
Mechanical Characterization of Structured Sheet Materials - lainon
https://www.disneyresearch.com/publication/structured-sheet-materials/
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trentlott
I do materials research and I'm more blown away by the novelty that _Disney_
is doing basic science.

Am I misunderstanding something?

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Kagerjay
Disney has its own manufacturing facility for custom steel fabrication
components

They need a diverse range of aesthetic designs that are structurally sound.
Some structures in Disney are very unique, the first one that comes to mind is
the Epcot ball. I can also see this material application being used in their
animatronics possibly(jurassic world trex comes to mind). Other use cases
might be nonload bearing walls and fences, there are a lot of walls in disney

It might also be needed for realistic physics rendering for pixar as well but
I might be wrong though. First thing that comes to mind is the movie Cars and
crash simulations on materials with this wall type.

They might have use cases for building souvenirs with these type of items.
Disney imports a lot of stuff overseas and has a large number of facilities
for JIT staging and manufacturing for custom things like specialty stamped
glassware souvenirs coffee mugs etc. Those are done locally, at least thats
what Universal Studios does

I might be wrong here too but they might want intentional deformation for
reasons i do not know about. It could be for visual safety reasoms as well,
you place this material adjacent to something load bearing. Similarly how
civil engineers will put an elastic material on a broken wall to observe crack
deformation. Youngs modulus on a sheet of metal of similar gauge thickness is
going to be always higher than what these materials offer. Money is not an
issue with disney at all.

Im not entirely sure if they intend to make 3D structures with this, or use
laser sintering to build custom composite alloys with these materials. They
are using finite element analysis with a combination of statistics to make
these models.

There might be actual cost saving reasons behind these materials. Or it might
be faster manufacturing and prototyping for small animatronics, they need lots
of those in short time frames. Those materials are most likely laser sintered
which is kind of like 3D printing which is used often in mechanical shops for
prototypes. 3D printing plastic offers no elasticity deformation generally

Other things that come to mind with these materials. Cutting board mats,
bracelets, mats, polygons, shape memory alloys (heat it up to change its
shape), balls, necklaces, board games, yoyos, string games, anything you can
3D print, clothing, cosplay (e.g. lots of disney starwars stormtroopers),
build you own mini deathstar kits (usually prelasered sheets of metal you
fold), gundam model kits or similar, legos. Those are just some applications
for souvenirs disney might use with it

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jpitz
>Money is not an issue with disney at all.

I just don't agree with that. Otherwise, I think you are pretty spot on.

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Kagerjay
I forgot to mention buckyballs and nets as souvenirs.

What I meant is Disney doesn't mind shelling out more money for quality goods.
They just pay horribly slow (90days IIRC) and require vendors to have really
high insurance policies.

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Kagerjay
I looked at a vendors insurance policy requirements from Disney its almost
$10,000,000 coverage. These include medical expensive, personal injury, damage
to premise and property, and excess liability. The average policy for most
small-medium businesses is usually around $500,000 for workers comp only

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jpitz
I'm a vendor serving that industry segment, and that's not out of line with
the coverage we have to carry.

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qubex
Remarkable. They’ve sampled the space of possible tessellated structures and
quantified their behaviours.

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chicob
A company that owns theme parks doing research in materials science and
robotics? Doesn't look like anything to me.

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UpshotKnothole
I’m sure thst the robots will never become self-aware and violently rebel at
the very least. Westworld Disney is going to be a huge hit!

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jmartrican
I'm surprised this isn't already a thing.

