Sponge assembly tips
- August 31, 2007
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While the latter of the two stages of creating a Menger Sponge—preparation and assembly—is much more fun, it can get very tricky at times. With a little practice, you will be able to assemble most of your sponge without even looking…really!
First, let's go over the basics. Preparation is the act of creating units—the individual pieces that compose cubes and the final sponge. Assembly is the act of interlocking units to create cubes and attaching them to the sponge.
Basically, units create cubes and cubes create sponges: units » cubes » sponges.
The easiest part of assembly is the first cube, requiring 6–10 units and a few easy steps. Attaching additional cubes can be done three ways:
Pre-assembly
The first method involves building a cube separately and leaving flaps exposed on sides that will interlock with other flaps. Pre-assembling cubes works best for cubes that will interlock with only one set of flaps, such as cubes on the 12 edges of a level 1 sponge.
Note: all cubes end up interlocking with at least two sets of flaps in all sponges, but flaps are exposed during assembly until more cubes are attached so some cubes will interlock with only one other until more are attached to them. For an example, see the first level four photo with some cubes attached on a single side.
Assembly on the fly
The second and most used method is used for cubes that interlock with two or more sets of flaps. Units should be added to the sponge one at a time.
Trying to attach a pre-assembled cube to multiple sets of flaps is enough to drive anyone mad because it is nearly impossible to make the flaps behave properly. (Don't believe me? Try it…now try it with three sets of flaps.) Assembling on the fly makes life much easier. Most of the time on larger sponges is spent assembling on the fly.
Some pre-assembly required
The last method was learned the hard way after many frustrating attempts and mangled units. There are areas in all sponges that are difficult to panel, such as the insides of the smallest holes. You could try to assemble the cubes in these areas on the fly and panel the necessary sides afterward, but depending on the direction of the flaps, you may find yourself wishing there was an easier way. The trick is to pre-assemble a cube up to step four in the cube assembly instructions and use that to start assembling on the fly. Explaining this without a demonstration is a little difficult and without access to a video camera.
While this can be a tricky method to master, it makes panelling those hard-to-reach sides easier since the bottom of the set of units after step four is the hard-to-reach side. Essentially, it's pre-panelled.
Mastering these assembly methods takes time and practice. By the time you finish folding a couple level one sponges, you should be able to do most of them quite well.
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