make storage easier. The bases will be attached to the loom base plate. The last thing done this week was for an order to be put in on Amazon for four neodymium magnets. Two sets should have more than enough strength to hold the moving wall which will be built later. Both walls created this week were taken home and will be brought to the church this weekend.