270 unit sonobe epcot ball folded by Deepika.
Go piece by piece. One piece at a time. Understand the structure and make a mental map of it.
There's symmetry throughout the structure. Suppose you add 5 pentagons. It comes alternative.
I was 75% through. I had agreed 6 pentagons. I was in the process of adding 5 more pentagons when things didn't add up. The symmetry was lost. I paused and started perspiring. Because at that stage with so many units assembled already it's hard to debug. I took a deep breath and took a look and realised in place of a hexagon, I had assembled a pentagon. I corrected it and things were fine. So remember symmetry.
Also, this is not my first time assembling a 270 unit bucky ball. In 2023 I had built a 270 unit and 360 units bucky ball using phizz units. Compared to that, sonobe is tricky. It was really confusing. Also with phizz units, I color coded. This time I made it all different rainbow colors which added to the misery. It was hard to differentiate a pentagon from hexagon.
Remember that there's gonna be only 12 pentagons what so ever. You take truncated icosahedron, 120 units, 270 units, 360 units bucky balls. It's gonna be only 12 pentagons.
Assembly with sonobe was stable. Nevertheless I suggest one to go with phizz units first, then build a 270 unit sonobe.
The structure is stable throughout. I hadn't used any glue for 120, 270, 360 units phizz unit. Even for this 270 unit sonobe epcot dome, I didn't use glue.
It takes a lot of patience. I took 3 days. Serval hours to complete this project.
Last time I took 5 cm for phizz units. However this time I used 7 cm square papers.
There's are videos by Thomas Hull on how to build bigger bucky balls. I suggest go through those videos to understand the structure first.
Good luck with the bucky balls.
Until next time,
SAYONARA
