Tag: Connectors

Peak Design acknowledges flaw with its Anchor connectors, is offering free replacements

For the fourth time since Peak Design launched its first camera strap system, the San Francisco-based camera bag and accessory manufacturer is changing its Anchor connectors—the little pieces that attach to your gear and snap into its camera straps.

The change comes after Peak Design realized its third version of the dyneema Anchor connectors, which were originally made to accommodate a larger variety of camera systems with smaller eyelets, are prematurely wearing out and failing.

According to Peak Design, there have only been seven reported failures of Anchor connectors of the more than one million sold since August 2017. That means only one in every 17,000 customers have been affected. But Peak Design said that’s still too high of a failure rate.

As seen in the above comparison image, Peak Design is fixing the issue by making the Anchor connector cord thicker once again.

Peak Design says it’s notified all customers who’ve purchased version three of its Anchor connectors, be it standalone or in a package with a camera strap. If you’re afraid you missed the email or otherwise want to double-check, Peak Design has created an Anchor update survey to help you see if you qualify. Also, as of May 22nd, 2018, all camera straps purchased through Peak Design’s website will come with a free Anchor Update Kit. According to a post on its support page, Peak Design said ‘eventually’ all Peak Design camera straps will contain version four Anchor connectors.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

June 6, 2018
Modular DIY Dome Kit: Flexible Connectors Join Geodesic Wood Structures

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

Reducing complexity and difficulty for would-be geodesic dome builders, this series of connective ‘Hubs‘ makes it possible for do-it-yourself types and even kids to collaborate on creating stable architecture.

Connector rods are joined at a hub that acts as a ball joint. The connector ball screws into a piece of lumber then attaches to the node. A simple structure can use materials on hand to build a working dome in a matter of minutes, all assembled by just a few people.

Building geodesic domes from metal parts can be laborious and frustrating – each piece has to be perfectly bent to join the rest, and the resulting structure is extremely heavy. The Hubs system is much cheaper than buying (or bending) a conventional dome.

Chris Jordan and Mike Paisley started work on this system a few years ago and recently made it available for purchase after a successful round of crowdfunding brought it to market. Their hope is to make dome-building a more accessible, cheap and easy process for everyone.

While wood and plastic are technically more durable, this approach lends itself to organic settings, creating wood structures that look appropriate in backyard settings and for temporary purposes or as ersatz tree houses. It is also more adaptable: cutting different lengths of wood lets users scale their dome more easily than with metal or plastic. And it is more flexible, too: the joints can bend and give, as can the wood, making the construction more forgiving.

Woodskin: Flexible Hybrid Material Makes Wood Modular

In essence, it has the look and feel of wood, but the flexibility of fabric, all rolled into one composite mesh that is durable but able to be molded into all kinds of creative patterns both …

Lightweight ‘Airbeams’ Frame Inflatable Geodesic Dome Tent

Derived from crystal structure of diamonds and geodesic domes of Buckminster Fuller, these all-weather structures are astonishingly strong but incredibly light at the same …

Geodesic Housing for the Homeless: Dome Made of Umbrellas

Could a low-cost, lightweight geodesic dome made from umbrellas, garbage bags and a space blanket provide a real life-saving solution for people forced to sleep on the streets? ‘Earth Lander’ …

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October 5, 2016
3D-Printable Connectors Make DIY Furniture Assembly Easy

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

Leveraging the best features of available 3D printers and the materials they can print, this kit-of-parts approach opens up an amazing array of possibilities for do-it-yourself furniture construction.

Studio Minale-Maeda presented their Keystones system at Milan, using elegantly simple table and coat rack designs to show off the potential of this connective system.

Their core idea is that the larger wooden pieces can be flat-packed more easily for shipping. Customers can then complete the assembly process using included or locally-printed pieces. Still, the potential of this approach goes well beyond that system as such.

There is really no reason to limit the process to a ship-and-print combination. With a similar but open-source variant, would-be buyers could take off-the-shelf dimensional lumber and construct their own furniture effectively from scratch. Perhaps unintentionally, the simple and standardized shapes of the components shown here already suggest such potential implicitly – at most a few cuts would be needed for the table, if even that.

Regardless, the solution-as-presented is quite crafty, whatever its potential future might be – it leverages the strengths of 3D-printed plastic (rigidity with flexibility), uses strong triangular shapes for structural support (like trusses) and requires only the most basic tool to tighten the finished product (a screwdriver).

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April 23, 2014