Homemade awning

#1

Decided I wanted to try my hand at making an awning rather than buying one. The main things I want is a fast deploy/collapse, and no legs or support lines. I was thinking a 270 and obviously inspired by the Kingsman, but don’t think I really need that much coverage. So I was thinking something that deploys the same fast way, but has a form factor of a normal ARB 2500. This is what I have come up with so far.

Standard-Collapsed
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Standard-Extended
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Standard-Mounted
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The idea would be the sides swing out and lock in place with spring pins (as shown), or a locking pin like a rear swing out has. There would be a slight downward slope from the vehicle outward, and I think you could get enough tension on the fabric with that long of a lever? I was also thinking of using nutserts to attach the fabric for easy replacement/cleaning of the fabric.

Any thoughts or ideas on how to improve this design, or issues you see? I have zero experience with awnings. Thanks!

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#2

With a two prong design like that I can’t envision the packup or stowaway of the tent would be fast or easy because of the fabric, but I could be wrong. The engineer in my sees there being difficulty in opening and closing. If the fabric has a width of x at both ends when open (end of prongs far from camper and close to camper) when you swing an arm the tent corners will follow an arc pattern, fully closed and fully open the length would still be x but at the angle with one closed and one slightly open I foresee the length being greater than x therefore hard to clothes without putting a lot of tension on the fabric. Folding it up would require a criss/cross/overlap of the fabric.

The viable solution for a two prong design would be sliding the fabric over the prongs after open and removing the fabric when closed.

Is there an existing tent that uses this design on the market?

#3

Thanks for the reply! I appreciate the insight of someone rocking more than an arts degree trying to do math!

This is how I roughly imagined folding up the fabric. Fold each ends in then roll up the triangle that is left. I was thinking the length would stay the same throughout the path the end of the arm takes, but maybe not. If I keep the longest dimension parallel with the side of the camper will there be enough slack to overcome this? What am I missing?

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#4

And I named that file confused-josh.jpg in regards to me being confused, then I realized your name is Josh too. ha

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#5

Gotcha, I assumed the length and width were the same, but it looks like your width is 7’ 7" and length is 7’ 11/16" so my input should not be a problem anymore (I couldn’t really see the original dimensions on my phone). If your length was longer then one side wouldn’t close all the way because the width of the fabric wouldn’t reach to one of the fulcrums. Then when you started to close the other side it would look kind of like a scissor lift that couldn’t collapse all the way. Hence my original caution if they were the same length then it could result in a lot of tension and tight fit when closing.

Cool design!

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#6

Cool. Thanks for taking a look and the feedback!

#7

Consider making a downsized model out of cheap materials and test the design before dealing with the full sized awning.

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#8

I found this video helpful. I have not made it myself though…

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