3D Printing

Bust of Sappho

I experimented with merging triangles on this 3D scan of the bust of Sappho (thing:105551). It is interesting how it turns into modern almost cubist art as the triangles mesh is simplified. Read on for more details...

Five turn torus necklace

Shapeways can print in different metals, but the turn-around time is about a week. So I typically prototype on a Makerbot and then send off for the final product once I have the design refined. If you can't print it yourself, you can also purchase the necklace from Shapeways.

XY Table

I tried to build an XY table using a 3D printed carriage, linear slides and steppers. It was ok, but not very linear and I gave up.

3D tools

Unfolding STL

Using the power of math and trigonometry, I've been working on a way to unfold 3D STL files into sections that can be cut on the laser cutter. This Mobius torus was my first successful model that was been converted to papercraft. Read on for details and source code...

3D printed corners

I've been experimenting with processing STL files to unfold them flat and make wireframes with dowels for edges and the next seemed to be generating 3D corners that will hold laser cut faces. Read on for more details...

Wireframe STL

I'm working on a tool that will generate 3D printable connectors for the vertices in an STL file, allowing construction of very large objects. Instead of being limited to the print volume of the 3D printer, the size of the resulting thing can be almost arbitrarily large. This two-turn Mobius torus has some issues with intersections between the beams, but might work out. Read on for more details...

Laser slicing

ReplicatorG and SkeinForge can be used to generate slices of arbitrary thickness, so I used a 3D model from Thingiverse and cut it out of 3mm clear acrylic. The technique makes for a very neat mix of high XY resolution and very low Z resolution. Read more about this technique...

UV cured 3D printed resin

I tried using a modified DLP projector to print 3D shapes with UV cured resin. It sort of worked, until the projector caught fire. Stand back -- we're going to try science! Read on for more details...

List of pages

Last update: November 8, 2020