Clemson’s Novel Construction Details

One of the big draws of using a great deal of CNC cut materials in the construction of structures has been the prospect of integrating the the interconnection of components into the components themselves. A few of the previous system attempts at building structures completely from CNC cut plywood have focused on some sort of tab principle to sidestep conventional mechanical fastening like screws or nails. This system offered by Clemson University has used something a bit different – the use of zip-ties to serve the inevitable need for fastening beyond the tab or friction-fit concept.

I’m still getting my head around the methods, processes and design elements necessary to carry this off. I’d assume that the integration of zip-tie fastening would actually be rather easy to do. Slithering plastic ties through wood components would really only require the placement of through holes at the right areas. That seems deliciously easy. In my mind, the tricky part would be to route the ties through in a manner where their best features are used in the strongest manner.

Thinking about zip ties, I’d figure that their strength lies in tensile loading and twisting forces. The weaknesses would be the fact that their flexibility would be difficult to mitigate when trying to get rigidity out of the connections. Perhaps this could be addressed in the remainder of the wood connection design where there isn’t sufficient directional latitude for the twisting to happen?

To this end, there seems to be painfully little imagery published of Clemson’s zip tie system to get an idea on how this system would be executed. Hopefully in the future, the university will mete out a bit more detail. Until then, I guess it’s back to the labs and the sketchbooks to try and arrive at how it could all work!