META
TITLE: Ringbein
WHAT: Product
MADE FOR: Self
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Ringbein
Ringbein is a simple trick you can use to make tables and more. It was added to the Trikka product catalog.
Content:
1 How it works ↓, 2 Variations ↓, 3 Sustainability ↓, 4 Credits ↓
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1 How it works
Just put the legs to the ring and put it up. Turn 1 bar to adjust the shape.
Legs must lie in a row not crossed.
The diameter of the ring determines the angle – wider ring = steeper angle.
Use this design to give all kinds of materials and parts a new purpose. The legs don’t even have to be the same diameter or length – all three legs can be different.
It also works with 4 legs but becomes harder to adjust.
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2 Variations & Forks
As usual with Open Circular Design there are many forks possible. Let’s look at some ideas.
Round plates can be placed in between the legs making it easier to adjust everything.
A plate from the flea market
Plate placed a bit lower
Upcyling: Poles from a broken camping chair & worn out cymbal
Scrap wood
Once down that road everything becomes possible.
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Tipps & Tricks
With some materials and applications a sliding top might pose a problem.
Chair leg caps are one way to deal with this. They are available in different colours and sizes (amz 1, 2)
With some materials and applications sliding legs might become a problem. Solve this with silicone band (amz 1, 2) …
or hose clamps (amz 1) or something similar.
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Go beyond
As this is an Open Circular Design it has Open Ends. Things we tried but didn’t finish. Pick up the ball if you like and push it further.
Ok. How about turning this into a full sized table:
Sure. But what about this problem?
A really heavy plate and two stands might already help.
Or just put something really heavy on top?
Or underneath?
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The Trikka Version
Here is a reshoot for the version we made for Trikka that leverages only parts of the Trikka parts catalog.
Build or buy?
None sells these parts in combination as far as we know. But all of these parts are individually available on many many places.
Parts
All new. Ringbein was added as part of Trikkas initial 44.
IP protected?
No
Purchaseable?
Only as local make. Local makes encouraged (voluntary donation of 1 €)
Support the designer:
Manufacturer contact:
lars@mifactori.de
Post license:
This post is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license
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3 Sustainability Discussion – how is this sustainable?
This is a pretty great open design as it checks almost all boxes for an open circular design. It is/uses:
Simple → Obviously! Hard to make something simpler than this!
Standards → Rings & round bars. Hard to find more standard parts than those.
Recyclable → Depends on the materials used. All examples above are made from well recyclable materials. This design supports recyclability.
Upcycling friendly → The design works great to give old parts a fancy new life (possibly even through efficient mass production processes.) Only rings aren’t that easy to come by.
Biosphere Support → This does not support the biosphere directly but you can argue that it provides an incentive to have plants in your home ;- )
Educative → It’s to simple to teach technical skills, just a view of the world: “it’s can be very easy to reuse things creatively!”
Open Licenses → As always and just in case our open licenses apply. But this design is so simple, flexible & obvious that no real design protection can apply here anyway! It’s free hardware.
Pre-Use → The main version does not require to make any change to the used material! You can even use different sized legs and don’t have to cut things to align. (What is “Pre-Use”?)
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4 Credits & Mentions
As said this design is so simple and (to some extend) obvious that we can’t be the first ppl. to discover this. It must be ancient knowledge. We discovered it ourselves though and did not make any effort to find examples. If you know some please send us links, we are happy to include them here as inspiration for us and others.
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5 Conclusion
Because of its simplicity and flexibility we give this Open Circular Design 5 out of 5 stars.
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★★★★★
Criticism: we see is that the main version is not very stable and therefore the solution has only limited application possibilities. But within these it works great!
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More?
- Full Flickr Album for Ringbein
- See Ringbein turned into a flexible circular exhibition infrastructure.
- Study more of our Open Circular Designs → here.
- Don‘t want to miss future updates? Sign Up to our Newsletter or follow us on one of our Social Media Channels →
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Deutsche Version
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