Amaze-balls!

Amaze-balls!

 

Fun facts about the Zome ball: 

 

It’s “impossible” to make: Just 3D print ‘em, huh? 3D printing is 10 times too crude too meet our tolerances (±0.01 mm = ±0.0004”). So how do we mold a hollow ball in one piece? I could tell you, but I’d have to kill myself. While the ball mold has been called “the most advanced tool ever built,” balls are still a bitch to make, but not quite impossible. 

It “designed itself:” the ball uses the same geometry as the Zometool: Steve Baer’s 31-zone system. Marc Pelletier drew the first ball using a Divine Proportion “graph paper” that Baer suggested (above), and Steve Rogers built a 6’ diameter model of it using Baer’s Zometoy. It took over a decade of work before we produced the first ball, on 1 April 1992. 

 

It can model the stuff it’s made of: first blush, most people think the Zometool is a fancy Tinkertoy, or molecular modeling tool. Along with a bunch of other brilliant people, you know it’s oh-so-much more; still, they’re not wrong: here’s a model of ABS, the material used to make the Zometool (and not coincidentally, Lego... but try to build this with Lego!)

 

It can model the stuff you’re made of: here’s Luke Collier with his atomic model of the DNA molecule. You can also build a schematic version with our DNA kit, or a bunch of life molecules with the Biochemistry kit.

 

One last thing: we have a limited inventory of “wild” colors: OMG Pink, Wham-O Orange, and Teallite. Get ‘em while they last.