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A year of learning 3D printing in public: one post a day starting in August 2013, from our first print to serious design work.

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  Day 365 Last day of the print-every-day-for-a-year project!

  I think the first thing that needs saying here is that a year is a very long time. There are a lot of days in a year. After about 60 or 70 days I remember thinking that we were probably halfway through this year-long blog thing and then being shocked at just how many days there are in a year. Damn.

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  Day 364 Customizable hinged polyhedra

  TWO DAYS LEFT. Just today and tomorrow, and we're done with our print-and-blog-about-one-thing-every-day-for-an-entire-freakin-year project! As our final big project this year, we've put together one model for making hinged nets of all five Platonic solids: the Tetrahedron (Day 353), Hexahedron/Cube

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  Day 363 Customizable hinge/snap icosahedron net

  THREE DAYS LEFT. Our final hinge/snap net is for the remaining Platonic solid, the lovely Icosahedron: Thingiverse link: Settings: Printed on a MakerBot Replicator 2 with no raft and no support on an acrylic build plate, with .3mm layer height. When you load the model the MakerBot Desktop software w

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  Day 362 Customizable hinge/snap dodecahedron net

  FOUR DAYS LEFT. Today we printed our fourth Platonic solid hinge/snap model, of a dodecahedron. This is the same shape we printed back on Day 83 as part of our old Hinged Nets and Snap Tiles series but now the dimensions and tolerances of the model are customizable in OpenSCAD and at the Thingiverse

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  Day 361 Friday fail: 72 pencils edition

  FIVE DAYS LEFT. Today we printed a redesign of AuntDaisy's Geo Hart 72 Pencil Holder from Thingiverse. Instead of scaling that model we made two simple new models in Tinkercad. Each model is just a hexagon ring with holes in it, used to line up pencils to make George Hart's wonderful 72 Pencils scul

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  Day 360 Shapeways print of the TRI bracelet

  SIX DAYS LEFT. The TRI bracelet (Day 320) is back from Shapeways! It's delicate but very beautiful and came out perfectly. You can bend it easily in your hand and it is soft on the wrist. It sort of feels like a strip of light, sanded tree bark. I wouldn't wear it to a bar fight or under a heavy jac

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  Day 359 Customizable hinge/snap octahedron net

  Today we modified the code of the hinge/snap Tetrahedron net from Day 353 to make an Octahedral net. Here are two copies, one unfolded and one folded: Thingiverse link: Settings: Printed on a MakerBot Replicator 2 with .3mm layer height and no raft or supports, in 31 minutes. Technical notes, why-ar

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  Day 358 iPhone stand binge

  I can't believe it took me this long to get around to printing an iPhone stand. Phone cases and stands are the first thing that most of my students think of to print. But here I am, almost at the end of printing one thing a day for an entire freakin year, and it just now occurs to me that I need a s

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  Day 357 Printer challenge! 26 mm level 3 menger sponge

  Today we had a visit from Rebecca Field, JMU mathematics professor, co-author, long-time friend, and fellow member of the Female mathematicians who have been known to have teal hair list. She is about to take over as head of the GSCI 104 3D Printing courses this fall in the JMU 3-SPACE classroom. In

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  Day 356 Sunday guest: Fred Hohman and knot fibrations, part 2

  Today we continue Fred Hohman's guest post from Day 355, in which he will print the knot fibrations he constructed yesterday... Now that I have code that can generate trefoil knots and fibrations of any thickness, it’s time to start printing various versions of the models. The goal is to be able to

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  Day 355 Saturday guest: Fred Hohman and knot fibrations, part 1

  One thing about living in New York City is that you get a lot of guests. Lots of people come to the city and hotels are too expensive even to consider! We've had seven different people visit us since we moved here just a couple of months ago. Blog-wise it's the same story: now that the print-a-day y

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  Day 354 Forty-one pentagonal icositetrahedra

  Today (August 15) I had the great pleasure and honor of attending the final convocation for the 2014 NYU GSTEM program. At this event, 41 young women who are rising high school seniors presented the work they did this summer interning at various science, technology, engineering, and mathematics depa

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  Day 353 Customizable hinge/snap tetrahedron net

  Today we modified Day 344's Cube net design to make a Tetrahedron net: Here it is mostly folded up. This net is so small that it only folds well in one direction; in the other direction the edges of the faces keep the hinges from swinging open enough for the model to close all the way. The cube net,

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  Day 352 Center of mass demonstration

  Today we printed designbynumbers' Center of mass manipulatives for calculus classes from Thingiverse. It worked very well and balanced wonderfully! Thingiverse link: Settings: Printed on a MakerBot Replicator 2 with .2mm layer height. We changed the infill to "linear" instead of "hexagonal" because

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  Day 351 Impossible menger burr

  After richgain's excellent guest posts walking us through Burr Tools on Day 348 and Day 349, we couldn't resist giving it a try. As I think we've established, I love Menger sponges and I'm kind of a jerk. So I made a burr puzzle that can never be assembled. Thingiverse link: Settings: The red menger

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  Day 350 Triple bubbles

  When three bubbles intersect, they do so in a very specific way. Here's what it looks like: Using the OpenSCAD code for this design included at the bottom of this post you can make your own bubble model with any three bubbles you like. The code will automatically position the bubbles correctly and c

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  Day 349 Sunday guest: Rich gain and printable puzzles, part 2

  This is the second in a pair of guest posts by Richard Gain (richgain on Thingiverse), designer and printer of 3D burr puzzles. For richgain's first post see Day 348. In Part 1, we used Burr Tools to design the two different puzzle pieces and the target shape used in the "Looks Easy" puzzle. Now we

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  Day 348 Saturday guest: Rich gain and printable puzzles, part 1

  Today's post is contributed by Richard Gain (richgain on Thingiverse), designer of the nicely-constructed puzzles from Day 324 and Day 332 as well as the beautiful and terrible Szilassi polyhedron from Day 325. He has designed a stunning array of challenging burr puzzles that he makes using the prog

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  Day 347 Friday fail: Self-intersecting faces edition

  It seems that the MakerBot Desktop software has an upper bound on the number of "self-intersecting faces" that can be in a model. When I had just a couple of squares hinged together, I didn't have any problems. But with six square faces all with hinges and snaps, there were over 500 of these bad fac

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  Day 346 Personalizable crazy cube

  One really cool thing about a fold-out cube is that you can print things on the faces without using supports and then fold up the cube to get an object with interesting protrusions all over. To print a closed cube with crazy sides would be really unreliable, but to print a flat one is easy. Here's o

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  Day 345 Customizable hinge/snap cube net

  This week we're attempting to combine three of our previous designs into one: - Print-in-Place Fidget Cube (for the hinges) - Poly-Snaps: Tiles for Building Polyhedra (for the polygon code and homogeneous snaps) - Polyhedra - Hinged Nets (to update to OpenSCAD/Customizer) So far we've managed to get

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  Day 344 Personalizable hinged initials

  Here's one use for yesterday's hinge - some stand-up hinged initials for young C: Of course, if your initials aren't CGR then this model doesn't help you very much. So here's a design you can customize yourself in Tinkercad: Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Technical notes, Tinkercad/educator flavo

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  Day 343 Customizable cone hinge

  Today we made a cone hinge module that can be used inside other projects: Thingiverse link: Settings: Optimized for a MakerBot Replicator 2 with default .3mm/low settings, with raft but (and this is key) no supports. For different printers, to change scale, or for tighter/looser hinges, try changing

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  Day 342 Hinge

  In preparation for a new hinge-related project, today we redesigned our conical hinge maker. Technical notes, clearance flavor: We made this hinge in OpenSCAD and tomorrow we'll have a customizable version up on Thingiverse, with modifiable tolerance parameters. Clearance dimensions matter a lot! He

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  Day 341 Ganesha statue

  Today we printed another scanned object from the Art Institute of Chicago, a Ganesha statue on MyMinFactory made by coskucan. According to the model description and trusty Wikipedia, Ganesha is known as a remover of obstacles and a god of beginnings, both of which particularly appeal to me these day

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  Day 340 Buddha statue

  Today we printed tomburtonwood's very descriptively-titled Buddha Seated in Meditation (Dhyanamudra), Chola period, c. 12th century, Art Institute of Chicago. Power-designer Tom Burtonwood (@tburtonwood on Twitter) is the Artist-in-Residence at the Art Institute of Chicago and he has been doing some

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  Day 339 Minecraft ringtail spider

  Today we printed toddsplod67's Minecraft spider from Thingiverse, for two reasons. First, Minecraft. Second, this 3D model is part of a tutorial for the 3D-modelling software Ringtail. There are so, so, so many modeling programs that we want to learn and it was nice to see a walkthrough tutorial for

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  Day 338 Tinkercad math gyros

  Today we gave a 3D-printing workshop at MoMath Summer Camp. Everyone got to make and print their own math gyro in Tinkercad. Here's what the students made: Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Printed on a MakerBot Replicator 2 and a MakerBot Replicator Mini at .3mm layer height. Technical no

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  Day 337 Calvin 3D scan!

  We recently got a scan of Calvin's head at the 3D Photo Booth in the MakerBot Retail Store on Mulberry Street in NYC. About 18 months ago we got a scan at the same location (see this JMU MakerLab post), and the technology at the 3D Photo Booth has changed significantly for the better. This scan is a

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  Day 336 Pile of pikachu

  Here's why you work so hard (see yesterday's post) to get a reliable print at 50% size: Because you need a lot of them! Young C has been spending a lot of time playing Pokemon at the Brooklyn Strategist (one of the best places on earth!) and will be bringing these to the next tournament: Thingiverse

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  Day 335 Low-poly pikachu

  Today's print is FLOWALISTIK's nicely stylized Low-Poly Pikachu model from Thingiverse. The design of this model is great, and just like the ones we printed on Day 282, FLOWALISTIC made very nice choices for the few polygons in the model. We wanted a very small model so we printed it at half size. I

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  Day 334 Snap!

  We printed ZortraX's Zortrax Buckle from Thingiverse for the sole purpose of hearing that satisfying snap that these types of buckles make. Can the snap be 3D-printed? Yes it can! This buckle works perfectly and makes a lovely snap. The buckle then unsnaps very nicely and seems to be holding up very

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  Day 333 Friday fail: Eighteen pieces edition

  Today we printed ATDT8675309's Cube Puzzle on Thingiverse, which consists of eighteen rods that assemble into a nice regular structure. Except that we failed at the assembly part! Maybe we're all thumbs, had too much coffee, aren't as clever as we thought we were, etc... Thingiverse link: Settings:

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  Day 332 Six piece box

  A few days ago we printed richgain's Printable Interlocking Puzzle 1, and today our print is his Printable Interlocking Puzzle 2. For me this was actually a pretty difficult puzzle to put together. However the pieces fit together very well with good clearances; nothing needs to be forced. The model

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  Day 331 POP customizable function bracelet

  Trading sine and cosine turns yesterday's POW bracelet into this POP: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerBot Replicator 2 on .3mm/low. Technical notes, math flavor: Yesterday's POW bracelet was based on this function: If we put the "2" weight on the cosine instead of the sine then we get the function

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  Day 330 POW customizable function bracelet

  Today we kick the math up a notch and use a combination of two trigonometric functions to define a bracelet curve. POW! Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerBot Replicator 2 with .3mm/low resolution and raft. Technical notes, math flavor: The main thing that characterized each of our previous bracelet d

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  Day 329 RIB customizable function bracelet

  This time we've fixed the frequency at 72, the amplitude at 2mm, and left the diameter, height, and slant variable to make a RIB bracelet. This bracelet is not stretchy but it is very fluid and bends/flattens easily, making it more comfortable to wear than the TRI (Day 322) or the SUN (Day 328). Thi

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  Day 328 SUN customizable function bracelet

  Continuing the bracelet series from Day 320 and Day 322, today we printed a new customizable sun-shaped variation. The bracelet is a little bit stretchy but not as much as emmett's classic Stretchlet design. Thingiverse link: Settings: Printed on a Replicator 2 and a Replicator Mini at .3mm layer he

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  Day 327 Saturday guest: AuntDaisy and the electra

  Today's post is contributed by Austin Day, aka AuntDaisy on Thingiverse, from Aunt Daisy Scientific Ltd., UK. AuntDaisy is the designer of the Trilobite articulatum model that we printed on Day 130 as well as the beautiful 3D-printable modular origami Electra model that we printed on Day 323. Thank

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  Day 326 Friday fail: Gyro edition

  Guess what, I started a Gyro project. As usual I'm starting with a big pile of fails. My goal is to make a reliable gyro model in Tinkercad to use in introductory 3D-printing workshops. I'd much rather use OpenSCAD so I could parametrize the tolerances, but I want something that a beginner could pic

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  Day 325 Szilassi polyhedron

  Today we printed a rather upsetting shape called the Szilassi polyhedron, a model by richgain on Thingiverse. (Day two of our two-day richgain series!) The Szilassi polyhedron has seven hexagonal faces, but the hexagons are not regular, and even worse, aren't even convex. However, these faces have a

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  Day 324 Three piece box

  Today we printed richgain's Interlocking Puzzle 1 from Thingiverse. Actually we printed it three times, in three different colors, so that we could make three multi-colored versions. The puzzle is easy, so a good simple gift for anyone. The three together make a nice set since the colors are on diff

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  Day 323 Printing huge with a mini: Modular origami electra

  Today we continue our series of posts investigating how we can get the most out of a MakerBot Replicator Mini. As its name implies, it's not a large printer and isn't made for printing large things. Which of course makes me want to print giant things with it. I guess I'm sort of a jerk. Probably if

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  Day 322 Updated "TRI" bracelet, now with wavy-control

  It occurs to me that some people like things more wavy than others. So today we're updating the Customizable TRI Function Bracelet design so that amplitude becomes a modifiable parameter. For example now you can make this wavier TRI model: Thingiverse link: Settings: Printed on a MakerBot Mini with

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  Day 321 Cylinder maze

  Today's design is wizard23's A-Mazing Box on Thingiverse. It needs some breaking in but it is fun to use and looks great: Thingiverse link: Settings: We printed this one on .2mm/Standard because it seemed like accuracy and fit could be very important. Things are tight but I think over time the actio

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  Day 320 TRI customizable function bracelet

  Today we have the first of many posts in a customizable bracelet series, with a bracelet design called TRI. It has a nice wavy shape that is based on a trigonometric function: The wavy shape makes this bracelet sit very nicely on your wrist. If you get it sized just right then it will fit over one o

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  Day 319 Science friday!

  This afternoon I had the pleasure of being a guest on NPR's Science Friday with Ira Flatow, live in the NYC studio. Even cooler, the other guest was Bre Pettis, CEO of MakerBot! For the show, the Science Friday group made a SCiFRI logo with MakerBot's new Printshop Typemaker app, and Bre printed in

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  Day 318 Pythagorean blocks

  Today we printed xoan's Pythagoras' 3-4-5! model from Thingiverse, which was one of the many entries to the Makerbot Academy Math Manipulatives Challenge, which called on modelers to design hands-on mathematical tools for K-12 classrooms. I love the simplicity of this model, and that it illustrates

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  Day 317 Vaas vase

  Zydac's stunning Delta Vase model on Thingiverse, which was based on architect Van Shundel Huis' Delta Vass piece. It's a really cool shape, with three angled planes making a "Y" at the base and a triangle at the top: Thingiverse link: Settings: Printed on a MakerBot Replicator Mini with .3mm layer

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  Day 316 Sphere rings

  Today we printed a set of kitwallace's Customizable Gyro Rings from Thingiverse, which he made with some simple, elegant OpenSCAD code after being inspired by Leoparder's Rhino-built Gyro Rotating Rings model. The amazing thing about this gyro is that unlike the one we printed on Day 164, this one h

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  Day 315 Mini prints to the edge!

  Every printer has its good and bad points. My trusty MakerBot Replicator 2 is a workhorse; it's fast, quiet, and dependable. However, I've never been able to print successfully over the entire build plate. Near the center is okay, but near the edges things tend to peel up or print badly. I know how

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  Day 314 Designing a penny trap with OpenSCAD

  Tinkercad is a fantastic way to get started with 3D modeling, but when you're ready to move to the next level I suggest learning OpenSCAD. OpenSCAD is a free and easy-to-learn programming language built specifically to produce models for 3D printing. Unlike more difficult programs like Maya and Blen

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  Day 313 Designing a penny trap with Tinkercad

  On Day 307 we printed a Penny Trap. Printing the model is easy, but how do you make it in the first place? That is, how do you make a 3D design file for a Penny Trap that your printer can slice up and print? Today we'll design a simple model of a Penny Trap using the easy-to-use but surprisingly ver

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  Day 312 Friday fail: Bracelet edition

  Guess what, I started a bracelet project. Here's what I've learned so far: - If your design is a solid hockey-puck bracelet shape and you print it with 0% infill, no roof, and no floor, then the raft will still print as a solid disk that uses more filament than the bracelet itself. - If you try to p

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  Day 311 Trefoil trumpet

  Today we had a hankering for some knots, and wanted to try building something big on the Mini. We chose fredhohman's trumpety Trefoil knot model from Thingiverse. Fred Hohman is a student at the University of Georgia who studies fibered knots with Dr. David Gay. This print is at the maximum possible

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  Day 310 Math encounters at MoMath and an emergency spool holder!

  Today (July 2) I gave two public lectures about mathematics and 3D printing at MoMath, the National Museum of Mathematics, as part of their Math Encounters series. I brought along my Replicator 2 for a 3D-printing demonstration, but an hour before I had to leave for the talk, I hit a snag. In our ol

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  Day 309 Brooklyn brownstone planter

  Helllloooo Brooklyn! (bawm-bawm bawm-bawm-bawm bawm-bawm...) July 1 was our first day in our new Brooklyn digs, so to celebrate we have made MrCainScience's Brooklyn Green Roof Design on Thingiverse. He made this model with Tinkercad, and was kind enough to post a link so that other people can copy

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  Day 308 JMU cube and logo letters

  Today we move out of our house in Virginia, and I say goodbye (for now) to James Madison University. I'll be on leave for at least the next year while I am the Mathematician-in-Residence at MoMath, the National Museum of Mathematics. As a goodbye (for now) present to JMU, today I'm publicly posting

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  Day 307 Penny traps: A good first print for the classroom

  This is the sixth in a series of posts about getting started from scratch with 3D printing. Our posts so far have focused on the mechanics of printing a simple model with various types of settings on the MakerBot Replicator Mini: - Day 302 - Unboxing and setting up up the printer - Day 303 - Rotatin

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  Day 306 Octopus eraser protector

  Today, one last print of Cute Octopus Says Hello. We used yesterday's "MyLow cheap 2-shell nFyR yRnS" slicing profile so the model would print as a shell with no base, and resized first to 50% as before, and then to 40% after that, to make tiny cute octopus eraser protectors: Thingiverse link (to th

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  Day 305 Friday fail: Octopus pro edition

  This is the fourth post in our series of getting started with 3D printing using the Replicator Mini. Last time we figured out how to print a hollow version of Cute Octopus Says Hello by setting Infill to 0%. This made an octopus model that was enclosed with a hollow center. We'd prefer to print an o

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  Day 304 Hello again: Octopus tinkering

  Yesterday we printed the Cute Octopus Says Hello model from Thingiverse as a first job for the MakerBot Replicator Mini. For that first print, we did everything the easy way; but you can't get easy, fast, and cheap all at the same time. According to the Preview estimate it took 40 minutes to print o

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  Day 303 Hello octopus: A simple first print for the mini

  This is the second in a series of posts about getting started with 3D printing, and the printer we'll be using along this journey is the MakerBot Replicator Mini. If you have a different sort of printer I hope you can still get something out of these posts, although admittedly they are going to incl

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  Day 302 Setting up the mini

  Today my 9-year-old assistant Calvin will be setting up a Replicator Mini. This is the start of a series of posts on how to get started with a 3D printer, what you might try printing first, how to modify existing designs and make your own, what supplies you might want to have on hand, and things you

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  Days 301+ to be posted in BROOKLYN!

  This blog is officially on hiatus until after we finish moving to Brooklyn. Stay tuned for the end of next week when we'll post the exciting news from this week about our new printer and how it works! See you on the other side, good old MakerBot Replicator 2...

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  Day 300 Divisibility by 100 celebration with 400 Menger sponges!

  We are at Day 300 in our year-long print-a-day project, thank goodness. In celebration, today's print is a HUGE LEVEL 4 MENGER SPONGE, built out of 400 tiny Level 2 Menger sponges printed with a bunch of Replicator 2 and Afinia H-Series machines at home and at work over the last few weeks. This mode

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  Day 299 Tricolored representation of 7_7

  Today we are finally at the end of the 15-knot series of knot conformations that we started on Day 266. This one is a tour-de-force, made by printing out separate pieces and heat-gluing them together afterwards! It is a tri-coloration of the the last seven-crossing knot, 77. Thingiverse link: Settin

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  Day 298 Friday fail: Down but not out - Also come see me july 2 in NYC!

  Still trying to pack up 14 years of house and move it to a Brooklyn apartment, and that is taking pretty much all my time these days. Since I seem to be a failure expert I will try to practice the number one rule about failure: that it is a temporary condition. I will get back to the blog soon, and

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  Day 297 Borromean rings for the fourth dimension

  Today we reprinted a giant red model of the Borromean rings from our Borromean Rings Collection on Thingiverse that we made on Day 178, to replace the giant blue model pictured there. The blue model is now on a trip to the UK to Matt Parker (standupmaths on Twitter), who will be photographing it for

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  Day 296 Spiral conformation of 7_6

  The penultimate knot in our series is the knot 76, in both standard conformation and the spiral S(5,2,(1,1,-1,1)) conformation from Day 234. Thingiverse link: Settings: Makerbot Replicator 2 on .3mm/low with custom knot slicing settings. The knot requires almost no support material if you print it e

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  Day 295 Tangle conformation of 7_5

  Just three knots left in the conformation series that we started on Day 266! Today we have the knot 75in a tangle) conformation, where you can clearly see the Conway notation [322] for this knot; note the one three-twist and two two-twists in the red model on the right: Thingiverse link: Settings: M

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  Day 294 Secret push-pin shelf

  One more push-pin print; this time we took another design by Tosh on Thingiverse, his Secret Shelf, and scaled it down for use on the corkboard. Our first attempt was a reduction to 60% scale, shown on the left in orange; this is the bottom of the shelf but we are using it upside-down since it was t

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  Day 293 Push-pin push-pin-less holder

  Today we printed a push-pin-less push-pin, for those times that you don't want to leave a hole in your object; the design is Tosh's beautifully simple Wall mount paper clip from Thingiverse. Thingiverse link: Settings: Replicator 2 on .3mm/low, printed with the object on its side so that supports ar

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  Day 292 Push-pin push-pin holder

  Today is Saturday and we are printing things for young C, who needs things for his corkboard. First, a push-pin holder that is held up by push-pins, JamieLaing's Thumbtack-able Thumbtack Holder from Thingiverse: Thingiverse link: Settings: The usual .3mm/low layer height with a Replicator 2. The thu

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  Day 291 Friday fail: Crossing change edition, with pretzel conformation of 7_4

  The most eagle-eyed of you may have noticed an error in one of the knots in the group photo of the knot conformations series on Day 266. We got one of the crossings wrong in 74! Specifically, we accidentally made a print of P(-3,1,-3) - that is, three negative twists on the left, one positive twist

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  Day 290 Cantarella conformation of 7_3

  Today's knot conformation takes us back to the beginning of my 3D-printing journey in February 2013, when I got my first 3D printer - still my favorite - a MakerBot Replicator 2. (Sad note: I think this fantastic printer has been discontinued, as it is consistently out of stock on the MakerBot site.

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  Day 289 Braid representation of 7_2

  Continuing with the knot conformations series we started on Day 266, today we printed a braid representation of the knot 72. Thingiverse link: Settings: Printed on a Replicator 2 with our custom knot support profile. Technical notes, Mathematica/Blender/Tinkercad flavor: This knot was printed by JMU

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  Day 288 Micron bach

  One of the things I had to give up to move from a house in the country to an apartment in Brooklyn was my drum set. Apparently you have neighbors and stuff when you live in an apartment building, and not all of them appreciate loud banging noises. In the hopes that I'll find time to turn my musical

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  Day 287 Grocery bag holders

  In preparation for walking groceries home from the shop in the big city, today we printed three of ivanseidel's Bag Holder model on Thingiverse (one for each of us in the family). There are a number of bag holders on Thingiverse but the design of this one is particularly sturdy and elegant, with lar

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  Day 286 Torus conformations of 7_1

  Today we have two torus knot conformations of 71. A torus knot is one that can be drawn on the surface of torus ("inner tube" shape) without intersecting itself. A T(p,q) torus knot wraps around the torus like a clock p times, and around the handle of the torus q times. The standard conformation of

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  Day 285 Seifert surface of 6_3

  Today we continue with the knot conformations collection that we started on Day 266. (See also Day 267, Day 268, Day 269, Day 272, Day 273, Day 275, and Day 276.) Today's knot is 63. Along with the usual conformation of 63 we printed a confirmation with a Seifert surface. A Seifert surface is a surf

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  Day 284 Friday fail: Using failure as a design element, or psychoalphadisco­betabioaquadoloop

  Today we printed peetersm's Customizable DrooLoop Flowers on Thingiverse. The one on the left has the "windswept" look that he describes in his fan control video, caused by the printer fan blowing the strands to the right as they cooled. The one on the left was printed with the fan off, which helped

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  Day 283 Everything will be forever centered around pokemon

  One last print for C's Pokemon addiction: jessed's Pokemon Deck Box on Thingiverse. Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerBot Replicator 2 with .3mm/low and a raft, on blue painter's tape on a glass build platform. Technical notes, printing flavor: For some reason large, flat things tend to print out all

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  Day 282 Must print all the pokemon

  Can you print just two Pokemon models for a 9-year-old? No. Two is not enough. You must print many, many Pokemon and then also print a full set for a friend's birthday. Today we are joined by FLOWALISTIK's Low-Poly Squirtle and Low-Poly Totodile models from Thingiverse. I'm really impressed with all

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  Day 281 Low-poly charmander and bulbasaur

  Pokemon fever has recently gripped my son's group of friends and now everything is about Pokemon cards more cards gotta get the best cards. As a surprise I printed FLOWALISTIK's lovely Low-Poly Charmanderand Low-Poly Bulbasaur models for C, to celebrate his last week of school. These prints are expe

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  Day 280 USAMO champion prints

  Today I had the pleasure of meeting the2014 USA Mathematical Olympiad champions at their awards celebration at the headquarters of the Mathematical Association of America in DC. We kicked off the day with a 3D-printing workshop. The students worked in four teams to design objects that would be print

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  Day 279 Pre-USAMO prints

  Today we are firing up our travel Afinia H-Series to get ready for tomorrow's 3D-printing workshop at the USA Math Olympiad award ceremony at the MAA Headquarters in Washington DC. The twelve student champions will each be designing and/or printing a 3D model at the workshop. One student did his hom

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  Day 278 Silver pentagonal hexacontahedron bracelet

  Back on Day 218 we printed a bracelet built by extracting the center rings of a Pentagonal Hexacontahedron in TopMod. This week we finally received the stainless steel version we ordered from Shapeways, and it is beautiful! It's pretty bulky so it isn't cheap, and you have to physically bend it open

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  Day 277 Friday fail: Diameter-is-not-radius edition, with customizable power hair clips!

  Say it with me now: If you measure across a cylinder with calipers, you get the diameter. The DI-AM-E-TER. Not the radius. Just saying, giant-model-on-the-right: As you can see, today we printed some power hair clips. Welcome to a special Ladies' edition of Friday Fail! To illustrate why custom hair

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  Day 276 Petal conformation of 6_2

  Today is my favorite from the 3D-Printed Conformations of Knots through 7 Crossings series that my Math 297 students developed last semester in the JMU 3-SPACE classroom. It's a petal knot conformation of 62, which means that there is an angle from which all of the crossings line up on top of one an

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  Day 275 Mosaic conformation of 6_1

  Today's knot print is a mosaic projection of 61: Thingiverse link: Settings: Printed on a Replicator 2 with .3mm/low and normal support settings. Technical notes, math flavor: This knot was designed and printed by JMU Student Taylor Meador. The images in her description below are from slides of a Kn

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  Day 274 Customizable sock bones

  Sometimes I think I got into this 3D printing thing just so I would have the opportunity to say things like "customizable sock bones". Here they are: These dogbone-like objects are for holding pairs of socks together, so you don't have to roll or tie up your socks. My sock drawer used to be an unhol

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  Day 273 Lissajous conformation of 5_2

  Today's knot is 52, the three-twist knot, in a Lissajous conformation. The cool thing about this model is that from each side, the knot looks like a wavy cosine function: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerBot Replicator 2 with our custom knot-slicing profile. Technical notes, math flavor: Lissajous k

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  Day 272 Lattice conformation of 5_1

  The cinquefoil knot 51 is one of two 5-crossing knots. The shape we chose for this knot is a lattice conformation, which means that it follows only perpendicular directions in 3-space, with vertices at integer coordinates. In other words, this conformation is obtained by connecting integer-valued co

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  Day 271 Stretchy bracelets

  It's Saturday and we are resting. Kids keep asking me for stretchy bracelets so today I made some from owens' Smooth and ridged stretchlets model on Thingiverse. They came out great! I love the ridgy one and in fact wore one of them around all day today until it finally broke because am a fidget que

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  Day 270 Friday fail: Measure-twice-print-once edition, with poker chip racks

  Today I wanted to design and print a rack for poker chips, and I wanted it to hold three stacks of 20 poker chips. If you sew, or knit, or build, or pretty much do anything, then you know you that should measure carefully, and preferably at least twice. I measured the chips. I remembered to measure

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  Day 269 Minimal stick conformation of 4_1

  The figure-eight knot 41 is the only four-crossing knot, and it is usually drawn like the white knot on the left in the figure below. It is also the only knot whose stick number is 7, which means that the knot can be made out of 7 straight line segments, but no fewer. The tricky thing about studying

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  Day 268 Tritangentless conformation of 3_1

  The trefoil knot 31 is the only three-crossing knot, which means that every other knot that can be drawn as a projection in the plane with three crossings (and no fewer) must be topologically equivalent to a trefoil knot. In my opinion the coolest thing about the trefoil is that it has a tritangentl

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  Day 267 Crazy conformation of 0_1

  Today we'll start going through the knot conformations in the series we introduced yesterday. Before we begin, let's go over some of the basic notation and ideas of knot theory. Knots are embeddings of S^1 into S^3, if you're a mathematician. If you're a normal person then you can think of knots as

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  Day 266 3D printed conformations of knots

  The final project for this semester's MATH 297 - Knot Theory Research and 3D Printing course was to research and print a set of interesting knot conformations for the first fifteen knots in the Rolfsen knot table. The students recently presented their work at the Spring MD/DC/VA MAA meeting, and tha

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  Day 265 Cairo and prismatic pentagons

  Today we fix our fail from Friday (Day 263), and print Cairo pentagons and prismatic pentagons from data kindly provided by Frank Morgan's student Maggie Miller at Williams College. I have a special place in my heart for tessellating pentagons because of the late, legendary Paul Sally at the Univers

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  Day 264 Sir not-appearing-in-this-film

  To finish the furniture series we have one final print: some of the pieces that we couldn't fit into our apartment and that will be traveling to North Carolina to live with my sister Alina. And this is just the furniture we thought might fit - some pieces we didn't even bother to print because we kn

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  Day 263 Friday fail: Off-by-one edition

  Being off by one is probably the simplest, most common coding mistake you can make, but it got me this week while I was trying to make tessellating Cairo pentagon tiles for Frank Morgan and his students at Williams College. These Cairo tiles are supposed to have a mirror symmetry as shown in the dra

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  Day 262 Customizable furniture minis

  Today our Customizable Furniture Minis set is finally done and posted to Thingiverse! I guess it's time to actually start packing now... Thingiverse link: Settings: All models printed on a Replicator 2 with .3mm/low resolution, with no support and no raft. Technical notes: For discussions of the Ope

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  Day 261 Clearance stars

  Sometimes with scaled floor plans it is difficult to tell if your setup is crowded or not. To test out the openness of our layout we printed two "clearance stars" to represent an individual's personal space as they moved through the apartment. According to homeplanner.com, for limited access spaces

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  Day 260 Bed frame and floor plan

  Today's print is very simple: just a snap-around bed frame to model the wooden frame around our king-size bed. As you can see in the picture, we've chosen the smallest of the bedrooms to be our "master" bedroom, and the bed will take up pretty much all of the room. The closet at the bottom of the pi

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  Day 259 Workshop desk and kid-size bureau

  This will be our last week of printing tiny furniture; after a few more days we'll have a full set and will post everything to the Thingiverse Customizer so that all the summer movers out there can print-and-plan their new spaces. Today we printed C's room, including a modular IKIEA Linnmon table-de

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  Day 258 Sunday gift: Knots for mom

  It's Mother's Day so today I am printing something for my Mom. When I asked her what she would like me to print for her, she suggested something that she could give away to her friends instead of something for herself. Because she is a nice person and wants to do nice things for those around her, li

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  Day 257 Saturday guest: Scott sherman's isohedra

  Today's post is contributed by Scott Sherman, otherwise known as loki3 on Shapeways, where he has a wide variety of exotic dice models, including a new kind of d4 and even a d5. You can read more about these models at his Fair Dice page. Since fair dice must have an equal probability of rolling any

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  Day 256 Friday fail: Fixed-by-Tinkercad edition

  Today we look at two objects that I had trouble printing on a Replicator 2 without doing some fixes. Usually when a model won't slice with MakerWare, I use MeshLab or TopMod to find and fix the problem. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. Today it didn't, and Tinkercad had to come to the

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  Day 255 Sofabed and office chairs

  Here's a secret: I might be a little bit obsessive. With the 3D printing. Of all the tiny furniture. I'm just saying, I think this might not be normal. But we press on... Although we have to give away a lot of our current furniture to fit into our Brooklyn apartment, there is one important piece we

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  Day 254 Arcade machine and light tree

  We are going to leave a lot of furniture behind in the upcoming downsizing move, but there are two pieces we absolutely cannot live without: our full-size Galaga/Ms.PacMan arcade cabinet and our light-up Vegas tree (which we got after lusting after similar trees at the Golden Nugget). Here's the 1:5

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  Day 253 Dining chairs and kitchen stool

  Continuing our 1:50 scale miniature furniture collection, today we added dining room chairs and four-legged stools. The picture below shows what the dining area will look like in our new apartment. Thingiverse link: COMING SOON with full customizable set when we're done. Settings: Printed on a Maker

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  Day 252 Large rhombic tricontahedron

  Today we printed a large copy of a Rhombic Tricontahedron (Day 203) to give to a doctor friend who is leading the pack of those trying to figure out a vision problem of mine. It is so great to have a doctor that is actually curious about solving a puzzle; so many others send me on my way if they don

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  Day 251 Extended billy bookcases

  Continuing from yesterday, today we printed some IKEA Billy bookcases with height extenders. The height extenders are sold separately and come in both wide and thin versions. I know you can put them on the tall bookcases, and I'm hoping you can put them on the short versions as well. Rather than pri

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  Day 250 Billy bookcases

  Most of our furniture consists of bookcases, and our go-to bookcases are from IKEA's Billy bookcase series. The Billys currently come in short and tall flavors, both of which can be either wide or thin, with one option for a deeper bookcase: These take almost no time at all to print, so you can make

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  Day 249 Friday fail - From OpenSCAD crashes to beefy win!

  Sometimes things just don't work and I don't know why. For example, the new version of OpenSCAD is great but I couldn't get it to run on my old Mac laptop; it would immediately quit upon opening. After a few weeks of frustration and unsuccessful Googling I finally stumbled across this handy OpenSCAD

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  Day 248 Thursday refactor - Sofa redesign

  On Day 230 we printed some tiny sofas to try to figure out what will fit in our Brooklyn apartment this summer. (The answer: not much!) In the comments, kitwallace suggested a very clean refactoring of our clunky OpenSCAD code, as well as a way to make the sofa dimensions more accurate while still b

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  Day 247 Geek glasses fix!

  Today we printed a modern 3D-printed version of the classic "taped glasses" fix. A little plastic piece fell off C's glasses and got lost, and without it the arm of the glasses springs out to the side, which is funny but not so great for reading. C designed this replacement piece himself, using cali

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  Day 246 An eye for an eye

  Today we were supposed to get a tooth pulled out (!) so we printed something very simple and relaxing: stevemedwin's Space Family Puzzle on Thingiverse. By "we" I mean "I" and by "supposed to" I mean that I ended up not having to get the tooth pulled. Long story. But it did have to do with my eyes (

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  Day 245 Large buckyball

  We liked yesterday's little Buckyball so much that today we printed pmoews' Large Buckyball from Thingiverse. Both models are icosahedral; you can see the icosahedron shape if you look at the "corners" of each model and ignore the honeycomb patterns. The photo below shows yesterday's C320 in the bac

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  Day 244 Buckyball with stand

  Today's print is the small Buckyball model from pmoews' Buckyball Easter Egg gift set on Thingiverse. Like owens' Menger Sponge with External Support model (see Day 157), this Buckyball prints with no internal supports, while being supported underneath by an external custom-made removable stand that

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  Day 243 Base for shell models

  Last week I used the shell model from Day 237 in class and it was so great to get to that point at the board where my picture is all crazy and I start apologizing for not being able to draw a really good picture of the shells and then be able to say "oh, wait, I happen to have a physical model of th

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  Day 242 Time turner

  Last Friday we talked about time and failing. Today we have a more positive thing to say about time, and we printed khakerry's Time Turner model from Thingiverse. (What I wouldn't give to have Hermione's device for being two places at the same time!) This model was built from the ground up in Tinker

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  Day 241 Six-piece bar puzzle

  The other day we picked apart the OpenSCAD code for althepal's six-piece ball puzzle (Day 239), so today we made a simple remix, removing the line of code for the enclosing sphere to make a six-piece bar puzzle. Our original intention was to add some spines or something to the ball, but this bar puz

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  Day 240 W clip

  Today we printed something useful: thomasforsyth's Clip peg - general purpose model from Thingiverse. It's not springy and it doesn't open far, but it does clip very securely. It's going to be great to be able to print these again when I inevitably lose them somehow. Thingiverse link: Settings: Repl

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  Day 239 Six-piece ball puzzle

  Today we printed althepal's Six-piece soccer ball puzzle from Thingiverse. I have a lot of puzzles like these in my office at work, and people often take them apart and then don't have enough time to figure out how put them back together again. The puzzles can be a pain for me to reassemble and don'

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  Day 238 Shellmaker 2

  More shells! This time we printed a model to match an example from the Khan Academy, so that you can go there and learn how to set up the definite integral for this volume with shells if you have a mind to. The volume is obtained by rotating the region between y=(x-1)(x-3)^2 and the x-axis on [1,3]

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  Day 237 Shellmaker

  Tomorrow in calculus we'll be discussing how to approximate volumes of solids of revolution using "shells". This is traditionally a very difficult concept for students to visualize, so having a physical model is really helpful. The trouble is, no physical models seem to exist. We've all talked about

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  Day 236 Conference swag x 8

  Today, eight models we've seen before, optimized for printing small and fast. We'll be printing one of these tiny models for each person that comes to the Fall Meeting of the Maryland/DC/Virginia section of the Mathematical Association of America, which will be hosted here at JMU next week. - Red Fi

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  Day 235 Friday fail: Time edition

  There is never enough time. Over the past few weeks I have failed miserably at time, specifically at keeping up with this blog on a daily basis. I've been "a few days behind" - sometimes an entire week! - for a long time now; always printing and working every day, but always behind. But it's not lik

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  Day 234 Spiral knot s(5,2,(1,1,-1,1))

  This semester five students and I have been 3D-printing the knots through 7 crossings in both standard and special configurations, as part of our MATH 297 - Knot Theory Research and 3D Printing course in the JMU 3-SPACE classroom. One of the knots that fell to me was 76, which happens to be the spir

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  Day 233 Bedmaker

  We don't have one bed of every size in our house but it seemed like a good idea to print all of the sizes; here we have Twin, Full, Queen, and King: Thingiverse link: Settings: Replicator 2 on .3mm/low, as usual. Technical notes, OpenSCAD flavor: Picking up where we left off in yesterday's code, we'

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  Day 232 Bookcasemaker

  Continuing our moving series, today we made an OpenSCAD module for making the most important type of furniture at all: bookcases! Here we have some Bondes (now discontinued, sadly) and Hemnes from IKEA, as well as a low TV stand: Thingiverse: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low on a Replicator 2 with the b

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  Day 231 Tablemaker

  Continuing with our (procrastination of) planning for this summer's move, we printed our dining room table and two coffee tables. Thingiverse link: Settings: Printed on a Replicator 2 with MakerWare .3mm/low, upside-down so as not to require supports. Technical notes, OpenSCAD flavor: Continuing wit

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  Day 230 Sofamaker

  It's official; we are moving to NYC this summer! This means downsizing from a house to an apartment, and some interesting furniture decisions. To help sort things out (and to procrastinate actually packing for as long as possible) I wrote a customizable sofa generator in OpenSCAD, and used it to mod

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  Day 229 Saturday guest: Kitwallace and programming polyhedra

  Today's post is contributed by Chris Wallace, also known as kitwallace on Thingiverse, and author of The Wallace Line. He is the creator of the Rolling Knot, Mobius Strip, and Concave Polyhedra models on Thingiverse that have been featured here as well as the amazing Knot Server to OpenSCAD code (se

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  Day 228 Friday fail: Terminal edition

  Seriously? An overnight print of eighteen Fidget Cubes (see Day 158) failed just before the LAST LAYER. Sigh. Thingiverse link: Technical note: We now use .48 clearance instead of .5 for our 10mm Fidget Cubes; you can set your own preferred clearance at the link above. Since there isn't much to lear

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  Day 227 Penrose snap tiles

  Today we printed emmett's Penrose Snap Tiles on Thingiverse, which are a genius-level modification of the already awesome Penrose P3 Tiles by pleppik. The genius is the excellent snap-together design that at the same time enforces the matching rules for aperiodic rhombic Penrose tilings. The tiles p

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  Day 226 Tetris box puzzle

  RarelyEvil's 3D Tetris Pieces Puzzle with Box on Thingiverse is one of the nicest working models I have seen on Thingiverse. It's a simple thing - just 3D Tetris-like pieces that fit together into a rectangular shape inside a box. But the details of this model are impeccable. First of all, the piece

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  Day 225 Hilbert cubes

  Today's print is sushiyaki's Hilbert block model on Thingiverse. This model is great because it prints without any supports at all, and some of the gaps between the paths even separate. There is also a natural slot that you can use to hold a business card or photo! Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerW

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  Day 224 Rattlebacks

  Today we printed VeryWetPaint's Rattleback Twins model from Thingiverse. If you spin one of these "rattleback tops" in the proper direction, it will actually shake and reverse itself, ultimately spinning in the opposite direction! It is really weird. Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low wi

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  Day 223 CGR 3-doodler squiggle tower

  Today we finally broke out the 3-Doodler 3D-printing "pen". Calvin loves making tall towers of squiggles. This one broke the record! Technical notes, Yaya-comparison flavor: We also have the Yaya 3D Pen, which is a nearly identical knockoff to the 3-Doodler except that it seems to be (a) lower quali

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  Day 222 Cube screw-puzzle

  Today we printed the four-piece cube puzzle from GeorgeHart's Five Screw-Puzzles model on Thingiverse. This one is very easy in comparison to the tricky tetrahedron puzzle from that set of models, which we printed on Day 104, but it is a good warmup to the trickier puzzle since it works basically th

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  Day 221 Friday fail: CubeX trio edition

  Let's start on a positive note. This week the CubeX Trio in the JMU 3-SPACE classroom printed something! Specifically, the giant hand model that comes as a demo with the CubeX software: Settings: CubeX Trio in draft/fastest mode, in one color PLA. This success is really the result of failure, but no

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  Day 220 Dragon curve

  Today we were very excited to print Henry Segerman's stunning Developing Dragon Curve model. Henry sent us the file for the model so we could print a small test run of it before attempting to print a supersize model on our large printer (more on that tomorrow). It's a Level 11 and it looks amazing!

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  Day 219 Chmutov-schwartz minimal surface

  Today we printed elgolem's Chmutov-Schwarz minimal surface model on Thingiverse, in honor of George Hart's wonderful bouncy circle sculpture from G4G11. Thingiverse link: Settings: To print this object we had to convert from obj to stl (used MeshLab); it was huge so we then reduced the scale twice b

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  Day 218 Poly/giraffe bracelet

  Today we designed a bracelet by using TopMod to extract a ring of irregular pentagons from the center of a Pentagonal Hexacontahedron wireframe (our "giraffe polyhedron" from Day 194). We made small and large versions. The large should fit over most hands and form a bangle bracelet. The small is for

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  Day 217 Customizable tree

  Today we printed the Customizable Tree from Thingiverse. A lot of my students at JMU 3-SPACE try to print trees from Marissa's Tinkercad community shape script or other sources, but those models often don't print correctly, and usually end up causing a lot of heartbreak. Thingiverse's new customizab

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  Day 216 Tiling space with a weird squiggle

  I've been having fun watching the math that Mike Lawler (@mikeandallie on Twitter) and his kids discuss on video at their blog mikesmathpage, and thinking about how to get my own 8-year-old son interested in watching those videos. Their post from yesterday, Penrose tiles and some simple 3D variation

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  Day 215 Great dodecahedron from generated polyhedra code

  Today's print is a Great Dodecahedron designed by kitwallace, author of The Wallace Line blog and master constructor and compiler of polyhedra. He'll be guest-posting later to talk about his OpenSCAD polyhedron models, but for today we have a test print: The model is really nicely designed and has a

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  Day 214 Friday fail, raft edition

  Here's my favorite fail from this week: a botched print of three Fidget Cubes. It's partially my favorite because I happened to have been sitting right next to the machine when it happened so I could stop it right away before the dreaded "giant blob built up around nozzle" problem kicked in. It's al

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  Day 213 Han solo lithopane

  Today I rest, and print atartanian's Han Solo Lithopane design from Thingiverse, based on MakerBot's Customizable Lithopane design from last year. Thank you for making this possible, internet! Now this is pretty cool, but I nearly fell over when I saw how amazing this thing looks like when light shi

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  Day 212 Stylized Catalan wireframes and full how-to-do-it

  Our Catalan Wireframe Polyhedra series is finally complete! Here is the whole happy family of thirteen: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low with support-reducing custom slicing profile, on a Replicator 2. We printed each one in a different color with scraps from home and work so that they would be easy to

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  Day 211 ...And the rest

  Or the Professor and Mary Ann, as they prefer to be called. Our last two Catalan solids are the Triakis Tetrahedron (dual of the Truncated Tetrahedron and Kleetope of the tetrahedron) and the Tetrakis Hexahedron (dual of the Truncated Octahedron and Kleetope of the cube/hexahedron). And now that I h

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  Day 210 Rhombic dodecahedron

  We're almost at the end of the Catalan series! Today we printed our eleventh, the Rhombic Dodecahedron, dual of the Cuboctahedron (which we also constructed with printed snap-tiles on Day 87). Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low with custom reduced-support slicing profile, on a Replicator

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  Day 209 Afinia menger

  Most of our prints for this blog are made on a MakerBot Replicator 2, since that's what we usually have at the house. But the other day one of the Afinia H-Series printers from the JMU 3-SPACE Classroom made a guest visit, on its way to the Expanding Your Horizons Conference, where Rebecca Field gav

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  Day 208 26mm level 3's and the sketch a menger cross-section competition™

  I love to root for the underdog: David vs Goliath, Buffy vs the entire Hellmouth, the Baudelaire twins against Count Olafand his evil theatre troupe. Today the role of the underdog will be played by the affordable consumer-level MakerBot Replicator 2 ( $2,200), going head-to-head with the wickedly e

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  Day 207 Friday fail: Menger style

  Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

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  Day 206 Menger coverups

  At this year's Gathering for Gardner Conference (G4G11) I gave a short talk about 3D printing sliced Menger sponges. So that people could look at the sliced models and guess what the sliced face looks like, I made some white printed coverups to hide the sliced faces. Thingiverse link: slice-covers a

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  Day 205 Disdyakis triacontahedron

  Today is our largest Catalan print so far, with a diameter of over 120 millimeters - about the size of a very large grapefruit. One cool thing about this model is if you look only at the large 10-degree vertices you see the points of an icosahedron, while if you look at the pentagons surrounding tho

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  Day 204 Pentakis dodecahedron

  Yes, we seem to have fallen behind again. We can talk more about that on some "Friday." For now we'll catch up with the rest of our Catalan prints and some additional Menger prints before getting on to new designs. Before we start, I want to give a shout-out to three people on Thingiverse that have

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  Day 203 Rhombic triacontahedron

  This Catalan solid is the Rhombic Triacontahedron, the dual of the Icosidodecahedron (which we've already printed twice before as a snap-together model, in Day 89 and Day 117). Thingiverse link: Settings: .3mm/low on an Afinia H-Series, with the support density reduced to 2 layers in order to make t

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  Day 202 Triakis octahedron

  New fact of the day: If you add a pyramid to each face of an octahedron, then you are taking its "Kleetope." A cool new word for me, leading to the next Catalan solid in our list: the Triakis Octahedron. Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare custom profile described in Day 194, on a Replicator 2. Si

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  Day 201 Saturday guest: Owens and the tetrahemihexahedron

  Today's post is contributed by Bill Owens, also known as owens on Thingiverse. He is the creator of the Customizable Menger Sponge and Customizable Sierpinski Tetrix models that cleverly print without support due to the help of some custom stands that print with the models. Thank you, owens, for bei

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  Day 200 Friday fail, candlestick edition with bonus rant

  Every week there is more failure. But those who seek only to avoid failure will never succeed at anything new. If you want to succeed every time at making something, go down to the Build-a-Bear shop in the mall, buy a Paint-by-Numbers kit, or cook a microwave TV dinner. Expect things to be done for

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  Day 199 Triakis icosahedron

  For the last week I've been printing whatever polyhedra appeal to me, and today I realized that everything I've printed is a Catalan solid. Today is the fifth, the Triakis Icosahedron - dual of the Truncated Dodecahedron, and the first one so far that has triangular faces. This way leads madness; I'

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  Day 198 Deltoidal icositetrahedron

  Another day, another Catalan solid. Today it is the Deltoidal Icositetrahedron, dual of the Archimedian solid known as the Rhombicuboctahedron. As we discussed yesterday, the fact that these are duals means the following two things: - Since every vertex of the Rhombicuboctahedron is degree four, eve

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  Day 197 Pentagonal icositetrahedron

  Today's print is yet another Catalan solid, the Pentagonal Icositetrahedron - dual of the Snub Cube which we printed with Poly-Snaps in Day 116, and giraffe-cousin of the Pentagonal Hexecontahedron we printed on Day 194. Designed using Mathematica, MeshLab, and TopMod as described in Day 194, with s

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  Day 196 Deltoidal hexecontahedron

  Continuing our string of Catalan solids, today we printed a Deltoidal Hexecontahedron. Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare custom profile described in Day 194, on a Replicator 2. Technical notes, math flavor: Catalan solids are the polyhedra that are the duals of the Archimedean solids. To recap w

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  Day 195 Disdyakis dodecahedron

  The Disdyakis Dodecahedron is a convex Catalan solid with a lot of cool properties, including: - It's the dual of an Archimedian solid, the Truncated Rhombicuboctahedon; - It has 26 vertices, 72 edges, and 48 faces, and 26 - 72 + 48 = 2; - It is a lot of fun to say out loud: Disdyakis Dodecahedron!

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  Day 194 Pentagonal hexecontahedron

  For the next week or two we will be modeling and printing wireframe models of various exotic polyhedra. On Day 192 we developed a method for doing this using Mathematica, MeshLab, and TopMod, and tested three types of meshes. We like the Goldilocks one in the middle (not too angular and not too roun

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  Day 193 Friday fail, angel hair edition

  It's Friday! Also, this: I was trying to make a smaller version of owens' Sierpinski tetrahedron model from Day 189, but stupidity got in the way. Specifically, I started the print and walked away before checking to make sure everything was okay. I know that I definitely Should Not Do This, but I di

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  Day 192 Mesh-testing a gyroelongated pentagonal bicupola

  Inspired by the many sets of polyhedral models on Thingiverse (for example pmoews' Archimedean Solids, Johnson Polyhedra, and Catalan Solids, and pdragy's Customizable Convex Polyhedra), today we experimented with ways to make wire-frame polyhedra. Our test subject was the gryoelongated pentagonal b

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  Day 191 Filament bracelet

  Today we made something very simple: a small, thin rounded tube for turning a scrap of filament into a simple bracelet. Despite how simple this is, it took over a dozen prints to get it just right so that it would hold the filament securely. The resulting bracelet is the top one in the following pic

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  Day 190 One hundred triangle-squares

  In bulk printing mode again. Over the past few days we have printed 100 of the Hinged Triangle-Square models from Day 189, for a giveaway at an upcoming conference. Many more to print but a hundred is a milestone worth a picture, don't you think? Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low with l

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  Day 189 Sierpinski tetrahedron

  Today an amazing thing happened. It became possible to print a Sierpinski tetrahedron without internal supports on a desktop filament-based 3D printer. Not a fancy laser sintering powder printer that costs tens of thousands of dollars and uses expensive printing material to boot, but a simple Etch-a

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  Day 188 Hinged triangle-square

  Today we printed the famous hinged dissection called the Haberdasher's Puzzle from Henry Dudeney, who found a way to cut an equilateral triangle into four pieces that reassemble into a square. Dudeney's solution had an additional property, which is that the pieces could be hinged so as to swing from

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  Day 187 Spirograph

  Thank you so much, Hercemer, for making a 41 Piece Spirograph collection available on Thingiverse! Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low on a Replicator 2, but my build platform is still a bit warped so I had trouble printing any rings larger than the blue one pictured here. I think it may

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  Day 186 Friday fail

  One thing I love about 3D printing is that it teaches you how to deal with failure. Lots and lots of failure. Every design I make ends with a pretty picture but starts with a stack of failed prints, and each one of those failed prints tells me how to redesign my model to be a little bit better. Prin

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  Day 185 Wishbone

  Easy mashup time: Today we printed SimplusDesign's Wishbone Cookie Cutter Set on Thingiverse and Eckerput's Rolling Pin Spacer on Thingiverse so we can make some cookies! Also, a bonus: The rolling pin spacer can be resized into a really simple bracelet to use as a reward for winning the wishbone-br

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  Day 184 Mystery pyramids

  Today we made a lot of little pyramids and a box. Why? Can't tell you that right now, it's for a friend and we'll follow up later on this year with a reason. Settings: As usual, MakerWare .3mm/low on a Replicator 2. We printed the pyramids three at a time at 80% and the box at 81% to add a little cl

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  Day 183 Hiroshima university

  To celebrate today's visit to the JMU 3-SPACE classroom from a group of students from Hiroshima University, we them made a nameplate logo design in Tinkercad. STL file: day183hiroshimauniversity.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low on a Replicator 2 with no raft and no

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  Day 182 Voronoi die

  Today we printed a copy of sirmakesalot's clever Bone Die on Thingiverse using our loaner Afinia H-Series: Thingiverse link: Settings: Afinia .3mm/low on "fast" with "only base" supports.

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  Day 181 Hexagonal borromean rings that print without support

  Printing Borromean rings in three pieces minimizes support because the first two pieces need no support at all. In this model we've used a hexagonal ring shape with sides beveled so as to allow printing in one assembled piece with no support or raft needed! The"chain" demo file by sal on Thingiverse

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  Day 180 Diamond borromean

  Same as Day 179 but with diamonds instead of ellipses! This version of the Borromean rings has more limited mobility but that restricted movement makes it naturally sit on your desk in a beautiful star shape: STL file, horizontal diamond: tricolor-diamond-borromean-rings.zip STL file, vertical diamo

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  Day 179 Tricolor borromean rings

  Yesterday we mentioned that you could print a three-color model of the Borromean rings by printing the rings separately and placing the first and second in and around the third right before it closed up. We did that today, using more elliptical rings to make the assembly easier: STL file, horizontal

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  Day 178 Borromean rings

  When I give talks about 3D printing and knot theory, I often tell the story of my student Olivia who created and printed a 3D model of the Borromean rings as her first project in my class. The Borromean rings consist of three rings arranged in such a way that no two of the rings are linked to each o

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  Day 177 Valentine tags

  C's classroom Valentine's celebration was cancelled last week due to snow, and rescheduled for today. Stranded at home for a couple of days with no car and no Valentine's candy to bring to school, we decided to make nametags for the students in his class. A lot of C's classmates have very unique nam

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  Day 176 Geologhedra samples

  Today we printed a small handful of polyhedra that represent crystal mineral models for geologist Amy Thompson at Bridgewater College. We used nischi'sCrystal Structures Models on Thingiverse to start; in the future we hope to make OpenSCAD versions of a much large collection of crystal models, for

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  Day 175 Metro wallet

  I don't have a NYC Metro Card, but I hope to in the future. When I do, dadhoc's Slim Wallet with Metro Card Sliding Compartment on Thingiverse is where I want to keep it! Thingiverse link: Settings: Printed perfectly on a Replicator 2 with MakerWare on .3mm/low, no raft and no supports. The middle d

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  Day 174 MAA icosahedron

  In a couple of days I'll be speaking at the Carriage House, the headquarters of the Mathematical Association of America. Since the MAA's logo is an icosahedron, I'll be bringing them one as a present: STL file: day174MAAicosahedron.stl OpenSCAD file: day174MAAicosahedron.scad Thingiverse link: Setti

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  Day 173 LEGO ring

  Thank you, tart2000, for making this lovely LEGO Ring on Thingiverse. My son had a great time adding the bling! Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low on a Replicator 2, with no raft or supports. Technical notes: We made this from tart2000's "less chunky" demo file without any changes or cus

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  Day 172 Mobius heart

  Happy Valentine's Day! In celebration, today we made a Möbius strip in the shape of a heart. The OpenSCAD code was kindly provided by kitwallace. From the side you can more clearly see its Möbius-ness: Thingiverse link: OpenSCAD code: day172kitwallacemobiusheart.scad Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low wit

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  Day 171 Sliced menger 3: Triangles

  The Menger slices from Day 169 and Day 170 each divided the cube into two identical pieces. Today we make a a slice parallel to the Starmaker from the first day, but higher up. What will the slice look like? Don't peek until you've tried to draw it! This piece is interesting because makes the larges

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  Day 170 Sliced menger 2: Rhomboidal

  Lots of people know what the inside of a sliced Menger cube looks like, at least the way we sliced it yesterday. But there are infinitely many ways to slice a cube into two identical pieces, and each one will make a different cross-section with different interior markings inherited from the Menger c

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  Day 169 Sliced menger 1: Starmaker

  Today we made a white stand and slice illustrator to accompany the diagonally sliced Level 2 Menger sponge we printed on Day 155. Don't look at the second picture until you try to guess what the white slice looks like! My God, it's full of stars! Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .2mm/standard o

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  Day 168 Mobius trefoil

  Using the same OpenSCAD code of kitwallace's from yesterday, today we made a Mobius-like solid whose cross-sections are triangles and whose boundary is the trefoil knot - that is, the knot that wraps three times around the outside of a torus while wrapping twice around its handle. STL file: day168tr

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  Day 167 Umbilic torus

  Today we did not print an umbilic torus. But we did print a triangular-cross-section mobius strip, which is very close. In yesterday's post we wished for a way to remesh Mathematica output, and it turns out that at least for this kind of object, kitwallace had already posted a way to make seamless m

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  Day 166 Mobius

  Today I spoke with jamesford007, a student at SUNY Geneseo who is spearheading efforts there to bring 3D printing into the study of mathematics. He shared with me his technique for creating thickened parametric surfaces in Mathematica that can be exported as STL files, and posted a lovely Mobius str

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  Day 165 One-piece catapult

  A student in my GSCI 104: 3D Printing class built a catapult that prints in one piece! Inspired by zheng's multi-piece Seej Catapult on Thingiverse, zackowen built a new Print in Place Catapult in Tinkercad that requires no assembly. We printed it successfully with no raft or supports at all! Thingi

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  Day 164 Two-color gyroscope

  Gyroscope time is going to go on for a while! Today we used the Custimizer version of althepal's Another parmeterized gimbal to make a 6-hoop version and switched filament partway through to get a two-color effect. It's really impressive. Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low in a bit over

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  Day 163 Working gyroscope!

  I don't know why, but I haven't had much luck 3D-printing gyroscopes - either from Thingiverse or that I designed myself. It really shouldn't be that hard, but somehow the prints were either too loose or too tight, and I sort of gave up for a while. Today we gave it another go with althepal's Anothe

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  Day 162 Sliced level 3 menger cube

  We are going to be printing a lot of Menger-type objects, I think. Today's is a level 3, sliced to reveal the stars. Model again by owens on Thingiverse. Here's the print in front of a mirror: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .2mm/standard in 7 hours and 27 minutes. Technical notes: The first t

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  Day 161 Level 3 menger cube on a filament printer!

  Thank you, owens at Thingiverse! You have made the impossible possible. It was great fun walking this print around the math department today, since everyone there knows just how difficult it is to print this object on a filament-deposition machine. Beautiful! As we said on Day 157, in hindsight the

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  Day 160 Stella prints!

  This is what happens on the first day that an 11-year-old girl and an 8-year-old girl learn how to design 3D models. The first day! I look forward to the next generation of grrl power makers! Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low. Thank you S&S for the guest prints today!

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  Day 159 Catan expander

  At our house we have enough extra hex tiles to play a five-person Catan game, but not a fifth set of pieces. Today we printed a new full set of Settlers of Catan pieces, including the knight and city wall pieces needed for the Cities and Knights Expansion Pack and a set of rings to attach to LEGOs t

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  Day 158 One hundred fidget cubes

  Actually, it's 105, counting the ones that are printing in the background. We've been making these all week; they print fairly reliably in batches of a dozen. We need to make 400 of these by mid-March for a set of conference giveaways. STL file: day158fidgetcubesmall.stl Thingiverse link: Settings:

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  Day 157 One-piece menger cube without internal supports

  The Holy Grail! Owens' model Menger sponge with external support prints a beautiful Level 2 Menger sponge with no internal supports. The difficulty with printing a Menger sponge on a filament-deposition printer is that in the horizontal position, the model is stable on the build platform but require

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  Day 156 Olee's designs

  Today we printed some custom bracelets for my niece, who mailed us a very nice letter that included some awesome designs to start from. Her designs were so good that we decided to print them exactly as she drew them! We tried to size them correctly but if they don't fit then they can be used as pict

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  Day 155 Menger slice

  Today we printed owens' Diagonal Cut Menger Spongedesign from Thingiverse. If you sliced a Level 2 Menger sponge in half along a diagonal plane as shown in the picture, what would the sliced face look like? Before you scroll down, take a look at this picture and try to imagine it: If you could see t

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  Day 154 First digitizer print!

  To break in the new MakerBot Digitizer in the JMU 3-SPACE Classroom, my student Patrick scanned and printed a beautiful African woman statue that another student gave me as a gift many years ago. It came out great, with lots of the details intact even with a small print. (This model is also a protot

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  Day 153 Stick and lattice trefoil knots

  To finish our collection of trefoil conformations, we have a stick knot and a cubic lattice knot: STL file for stick: minimum-stick-number-trefoil-knot.stl STL file for lattice: minimum-lattice-number-trefoil-knot.stl Thingiverse link: Technical notes, math flavor: Usually in knot theory, although t

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  Day 152 Petal and tight trefoil knots

  Two more trefoil conformations - as a petal knot (all crossings line up along one center stem) and a tight knot (with the smallest amount of rope length possible given its diameter): STL file for petal: petal-conformation-trefoil-knot.stl STL file for tight: minimum-rope-length-trefoil-knot.stl Thin

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  Day 151 Fourier and tritangentless trefoil knots

  Continuing our collection of trefoil knots, today we printed a trefoil in a Fourier-(1,1,2) knot conformation and a trefoil knot in a tritangentless conformation. In other words, the first trefoil knot in the picture below is a curve traced out by a collection of cosine functions (1 in the x-coordin

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  Day 150 Trefoil torus knots

  For the next four days we'll be posting various mathematically interesting models of the trefoil knot. Mathematicians consider two knotted forms to be equivalent if one can be transformed into the other by stretching and moving in space, without cutting or joining. The way a knot sits in space is kn

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  Day 149 Balloon dog

  Today we rest. And print a balloon dog: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low scaled to 57mm across, in 29 minutes with raft and support on a MakerBot Replicator 2. Technical notes: We predict that the 3D-printed balloon dog will last infinitely longer than the one made out of a balloon.

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  Day 148 Shrinking and remeshing the fidget cube

  Now that the hinges on the Fidget Cube are smaller (see yesterday's post), we can make the cube itself smaller. Let's start by going down from cube length 20mm to cube length 15mm: And now down to 10mm! This tiny fidget cube actually works, and it is very quick to print. I think this is pretty much

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  Day 147 Fidget cube with smaller hinges

  After more testing we figured out how small we can make the hinges on the Fidget Cube and still have it print reliably in one piece. (The answer: 1.5mm radius.) STL file: day147fidgetcubeblack.stl Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .2mm/standard in about 90 minutes, with no raft and no supports,

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  Day 146 Customizable print-in-place fidget cube

  Today we finished our customizable print-in-place fidget cube model. By changing just a few parameters in OpenSCAD code, we can decide whether the fidget cube will have a snub configuration (as shown below), set the sizes of the blocks and the hinges, and fine-tune the clearance between moving parts

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  Day 145 Print-in-place fidget cube

  On Day 142 we printed a copy of emmett's Folding Cube model from Thingiverse. That model works wonderfully but assembly was a little difficult both because it was physically hard to snap together and because I am very bad at visualizing rotations and mirror images. For me it was challenging to put t

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  Day 144 Volumes of hanoi

  The semester has begun and we are back to teaching calculus. Later this semester we will cover Volumes of Solids of Revolution with the "disc method" and the "shell method", and when we do, we'll use today's print as a 3D example. This model was developed last summer in collaboration with RM and BL,

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  Day 143 Shapeways delivers!

  Does it count as a print-a-day print if something I designed and sent to Shapeways was delivered today? I think it does, at least the first time it happens! Our design from Day 136 was difficult to print on a filament machine, so we sent a copy to Shapeways: Shapeways link: Settings: Shapeways "whit

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  Day 142 Fidget cube

  Still underwater with the first week of school, so today we're printing emmett's great Folding Cube model from Thingiverse. The eight pieces print separately and then snap together with conical hinges to make an assembly that folds into two types of cubes, one with rounded corners and one with strai

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  Day 141 Companion dodecahedron

  So the spring semester started yesterday, and I'm already fully underwater with one calculus classes, three 3D-printing classes, and a lot of trips to plan. So today we print something that we didn't have to design: cobbal's most excellent Companion Dodecahedron from Thingiverse. I so wish I had tho

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  Day 140 Three pi

  My son loves pi. The number. He and a friend at school have actual arguments about who has memorized and/or written down the most digits of pi. The other day he designed and printed a pi in Tinkercad from scratch to give to his friend; I love the little bend he put into the leg! Tonight I printed a

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  Day 139 Stereographic spheres

  Henry Segerman is well-known for the intricate mathematical modeling that he designs and prints at his Shapeways shop. So to put our Replicator 2 to the test, today we printed henryseg's Stereographic projection model from Thingiverse. It came out beautifully! Thingiverse link: Settings: Printed wit

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  Day 138 ABS and PLA recycle signs

  This semester a MakerBot Replicator 2 and MakerBot Digitizer are joining the Afinias we have in the JMU 3-SPACE classroom, so we will need a recycle/fail bin for PLA as well as ABS. These signs are a remix of MakerBlock's Recycling Symbols on Thingiverse using the new text Shape Script feature at Ti

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  Day 137 Clover knot

  More TopMod! Today we made a knot: STL file: mystery-clover-knot.stl Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .15mm/high with raft and supports, in 6 hours and 23 minutes. I didn't use the custom knot supports from Day 110 because sometimes they don't work well for thin knots. The supports were not as

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  Day 136 Six handles fancy

  Today we took yesterday's TopMod model and created crusts along certain face loops to get a more open, fancy, swirly design: STL file: day136sixhandlesfancy.stl Thingiverse link: Settings: We used the same custom MakerWare settings from Day 110's knot, to minimize supports and support attachment to

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  Day 135 Six handles

  Today's model is a sculpture made with the excellent and innovative mesh-wrangling software TopMod. Since my way-back math roots are in topology, TopMod is like coming home; everything about it speaks my language. Having said that, I'm just a TopMod beginner so my first sculpture is very simple: jus

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  Day 134 Low-poly gollum

  Today's print is a low-poly version of BorisBelocon's Gollum on Thingiverse. We printed this for Tim Chartier of Davidson College, who created the low-poly version of BorisBelocon's model by using Quadratic Edge Collapse Decimation in MeshLab. You can read more about Tim's work at his MathMovement s

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  Day 133 Broken hearts

  Today the holiday visits are over and we are back to designing. Something simple to start, and to get ahead for the next holiday: customizable easy-to-print broken hearts that you can string together. More importantly, this model is also a tutorial for printing designs based on mathematical parametr

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  Day 132 Stretchy bands

  To finish out the Thanxmas presents, today we printed some of walter's Customizable Stretchy Bands model from Thingiverse. STL file: day132stretchybands.stl (but customize your own!) Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low on a Replicator 2, very fast to print. Technical notes: The file above

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  Day 131 More bowls

  The past week of cleaning and family visits has meant a lot of reprints and Thingiverse designs, and today is no exception: we printed a bunch of bowls from the same model used in Day 64 and Day 65, petergross3's Condiment Bowl from Thingiverse. Thingiverse link: Settings: Printed small versions at

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  Day 130 Trilobite articulatum

  Today is Thanxmas for our family! For the festivities we have a celebratory Trilobite articulatum from AuntDaisy on Thingiverse in our faux fireplace. Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low in about 4 hours. Technical notes: We used the "tight" files from AuntDaisy, which worked perfectly on

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  Day 129 Estonian kroon coin trap

  Today's print is a Customized Coin Trap to hold an Estonian Kroon in the blue, black and white colors of the Estonian flag, for my father, who was born in Estonia. STL file: day129estoniankroontrap.stl Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low in about 15 minutes, with two filament swaps and a

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  Day 128 Pile of snaps

  Today we printed a lot of colorful Poly-Snaps to give to Henry Segerman: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low on a Replicator 2. Technical notes: These were printed in two configurations, some with the default "compact" parameters on the Poly-Snaps customizer (see also Days 113 and 115-117) and some with th

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  Day 127 MakeyMakey holder

  Today this print-a-day project was featured on the MakerBot blog in the MakerBot Stories post Mathgrrl Makes a 3D print a Day, by Blake Eskin! A year of 3D-printing-flavored making for me, and a new year of MakeyMakey-flavored making for my sister. Today we printed her jensa's MakeyMakey Gamepad cas

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  Day 126 Dalek

  I really hope my family isn't reading this blog, or they are finding out what all their Thanxmas presents are. To continue yesterday's theme, today we are printing guydebored's great Dalek model from Thingiverse. Thingiverse link: Settings: We printed the body on .3mm/low without raft or supports, a

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  Day 125 Tardis

  My family is celebrating the holidays late with Thanxmas after the new year, and more presents are in order. Today, one large Tardis and two small, from Gossamer's wonderful Parametric Tardis model on Thingiverse: Thingiverse link: Settings: As usual, MakerWare .3mm/low with the small version printi

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  Day 124 Low-poly bear

  What do you print for a person with minimalist tastes? I'm hoping a low-poly bear, like christophecaren's beautiful Bear model on Thingiverse. Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low, with raft and supports. I printed the model upside-down to minimize those supports and then had some minimal

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  Day 123 "Ticket to Ride" card holder

  A couple of days ago on Day 120, we printed some train trays for the excellent game Ticket to Ride. That was all well and good until the cards seemed all out of order and falling out of their giant tall stacks. So we printed a card holder for train cards, ticket cards, and used train cards. The logo

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  Day 122 Menger coaster set, part 2

  Continuing from yesterday, here are the other four interesting slices of a Level 3 Menger Sponge: STL files: day122mengercoaster5.stl (and 6 and 7 and 8) Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Like yesterday, we used Makerware .3mm/low,for a print time of about 30 minutes per coaster, with colo

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  Day 121 Menger coaster set, part 1

  Following up on Day 23's Menger-sponge-slice coaster, today we print four different slices of a Level 3 Menger Sponge. There are four more interesting slices that we'll print tomorrow. These were constructed in Tinkercad after importing a Menger sponge that was created in Mathematica (although we co

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  Day 120 "Ticket to Ride" trains tray

  C's grandma gave us the game "Ticket to Ride" today, and it is great fun! The turns go by really quickly, making for a quick game that is fast-paced enough to hold everyone's attention even when it isn't their turn. However, each player has 45 trains to keep track of, which can get a bit messy. One

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  Day 119 DSi stylus holder

  C recently finished saving up for his Nintendo DSi (see Day 18 and Day 19 from way back in September), and apparently it is necessary to have multiple styluses (styli?) so that you can change colors and lose them and things. Today we printed a small holder for them, designed in Tinkercad with their

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  Day 118 Poly-snaps icosahedron

  I always find the icosahedron the most difficult polyhedron to assemble with modular tiles. It is so close to spherical that the angles make assembly difficult; putting something together on one side tends to dislodge something on the other side. If you've ever assembled modular origami polyhedra th

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  Day 117 Poly-snaps icosiodecahedron

  Our fifth Poly-Snap example is the Icosidodecahedron, a semi-regular polyhedron with twenty triangles and twelve pentagons. It's sort of like a mini-Buckyball with triangles in place of the hexagons. Today's new model looks nicer and fits together better than our old snap-tile model from Day 89, and

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  Day 116 Poly-snaps snub cube

  A "snub polyhedron" is a model obtained by adding triangles between the faces of another polyhedron. For example the Snub Cube below is like a cube whose six square faces have been exploded outward, with 32 triangles filling in the gaps: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low in two batches

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  Day 115 Poly-snaps truncated octahedron

  Today we "truncate" yesterday's octahedron. Truncating) basically means that we slice off the corners of the object. The result here is semi-regular, meaning that each face is one of two regular polygons and that the same configuration of polygons surrounds each vertex. This Truncated Octahedron is

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  Day 114 Poly-snaps octahedron

  Our second Poly-Snaps model is an Octahderon, with eight triangular faces. Compare with the Hinged Octahedron from Day 82, which is beautiful and prints in one piece, but has variable snap-numbers on its open edges and uses up a lot more material. Today's model makes use of the customizability of th

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  Day 113 Poly-snaps truncated tetrahedron

  Over the next six days we'll be posting polyhedra that we assembled using our new Poly-Snaps on Thingiverse. Our previous polyhedral models were made from Snap Tiles which had either two or three snaps on each side. This new type of modular polyhedra-builder has the same number of snaps on each side

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  Day 112 Tetris t's

  I like the rounded and nicely-spaced design of 3DAndy's Pentominos on Thingiverse, but wanted to print some tetrominos instead, for math/puzzles (for example, polyomino packing problems) and for future Tetris-related art projects. Since 3DAndy was nice enough to post his OpenSCAD code, it was easy t

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  Day 111 One MetroTech center

  This is a model of the building that houses the MakerBot Headquarters in Brooklyn, with a hole in it for a couple of pens or whatnot. The basic building shape was downloaded from Trimble 3D Warehouse, then resized and converted to STL in Sketchup, with windows added in Tinkercad. Happy holidays, Mak

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  Day 110 Rocking knot

  Today's print is a knot with a special property: No matter how the knot sits on the table, it never touches the table in more than two places. This property makes the knot rock back and forth easily, and roll down even very shallow inclines. It's a fun thing to have on your desk, and it's the knot t

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  Day 109 Sharpie print

  This design was inspired by DesignMakeTeach's excellent post Sharpie to 3D Print in 30 Minutes on his blog designmaketeach.com. Such a fantastic idea for introducing someone to 3D printing and for helping kids make simple prints! I wanted to take Shapeways out of the equation so I found a way to do

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  Day 108 Minecraft castle

  Minecraft is "The Last Starfighter" of 3D modeling and printing - a game that gets kids ready for the next industrial revolution by teaching them how to move, build, and think in a virtual 3D environment. Even better, you can load your 3D-modeled creations into your Minecraft worlds and also 3D-prin

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  Day 107 SEGA sonic cartridge sleeves

  We love Sonic 2 on the SEGA Genesis), and we've recently been enjoying the whole series all over again with our son. Our ancient cartridges don't have protective sleeves, so we printed some custom ones! Designed in Tinkercad with some help from Inkscape and the internet (specifically, the nice .svg

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  Day 106 Filament shelf clip

  I keep my filament on an old curtain rod over a shelf, and the rolls that are far away from the printer don't unroll correctly. This shelf clip fixes the problem. The open loop design allows it to open a bit to fit over the shelf with a small dot of poster-tack-gum underneath to keep it from sliding

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  Day 105 Bow box

  Tired. Need simple. Something that just works. How about muddtt's Christmas Gift Box on Thingiverse? Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low with the base and the bow in one print and the top in another. Stuff to change: I really love siesauers' Make of this model where they printed everythin

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  Day 104 Tetrapuzzle

  One nice entry from the Makerbot Math Manipulative Challenge on Thingiverse was GeorgeHart's Five Screw Puzzles. Here is the tetrahedron puzzle from that entry. Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low worked well, with no raft or supports (prints in two identical pieces). Technical notes: PLA

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  Day 103 Cheese labels

  Today we used Tinkercad, Inkscape, Fontspace, and the technique from Day 27 to make four cheese labels for a party tray. STL file: day103cheeselabels.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low, switching filament when it got to the letters. Technical note: Star fruit turns ou

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  Day 102 Fidget rings

  Today we made two copies of AmazingSpanoMan's Customizable Fidget Ring on Thingiverse. The center ring spins around very nicely. STL file: day102fidgetrings.stl Thingiverse link: (customize your own!) Stuff to change: The size I printed is a bit too big for me to wear, but still fun to play with. Ne

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  Day 101 More dodecahedra

  Of all the nets from Day 80 through Day 86, I think the dodecahedra works the best. Easy to put together, easy to take apart, at least as printed from my Replicator 2. Surely extra dodecahedra nets will be good for something, right? STL file: hinged-dodecahedron.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link:

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  Day 100 Tiny icosahedron surprise ball

  I have a small gift I have to give someone secretly at a party, so I enclosed it in this tiny hollow icosahedron. Safe to show off at the party and they can open it when they get home. (By breaking it, unfortunately, but it would only take a few minutes to print another one later if they want one!)

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  Day 99 Snowflake ornaments, part 2

  Printed the rest of the ornaments! STL file: snowflake-ornaments-i.zip Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low in 7-9 minutes per ornament. Technical notes: I tried printing one of these on an Afinia H-Series at work and it did not go well, either with or without raft, and eve

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  Day 98 Snowflake ornaments, part 1

  For the Thingiverse/Studio 360 Ornament Challenge we remixed the snowflakes from Day 70 and Day 71 into thicker, hangable snowflake ornaments. Here is the first half: STL file: snowflake-ornaments-i.zip Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low on the Replicator 2 has each snowf

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  Day 97 British pound trap

  Today's print is one of the drop-down choices from the Customized Coin Trap model that we posted about yesterday: a trap for a British pound coin. STL file: day97poundtrap.stl Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .2mm/standard on a Replicator 2. Technical notes: Pound coins are so thick that this m

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  Day 96 Customizable coin traps

  Finally I have gotten around to learning how to use OpenSCAD, and thus also the Thingiverse Customizer. Our first customizable design: traps for coins of any size, from any country! Did you lose a bet? Pay them back with a coin they can never use. Or, did you win a bet? Immortalize your winnings in

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  Day 95 Kinematics bracelet #2

  Yesterday's bracelet was so great that we decided to print another one today, again from Nervous System's Kinematics@home site. STL file: day95kinematicsbracelet2.stl (but go make your own instead of using this one!) Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .2mm/standard, since the bracelets from Kinem

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  Day 94 Kinematics bracelet

  The design studio Nervous System has put up a great free morphing/algorithmic/supercool bracelet-making site at Kinematics@home where you can modify bracelet designs within certain parameters and then either download an .stl file or send the design off to be 3D-printed for you. I need larger bracele

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  Day 93 Pig and veg toothpicks

  For the holidays, here are some toothpicks that you can use to label foods according to if they contain meat (bacon!), are suitable for vegetarians, or have some potential allergen for one of your guests. The images at the tops of the toothpicks were extruded from files found in an icon pack at find

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  Day 92 Weeping angel from dr. who

  Great, now we're too terrified to take this out of the printer. This beautiful and horrifying model is fantasygraph's Dr. Who Weeping Angel on Thingiverse. We printed it in honor of the Day of the Doctor, and in particular for the joy of seeing David Tennant play the Doctor just one more time. STL f

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  Day 91 Truncated icosahedron

  We didn't have time to make this one earlier, so here it is now. A truncated icosahedron (Buckyball/soccerball/football depending on who you are). I made the snaps really tight so this model would stay together very solidly. If you want to take it apart over and over then I recommend loosening the s

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  Day 90 Stellated octahedron

  And finally, the last of the set of models from my entry to the Makerbot Academy Math Manipulative Challenge on Thingiverse. This model shows that we can use the individual snap tiles to make non-convex polyhedra. Here is the stellated octahedron: STL file: snap-tile-stellated-octahedron.zip Tinkerc

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  Day 89 Icosidodecahedron

  Today, the simplest Archimedian solid using triangles and pentagons, the icosidodecahedron: STL file: snap-tile-icosidodecahedron.zip Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: The tiles are optimized to work with the low/.3mm MakerWare setting on a Replicator 2.

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  Day 88 Truncated octahedron

  Yesterday's model was the simplest Archimedian solid with square and triangle faces. Today we have the simplest semi-regular polyhedron with square and hexagon faces, the truncated octahedron: STL file: snap-tile-truncated-octahedron.zip Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: The tiles are optimized to w

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  Day 87 Cuboctahedron

  To get more flexibility constructing polyhedra we can use individual snap tiles instead of pre-arranged hinged nets. This also allows us to make nice two-color semi-regular polyhedra, such as this cuboctahedron: STL file: snap-tile-cuboctahedron.zip Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: The ti

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  Day 86 Rectangular rhombohedron

  The last of the polyhedral nets so far is for a rectangular rhombohedron: STL file: hinged-rectangular-rhombohedron.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Low/.3mm MakerWare settings on a Replicator 2 in one hour and 10 minutes. Technical notes: These fit together to tile 3-dimensional spac

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  Day 85 Hexagonal prism

  Of course there are many polyhedra that aren't one of the five Platonic solids that we just posted about. For example, prisms. Here is a hexagonal prism made out of a folded hinged net: STL file: hinged-hexagonal-prism.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Low/.3mm MakerWare settings on a

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  Day 84 Hinged icosahedron

  The final Platonic solid in the set of models we entered into the MakerBot Academy Math Manipulatives Challenge was the icosahedron. STL file: hinged-icosahedron.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low on a Replicator 2 in two and a half hours. Technical notes: This is the

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  Day 83 Hinged dodecahedron

  Of all the hinged polyhedral nets we made for the Makerbot Academy Math Manipulative Challenge, the dodecahedron came out the best. It just hit the sweet spot of angle and snap closer tightness. You can even see a video of 8-year-old C assembling it in under 30 seconds. STL file: hinged-dodecahedron

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  Day 82 Hinged octahedron

  Working our way through the five Platonic solids that were included in my entry for the Makerbot Academy Math Manipulative Challenge, today's blog item is a hinged octahedron. STL file: hinged-octahedron.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Replicator 2 MakerWare .3mm/low settings with no

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  Day 81 Hinged cube

  So I guess my reward for working night and day on the Makerbot Academy Math Manipulative Challenge for a week is that I can now post each model separately on this blog, which should take care of a week or two of my year of prints. Today, the cube: Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Makerwar

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  Day 80 Hinged tetrahedron

  Over the next several posts here I'll put up pictures and files of the objects in the set of polyhedral models I made for the Makerbot Academy Math Manipulative Challenge. Back on Day 63 I tried to make a folding net for a tetrahedron with hinges in a center-cylinder-surrounded-by-open-cylinder desi

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  Day 79 Cat treat d20

  For our cats to bat around and get treats out of, a D20 Cat treat toy by hroncok on Thingiverse. Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare .3mm/low.

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  Day 78 Creeper party

  The rest of the Minecraft party favors... Thingiverse link: Settings: Same as yesterday except that some of these were printed on the Afinia. The Afinia ones had support that was more difficult to remove.

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  Day 77 Posable creeper

  In need of some party favors for an upcoming Minecraft birthday party for C, today we tried out Conseils' Minecraft Creeper with Movable Head on Thingiverse. Thingiverse link: Settings: Makerware low/.3mm works fine, but the connector tab needed to be snipped a bit thinner to work. But then it works

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  Day 76 Koch snowflakes

  It's getting cold and I think it was supposed to snow this weekend. It didn't, so we made some more snowflakes to follow up on Day 70 and Day 71. This time gescandon's mathematically-inspired Koch snowflakes on Thingiverse. Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare low/.3mm prints one of these snowflake

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  Day 75 Helicopter challenge rings

  Our son recently saved up his allowance to buy a small remote-control helicopter, so today we made some rings for him to try to knock over and pick up with the copter. STL file: day75helirings.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare low/.3mm, I think it was under 30 minutes for all

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  Day 74 Decasphericons

  Today we printed and assembled the two types of decasphericon models from chriskpalmer's Sphericons on Thingiverse. We used Gorilla Glue to install 3mm Neodymium Rare Earth Super Magnets in the holes of the model and are impatiently waiting until tomorrow to be able to snap the two pieces together a

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  Day 73 CGR pontoon boat, full size

  Our son printed his LEGO team's pontoon boat in full size today. Enough room for five minifigs, and it floats! The minifigs sit on LEGO-style bumps to stay in place. The color changes come from filament swaps and drawing on the filament with Sharpie before it went through the extruder. STL file: day

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  Day 72 Carabiner

  In the interest of attaching things to other things, today we printed briscoe28's s-caribiner from Thingiverse. It's interesting how the flexible bit works; this is a very nice design, which I guess is why it was a "Featured Thing" on Thingiverse today! Thingiverse link: Settings: Afinia low/.3mm in

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  Day 71 Snowflakes, part 2

  More snowflakes! STL file: day71snowflakes2.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare low/.3mm to get these in one layer.

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  Day 70 Snowflakes, part 1

  Lots of tiny snowflakes for some kind of winter/holiday use. The snowflake designs are from a vector-graphics snowflake patterns file on Zezu. In future days we will make these larger and add holes/hooks so they can be used as ornaments. STL file: day70snowflakes1.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse lin

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  Day 69 CGR pontoon boat

  Today our 8-year-old son designed this boat in Tinkercad for an upcoming LEGO competition. The picture shows the 50% scale model we printed today so full-size minifigs don't fit, but printed at full size there will be places for five LEGO minifigs in sitting position, complete with "bumps" to hold t

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  Day 68 Glow sphere #1

  I love the look of gavi's Spherical lattice on Thingiverse, but don't have a resin printer to get the beautiful print that they do. However, their low-res "visualization only" file is small enough to open in Tinkercad, so I sandwiched it between two spherical layers and printed in translucent filame

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  Day 67 The knot 8_19

  The real reason for printing the knot 818 yesterday was to compare it to a print of 819, the first non-alternating knot in the standard knot table. STL file: the-knot-819.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: The same MakerWare custom knot-slicing profile used yesterday. Technical notes: A

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  Day 66 The knot 8_18

  Our initial reason forgetting a 3D printer was to print mathematical models of knots, so today we go back to our roots and print a model of the knot 818 with our new translucent yellow filament: STL file: the-knot-818.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare custom knot-slicing prof

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  Day 65 Condiment bowl with sharpie stripe!

  Same bowl as yesterday, but this time we colored an 8-inch length of the filament with a black Sharpie marker before it went through the machine. Beautiful stripe, worked perfectly! Thingiverse link:

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  Day 64 Condiment bowl

  The Condiment Bowl designed by petergross3 in Thingiverse has such a beautiful shape, mixing squares and circles. We had been waiting to print it until our new translucent red filament arrived, and today is that day! Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare custom profile to get linear infill on the lo

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  Day 63 Tetrahinge

  Trying to find a better solution for making polyhedral nets than the folding models from Day 44, today we have a hinged version of a tetrahedron. The hinges are built to print together, fully assembled, using the "low" setting on a Replicator 2. STL file: day63tetrahinge.stl Tinkercad link: Thingive

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  Day 62 Quick hex bowl

  Couldn't be simpler than this. Needed a bowl, threw down Marissa's "wedge" shape script in Tinkercad, printed it as a shell on the Afinia. STL file: day62quickhexbowl.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Afinia 3D software with .3mm default fast and "shell" setting. This causes only the b

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  Day 61 Hilbert steps

  Okay, so maybe Day 60's model was maybe based on a Hilbert curve, not a Peano curve. So, we may as well make another model out of it. This one also keeps its form when picked up and has vertical steps to track the path of the curve. STL file: hilbert-steps.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Setti

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  Day 60 Peano curve

  Today we have a space-filling Peano curve with a dish-like indentation just because it looks cooler that way. More dish-y and more space-filling-y than the H-Tree fromDay 57! The model was made in Tinkercad using an image coded by blog.disktree.net-curve.html). It's fun to watch the Replicator trace

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  Day 59 Chainmail tests

  A sister-in-law of mine makes really intricate chainmail jewelry by actually bending tiny loops of metal. It's beautiful. For a present I printed her three samples of 3D-printed chainmail patterns. (Although her real ones are uncountably more beautiful and complex!) The designs are from TrenchCoatGu

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  Day 58 Cos plate

  I need a small cookie plate for a reception. And maybe PLA isn't FDA-approved but frankly I think most people would probably eat a cookie that was sitting on the table with no plate at all, so a PLA plate is probably okay. Just in case, however, here is a plate the minimizes cookie/PLA contact, beca

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  Day 57 H-tree dish

  Here is a small dish whose pattern comes from a level 5 H-Tree, which is a fractal space-filling curve. It is designed so that a Replicator 2 on "low" will trace its path with one layer all over the curve. STL file: h-tree-dish.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare "low", in an h

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  Day 56 Hairdo hardware #1

  I have a lot of hair and almost nothing is strong enough hold it up reliably. So today we begin a quest to 3D print something that can do the job! We'll start with takigama's Hairtie and Chopstick Hair Clip on Thingiverse just to get a sense of what is possible, and modify from there on future days.

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  Day 55 Customized bowl

  Today we print a beautiful low-res bowl made from gelstudios' wonderful Customizable Bowl Factory on Thingiverse. STL file: day55customizedbowl.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare "low" at 70% of the size in the file, with supports on because the bottom of the bowl has a lip ar

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  Day 54 Monitor tags

  These little tags are to put on the top of your computer monitor as reminders. You can also lightly clip a small paper to your computer with these. I'll also use them in class as participation tags - when a student contributes in class they can remove their tag - but at home I'll be using them to re

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  Day 53 Sine remake

  One of my calculus students earned a perfect score on this week's exam! So I made a present to hand back with her test. I hope she likes the sine function. The design is a remake of eduardoviruena's f(t)=sin t model on Thingiverse. I couldn't get that model to slice and print correctly, and the only

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  Day 52 Tiny frame #2

  Another tiny frame... this time for holding flatter things or maybe a very, very small picture. STL file: day52tinyframe2.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare "standard" in about an hour, with the usual hex infill (which shows through the translucent filament to make a nice patt

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  Day 51 Tiny frame #1

  A friend of mine likes to glue together picture frame corners to make very tiny frames for very tiny pictures. I have a couple for my bathroom but wanted to make some more. Here's one with a 20mm-sided cube area in the center for displaying a very small model or object (in this case a Settlers of Ca

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  Day 50 Escher trefoil

  Today we printed kenji1206'sEscher's knot from Thingiverse. Thingiverse link: Settings: Afinia .2mm default normal, in 1 hour and 52 minutes.

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  Day 49 Dodecaloop

  P wanted something for his office and it is AWESOME. Forty rhombic dodecahedra of awesome. Printed from emmet's Dodeca Chain Loop on Thingiverse. Thingiverse file: Settings: MakerWare "standard" with no raft or supports, on the glass, for 4 hours and 4 minutes.

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  Day 48 Do it now!

  Here is a bar to put over important documents that you need to deal with as soon as possible, so that they don't vanish into the black hole that is the top of your desk. Made in Tinkercad with Inkscape for the letters. STL file: day48doitnow.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Standard M

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  Day 47 Hanging pencil cup

  Just a small pencil cup for hanging over the side of a box. Yes, this is another thing for the JMU 3-SPACE classroom, which opens on Monday! After that I can get back to printing for "home"... STL file: day47pencilcup.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Afinia .3mm fast in 37 minutes. Te

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  Day 46 Salt bowl remake

  I love the look of Kulitorum's beautifully simple Salt Bowl on Thingiverse, but I couldn't get it to slice with MakerWare so I remade it in Tinkercad from a truncated sphere shape. STL file: day46saltbowl.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare "low" in just under an hour. Technica

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  Day 45 Tree frog sample model

  Various levels of MorenaP's nice Treefrog model on Thingiverse: Thingiverse link: Settings: Afinia 1.5mm "Fine". This models is particularly nice because it is built to not need any supports at all other than the raft. Prints beautifully.

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  Day 44 Triangular polyhedra nets

  Today we used Tinkercad to design 2D nets that fold up to regular 3D polyhedra, specifically the tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron which all have triangular faces. STL file: day44triangularnets.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Makerbot Replicator 2 on "Standard", which is .2mm

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  Day 43 CGR Catan trophy

  And for the winner of Catan, a trophy! The current winner in the house gets to display this tiny trophy on their shelf. This was made by our 8-year-old son by modifying Josh Goldenberg's Championship Trophy on Tinkercad. STL file: catan-trophy.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Afinia .

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  Day 42 Catan numbers

  We play Catan a lot at the dinner table and everything gets a little rough around the edges. Our number disks in particular looked a little shabby so we made some spiffy replacements. The numbers were made using Inkscape and Tinkercad, with the font-extruding technique from Day 27. We used height in

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  Day 41 Catan card holder

  Today, something long-awaited in our house: A card holder forSettlers of Catan! The design is an extension of Zarquon's Game Card Holder, which is itself a derivation of condac's Game Card Holder on Thingiverse. In this version Tinkercad was used to add tabs on the tops and bottoms as well so that y

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  Day 40 Cheese doorstop

  Yet another thing for the JMU 3-SPACE classroom: some cheese to keep the door open. Design from terenceang's Cheeze Door-Stop remix of mpv4gb's Swiss Cheese Doorstop on Thingiverse. Thingiverse link: Settings: Afinia .3mm fast. Some of the circles came out rough but since it is on the floor I don't

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  Day 39 CGR boat

  Our son designed today's print in Tinkercad. It is a test design for a 3D-printed boat for use in flooding emergencies. This was his third design, optimized for rough waters and ability to float after being dropped from a rooftop into water. He used Marissa's "Capsule" Tinkercad shape script. STL fi

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  Day 38 3-SPACE afinia fan cover

  With the start of classes in the JMU 3-SPACE classroom just a week or so away, today's print is an upgrade of Day 24's Afinia fan grate: STL file: day383spacefan.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Afinia .2mm normal defaults in 50 minutes. Technical notes: At .3mm fast, the letters in t

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  Day 37 Creeper desk ornament

  Okay, I've been traveling and I am very tired. One more day of something simple. A creeper face to keep you company on your desk. STL file: creeper-desk-ornament.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Afinia .2mm normal in just over an hour. Technical note: Although a very simple object, it

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  Day 36 Photo background clips

  Today, something very simple but which I think will be very useful for future pictures on this blog: slepcat's Paper Clip to set up simple photo background on Thingiverse. Thingiverse link: Settings: Afinia .3mm default fast in 29 minutes. Technical notes: On the settings I used, the gap for the pap

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  Day 35 Wormhole candle holder

  JamieLang's Wormhole Candle Holder is one of the most beautiful things I have seen on Thingiverse that is easily and reliably printable on a household fused deposition modeling machine. Its overhang angles are mild enough that no supports are necessary and the wireframe design cuts down on printing

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  Day 34 Ice cream stacker

  Counting allowance points to 100 is fine but it takes forever. For a more short-term reward we now have this three-step path to a trip for ice cream. The design is BrianStamile's Mmmmmmmm Ice Cream model on Thingiverse, sliced up with matching indentations and protrusions in Tinkercad. STL file: day

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  Day 33 Icosapillar

  Of course every icosahedron jawbreaker trap needs a respectable stand. Here is a very simple one I made in Tinkercad. Its top is exactly the shape needed to hold the icosahedron and we filled it with rice as it printed so it would be sturdy. STL file: day33icosapillar.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse

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  Day 32 Icosahedron jawbreaker trap

  The problem with Day 29's Icosahedron Failure Bowl wasn't with the model, it was with the machine. Turned out that the Replicator 2 needed a new xyz motor wire harness. So now let's try it again: This year's prize at the SUMS Conferenceis a lot of jawbreakers trapped inside a 3D-printed icosahedron

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  Day 31 Minecraft stamp blocks

  Creeper, zombie, and skeleton head blocks for your Minecraft stamping needs. STL file: minecraft-stamp-blocks.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Afinia .2mm normal, 1 hour and 2 minutes for all three head stampers. Stuff you might want to change: Maybe find some stamp ink pads that aren

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  Day 30 Engage lightswitch

  I miss ST:TNG. So today we made a little Picard bling for our downstairs bathroom lightswitch based on zthralls' Rounded Lightswitch Cover on Thingiverse: STL file: engage-light-switch.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Afinia with .2mm on "normal", 1 hour and 35 minutes, with a filamen

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  Day 29 Icosahedron failure bowl

  This year's prize at the SUMS Conference is a lot of jawbreakers trapped inside a 3D-printed icosahedron (symbol for the Mathematical Association of America). Yes I am working late at night at home again, shut up. Also the icosahedron only printed halfway before my Replicator 2 had a shifting malfun

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  Day 28 Gear box

  Tonight I'm tired. I'm making a box. The box is JinxTheRabbit's Box and Lid from Thingiverse and I cut a hole in the top with Will and Durgan's gear shape script in Tinkercad. STL file: day28gearbox.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Afinia 3D software .3mm normal, 54 minutes.

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  Day 27 Duck & block resolution testers

  With the 3-SPACE class looming closer and closer, my "at home" and "at work" are pretty mixed up. So again I'm printing at home for work. This time we have some resolution testers, so students can see how much it costs in print time to increase resolution, and what kinds of shapes do well even at lo

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  Day 26 Afinia tool holder

  The Afinia H-Series 3D printer comes with a very nice set of tools, some of which are very sharp and difficult to store safely. Today we used Tinkercad to design a tool holder that hangs inside the box that holds our gloves, tape, and other printing accessories. STL file: day26afiniatools.stl Tinker

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  Day 25 Dominos

  My son has been watching a lot of domino-toppling videos. Turns out dominos are kind of expensive - but pretty much the easiest thing ever to model in Tinkercad. We made standard-sized 1 7/8 x 15/16 x 1/4 inch dominoes. STL file: day25dominos.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: On the Re

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  Day 24 Afinia fan grate

  The Afinia H-Series is wonderful but I wish there was a cover for its exposed fan. It doesn't hurt to touch it but when small kids are around it is better to have it covered. Today's design is based on the bottom half of jlark's Extruder Fan Duct on Thingiverse. STL file: day24afiniafan.stl Tinkerca

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  Day 23 Menger coasters

  It's hard to 3D-print a Level 3 Menger sponge. But it isn't hard to print a slice of one, and it makes for a decent coaster. STL file: day23mengercoaster.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Afinia MakerWare at .3mm resolution, fast setting, with a raft, in about 34 minutes. Technical not

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  Day 22 3D stars

  Although this blog is for stuff I make at home, if you are a teacher then you know that home and work are essentially the same thing, especially when you are grading exams. It's the season for that first calculus exam, and to reward the students with B or higher grades I made some 3D stars. STL file

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  Day 21 Tri-koch box

  Today I wanted to test out the "shell" setting on the Afinia, so we printed the bottom half of the "trikoch" file from hakalan's Scripted Vases collection on Thingiverse. It is even more beautiful in person than in this picture, although it is very sharp at the top corners! STL file: day21trikochbox

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  Day 20 Lattice box

  Okay, because of yesterday we now have a hundred thin rings to keep track of, so today we built BozarthPrime's Dice Box, with the top and the lip for the top removed. Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare "low" with no raft and no supports. Very nice to have a print with an open latt

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  Day 19 100 point counters

  My son wants to save up for something with his allowance and chore money, which we do on a point system. When he saves up 100 points he will have enough saved up, so we made 100 thin rings so he can visually track how close he is to his goal. This is the real reason we printed the rocket yesterday;

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  Day 18 Tricolor rocket

  Today we made a copy of landru's Modular Model Rocket from Thingiverse. STL file: day18tricolorrocket.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Standard "low" MakerWare setting, with a raft. Printed the three pieces separately in about two hours total. Technical notes: I had to fiddle with the

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  Day 17 Strainer funnel

  To make a base for cold hibiscus tea, boil water and add to a handful of dried hibiscus flowers in a Mason jar. Once it has cooled to room temperature, strain into a second Mason jar. You can keep the base in the fridge for a pretty long time; at least a week. When you are ready for cold hibiscus te

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  Day 16 Ms. PacMan letter opener

  On Thingiverse, peterpur's round Letter Opener is just one step away from being Pac-Man. Or Ms. PacMan, maybe? STL file: day16mspacmanletter.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Afinia H-Series on .2mm default normal, with a raft, in 21 minutes. Technical notes: This model was made in Tin

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  Day 15 Toast pliers

  Sometimes you work all night to make a letter opener and then the files won't download. And then you make some Toast Pliers, designed by r4ph on Thingiverse. Thingiverse link: Settings: Afinia at .25mm on "fast", with the model scaled to 80%; printing took about 27 minutes. Technical notes: ABS plas

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  Day 14 Dodecabubbles

  Inspired by JMP's Bubble Frames on Thingiverse, today we have a dodecahedron frame for dipping into bubble solution to make a minimal surface. STL file: day14dodecabubbles.stl Tinkercad link: Settings: MakerWare "Low" with raft and supports, with a model at 80% of original size taking just over an h

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  Day 13 LEGO marble run (chapter 3)

  Picking up from where we left off on Day 8, we made some curved LEGO marble run pieces (the translucent blue pieces in the picture). STL file: day13legomarble.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare special slicing profile described in Day 8 of this blog, about 23 minutes per curve

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  Day 12 Videogame dice

  Today we made a videogame die, with the number on each face represented by some classic game. In the picture you see 6 Minecraft creepers, 2 Space Invaders, and 3 Pac-Man dots; the other three number faces are 1 companion cube from Portal, 4 Super Mario Brothers mushrooms, and the 5 Tetris pieces. S

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  Day 11 Giant knot

  Two days ago we printed some mini knots; today we go to the opposite extreme and print a GIANT knot! It was really fun seeing the looks on people's faces when they saw this giant thing. It looks even better in person than it does in the picture. STL file: giant-knot.zip Tinkercad link: Thingiverse l

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  Day 10 Going fishing

  Up until now I tried to design a completely new object or at least modify/remix an existing design each day, but today my design time was spent learning OpenSCAD so today's print is just a set of things that are good to give as a small gift for someone who likes to fish: two Fishing Lures from sirma

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  Day 9 Mini knots

  Even at home, eight days is a lot of time to pass without printing something mathematical. So today, miniature knots! We can use them around the house as game tokens or poker chips, or just to look pretty. STL file: mini-knots.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: Makerware custom profile

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  Day 8 LEGO marble run (chapter 2)

  Following up from Day 4 we have some new-and-improved LEGO marble run pieces: STL file: day8legomarble.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: MakerWare "low" with no raft and custom supports as described below, with two pieces printing in 37 minutes. Technical notes: To make the supports ea

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  Day 7 Holey coin-op bottle opener

  Today something very simple: a minor remix of hoeken's lovely minimalist Coin-op Bottle Opener on Thingiverse, with holes added for style and so you can see the penny better. STL file: holey-coin-op-bottle-opener.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: On MakerWare "low" with no raft or supp

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  Day 6 Hinged butterfly

  Inspired by the hinge in someandy's Embossing Stamp, today we make a hinged butterfly. The image came from a screenshot of butterfly on wugange.com and was converted to .svg format by online-convert.com and then imported into Tinkercad. Most of the fiddling was testing and retesting the hinge and fi

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  Day 5 Fractal LED

  Most of today's design time was spent tweaking the LEGO marble run piece from yesterday, but that's not done yet so here we will do an easy mashup of two great things: the "2032 button cell holder "by sphynx on Thingiverse and the "Fractal" community shape script by Petr Broz on Tinkercad. STL file:

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  Day 4 LEGO marble run (chapter 1)

  Today our 8-year-old jumped into the print-a-day game with a sample piece for a marble run to be built on top of LEGO pieces. Using Tinkercad he combined a short piece of marble track with a LEGO brick in Tinkercad's public files (credit to Kerry Todyruik). STL file: day4legomarble.stl Tinkercad lin

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  Day 3 Pickaxe hangers

  Today we printed hangers for our Minecraft foam pickaxe and sword. Each of these nails into the wall in two places and has a small post that sticks out. By placing the hangers in strategic locations the foam pickaxe and sword will balance on the posts and we will be able to take them on or off the w

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  Day 2 Voronoi box

  One of the new Community Shape Scripts on Tinkercad is a very nice Voronoi diagram maker by Brandon Cole (including the code!). As a sort of random test of what sorts of angles we can get away with when printing without supports, here is a trinkets box with Voronoi sides made from Cole's shape scrip

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  Day 1 Coin traps

  For the first day, a simple coin trap for nickels or quarters which we designed in Tinkercad. STL file: coin-traps.stl Tinkercad link: Thingiverse link: Settings: We printed these on the MakerWare "low" setting with no raft and no supports on blue painter's tape. Halfway through the print you can pa