Introduction: PVC Pipe Star Tetrahedron

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About: Maker of things, hacker of robots. Code, mechanical, electrical, electronics, I like to play with it all.

After playing around with PVC pipe tetrahedrons for a while, I ran across pictures of star tetrahedrons, sometimes called "merkaba", or "Stellated octahedron". They are just two tetrahedrons combined, so I thought I'd try making one.

Supplies

Similar to the PVC pipe tetrahedron, just more.

  • 8 Side outlet elbows (3 female sockets)
  • 24 Street elbows (1 female socket, 1 male spigot, 90 degrees)
  • 24 sections of pipe all the same length
  • 6 Cross fittings (4 female sockets)

Step 1: Make the Edges

Take a cross fitting (shown in dark gray,) 4 sections of pipe (shown in blue and red,) and 4 street elbows (shown in orange.)

Plug the pipe sections into the cross fitting.

Put the street elbows on the pipe sections.

Repeat to make six edge assemblies.

Step 2: Attach the Vertices

Take the assembled edges and the side outlet elbows (shown in green.)

Plug the street elbows (orange) into each of the side outlet elbow's (green) sockets at 45 degrees away from the direction the other two legs of the side outlet elbow.

Step 3: Try Other Variations

Using street elbows makes the basic design easy to assemble and explain. With short sections of pipe, they can be replaced with any 90 degree fitting to make connections to other PVC pipe objects.