Liora's Journal: Hmm...

...Let me preface this by saying I am not an idiot. I'm really not.

Ok, that said, is there anybody out there in my readership that is familiar with the www.8020.net Industrial Erector Set? (Or at least somewhat mechanically minded that can give it a whirl?) I've never used the thing before, and if I had the pieces in front of me, I could build what I need to build, but I don't have the pieces, I just have all of the .PDF manuals that are available on their website.

I want to build a trade show display. Let me describe first what I'll settle for, and then exactly what I want. Two roughly 1' long pieces to serve as feet, 9' apart. In the middle of these, two poles going up 9'. Connecting the poles are two different 9'long pieces, one 6" off the ground, the other 8.5' off the ground. I will then design a banner and get the company printing the banner on vinyl fabric to sew a loop on the top and bottom so that the banner will slide through the connecting pieces to hang. All of this must collapse into something that is checkable on an airline.

Now, what I'd like ideally (but it seems I can't have) is something almost just like this, but instead of this being a fram for one 8' X 9' banner, this being a frame for one 3' X 9' banner in the middle, and then two additional banners on each side of that, also 3' X 9' coming out at you at roughly 45 degrees (each forming a 125 degree angle with the middle banner).

I called the place and talked to a guy, and he said that it looks like what I'm looking for are things all in their "Fractional Catalog" so at least I have narrowed my search to one of their four catalogues. And I wanted it to be 1" X 1" and then varying lengths. But if I go that route, my ideal choice is seemingly out, because there are no joints for the 10 series (1" X 1") that are not either 180 or 90 degrees. I want 120 degrees. So there is another option, that's the (1" X 1.5" series) 15 series. But having non-symmetrical stuff for planning is making my head hurt a little bit. And there are pages and pages of this catalog to go through.

Anybody know anything about this stuff?

[Edit]: After further examination, it looks like if I go with Metric I can have what I want and get the angles I want too (I don't care about the difference between 1" X 1" and 2cm X 2cm).

actually

[blinder]

I know a little something.
my brother used to be a marketing director for this company that did a lot of trade shows. here's what he would do.

he would hire a local company (wherever the trade show was) to get the various materials he needed for the booth, including elaborate "erector set" type of pieces to create the "bones" of the booth.

That way, he could have just about any size he needed, and not have to worry about checking anything on the airplane.

This may or may not be feasable in your situation, j

Re:actually

[Liora]

That's a good idea, but that's not something I can do, because we don't want to have to purchase this more than once - I'm going with the erector set and vinyl rather than a traditional trade show display is because I can make this in under US$500, whereas the traditional ones you order are US$4-6K. Although I think my boss would let me pay for the expensive one, we're a small company, and we generally try to keep costs down so we can get paid well and have nice computers to work on. We'll need whatever