I remember seeing their booth at the Orlando Maker Faire years ago. Metal pipe was a bit too expensive for my budget but I was still inspired by their display and started using PVC and custom 3D printed connectors in my gardening projects.
I love how much work they've done on connectors. In my experience with PVC, one of the biggest hurdles to making interesting projects is finding prebuilt connectors for anything besides simple 90-degree angles. It makes sense given that most PVC projects are for construction rather than hobby projects, but it's still annoying.
Having pre-drilled screw holes is also a nice bonus.
The "discounted" bundle is such an anti-pattern. I'm saving the price of one fitting, out of 20. So if the bundle has even one fitting that I have no use for, the whole deal falls apart, and I should have bought them individually instead. Anyone with the volume to make use of all connectors would probably want to negotiate a better deal anyway.
EMT conduit isn't a great support material if you're handling human weight loads. The picture on the front page showing off the strength is visibly bending. It's kind of an awkward load profile, lower weight like an awning you're probably using ABS, higher weight you're using 1 1/4" system like steeltek or keeklamp
And that’s even with his feet on the ground out of frame ;)
Right. There are many structural pipe fitting systems. Here's one.[1] Grainger, McMaster-Carr, and larger hardware stores stock them. Usually, they use bigger pipe. Fittings are really cheap on Alibaba.
Are these elements friction-fit? That seems to be a majorly bad idea if you want to handle loads, especially if you want these fixtures to be permanent. A speck of grease or oil could make your structure collapse.
Doubly bad, the friction seems to be created by screws that can get loose with time/ not be tightened with the proper torque.
Also, an Europe specific thing (I think), is that we don't use metallic pipes for electric wiring, we use PVC.
Awesome, but what does 1'' mean? Some weird measurement unit?
" is imperial inches, ' is imperial feet.
It's awesome that they combine 1" pipe with a 5 mm hex [1] (often "Allen" in the US) fastener. :)
1" is one inch
1' is one foot
So yeah, a weird measurement unit. Technically the symbol to be used is a prime symbol (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_(symbol)), but what’s used in practice is anything that looks close enough.
Neat idea!
In college I hung blackout curtains in my dorm room with conduit - IIRC it was maybe $5 for a pipe that was longer, sturdier, cheaper, and less annoying than the typical telescoping curtain rods (where the curtain always gets caught up on the telescoping edges as you open it).
I also love that you can add structural bends with readily available (and relatively compact) conduit bending tools. Gotta love economies of scale.
I have been shopping for pickup truck bed organization racks that are in the thousands of dollars, but can never pull the trigger because they do not seem like they should cost that much. If I can design these to support the weight I need they will find their way in to the truck bed and my overlanding rig.
I think you’re far better off with black pipe or rigid metal conduit than EMT (thinner conduit which is not even allowed to support a light or outlet per the electrical code).
Black pipe is still pretty cheap and way stronger than EMT.
Probably a little pricier but I’ve had great success with linear rails for projects like that. There’s a ton of sizes and accessories like wheels and plates and various hardware
+1 for rails like these. I’ve used 10 series aluminum extrusions in a roof rack, roof top tent, awning and solar panel setup. I purchased all mine and accessories from here
https://www.tnutz.com/product-category/10-series-extrusions/
Incidentally, as a kid I loved Fischertechnik kits; they're like Lego but instead of a brick as the basic element, they have X-linear rails.