connecting bases with ... connectabase?

[lightning]

I wanted to share something that was originally designed by oldschooldm during his attempt to fold-flat the Samurai wall modules. It is a very easy solution to connecting stuff and it is fast to implement. Originally the design only had the slots on the edges of the wall modules but as I wanted to make some T-connections at some time I also thought it could be done with this solution by adding slots on the sides of the bases.

This approach is following the design of fold-flat where you have (square) flaps that are inserted into slots and will hold the pieces together via friction. See an example of two wall modules. The connecting square flap is double layered to make it a little thicker than the slot. I have removed 1mm border from the lower layer so that I have a little ledge to make inserting easier. What I also like is that you can just add this to existing bases.



The parts follow the pattern below. In the PDF (link@bottom) I created you can taylormake sizes required for 1" and 2" wide bases. Cut just the triangles out that you will need for connections space. Can be one or two or all. Then cut and fold the part or cut in three stripes (esp. when using thicker cardboard) and glue together. It has worked great with my test builds. The only thing I notice you need to make sure to glue the middle layer thorough. I there is glue missing around the insertion area the tabs might not stick as there is not enough friction.


If you want to create bases for other sizes use this reference. The main grid is 1" and the red subgrid is 1/5"


oldschooldm generously made it available free to use and I hope it will be useful for a lot of projects.

Here is my implementation PDF.

Would love to see pics if you use it and if you have feedback, improvements or further development that you'd like to share, don't be shy

[bravesirkevin]

I might need to look into this. Might be very useful for a project that I'm working on.

[oldschooldm]

Thanks for refining and shipping this lightning!

This system is all about friction fit - hence the double-thick connectors fitting in a single-thickness slot. It's not meant to be super-sturdy or lock-tight.

I'm going to use this connector system on my fold-flat walls in the future along with periodic repositionable glue-dots to keep the walls safe against player bumping them.

[tonsha]

I'm not sure I understand the construction - especially how to use the two pages.

Could you please explain how it all looks under that bottom plate?

Other than that it looks like a fantastic way to connect terrain pieces together!

AWESOME!

[whisper31]

Very interesting idea you two. I may have to take a shot at using this. TerrainLinx from WWG is a little tough to work with, but it is using foam core board as the inner layer of the lamination.

[glennwilliams]

Nicely done.

[lightning]

Feb 14, 2017 0:07:41 GMT -9 tonsha said:

I'm not sure I understand the construction - especially how to use the two pages.

Could you please explain how it all looks under that bottom plate?

...

My two pages are just implementations of the general idea. The first page produces 1"wide strips and the second page 2"wide strips. So for the first page you can have several 1x1" bases if you cut them or one 1x8" base. Same for the 2" page. You can extend this to any size base you need.

The general idea is to have bases that will "magically" be held together with connector parts. The magic being friction! Obviously it is not as stable as glued together, but works fine for holding stuff together on a gaming table.

The bases are made of three layered parts where the middle layer has some cutout spaces (where later the connector parts will be inserted) and the top and bottom layer, covering the cutout spaces, produce the friction to hold whatever you insert in place. The small squares on the bottom of the pages are the connector parts.

My PDF has the bases setup as parts that you would Z-fold to produce the three layers. You could also cut the three layers separately and glue them together.

One refinement I made when building this, is to make the bottom layer a little smaller, resulting in a little ledge (as seen on the photo). This will help inserting the connector squares.

Let me know if this helps. Maybe I should do a video ...