Prana Sphere

Other names for this Geometry

Regular Octahedron
Square dipyramid with equal edge lengths

Building a Prana Sphere

Basic Prana Sphere

You will need the following Connectors

• 6 - Prana Sphere Pipe Connectors

You will need the following pipes

• 12 lengths of pipe of the same length

N.B. when determining the lengths of the pipe, you will probably need to take into account that part of the connectors actually add to the length of the sides. So may need to determine what length the connectors add to your pipe lengths for the various sides and deduct this from the lengths of the pipe you produce.

Prana Sphere with Base Support

To setup a Prana Sphere with two of its Vertexes vertically aligned i.e. how a Prana Sphere is normally viewed.

You will need the following Connectors

• 5 - Prana Sphere Pipe Connectors
• 1 - Prana Sphere Base Pipe Connector

You will need the following pipes

• 12 lengths of pipe of the same length
• 4 - lengths of pipe - usually of the same length (large enough to create a stable base for the Prana Sphere)

N.B. when determining the lengths of the pipe, you will probably need to take into account that part of the connectors actually add to the length of the sides. So may need to determine what length the connectors add to your pipe lengths for the various sides and deduct this from the lengths of the pipe you produce.

The following video shows a Prana Sphere being constructed using the above Prana Sphere Vertexes and plastic pipe.

N.B. in the above video, older versions of Prana Sphere Vertexes were used, which have since been updated to the ones available on this page.

It should be noted that the above base supporting Vertex can only cope with a certain size of pipe length for the Prana Sphere it has to support. This is what happened to a Base Supporting Vertex, when I used too large a pipe length for constructing the Prana Sphere :-

N.B. If you do decide to use this form of supported Prana Sphere, I suggest printing the Base Vertex with a solid infill, as opposed to any form of a mesh infill, to create the strongest Base Vertex you can possibly create.

Prana Sphere with supporting Struts

To deal with the strength issues of the above Base Vertex, I have created this variant with supporting struts.

You will need the following Connectors

• 2 - Prana Sphere Pipe Connectors (used at top and bottom of Prana Sphere)
• 4 - Prana Sphere Support Pipe Connector (used in the middle plane of the Prana Sphere)
• 4 - Prana Sphere Base Support Pipe Connector (used at the base of the supporting Struts)

You will need the following pipes

• 16 lengths of pipe of the same length

N.B. when determining the lengths of the pipe, you will probably need to take into account that part of the connectors actually add to the length of the sides. So may need to determine what length the connectors add to your pipe lengths for the various sides and deduct this from the lengths of the pipe you produce.

Useful Maths

Determining the required length of side for a given height of a Prana Sphere

For a given height of Prana Sphere (when considering a Prana Sphere standing on one of its vertexes, with opposite vertex vertically above it), the length of the side of the Prana Sphere is found using the formula :-

Prana Sphere Side Length = height / 1.41421

N.B. 1.41421 is approximately the Square Root of 2.

The above formula is derived from the formula for working out the radius of a circumscribed sphere of the Prana Sphere (one that touches the Prana Sphere at all vertices).

Files use with 3D editing packages and 3D printers

Prana Sphere Pipe Connector

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Prana Sphere Base Pipe Connector

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Prana Sphere Support Pipe Connector

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Prana Sphere Base Support Pipe Connector

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Prana Sphere

Below are the files for a generic Prana Sphere i.e. wire frame Octahedron.

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