Design Process
For my first shape, I tried to replicate the ‘flexible design’ that we saw in class and from this paper: https://handandmachine.org/publications/Extruder_Turtle.pdf. I used their method of adding perpendicular movement to the turtle’s path, and applied that to a sine wave.
My next design uses the concept of ‘bridging’, where you stretch a single piece of filament across a gap. The way my code works is it first prints out a circle, then creates the bridges one by one. Only some layers have bridges and the number of them changes with each layer.
My last design was a bit of an accident. I was originally just testing to see if I could create loops with filament in the same way as with clay, but I ended up creating this ring with an interesting surface texture instead. Each of the ‘ridges’ comes from the printer doing a quick z-hop while also increasing the amount of extrusion. I used the functions “set_extrude_rate” and “forward_lift” to create these shapes:
The first two designs are unique from sliced designs from their use of single filament movements. The third design’s quick changes in extrusion rate and diagonal movements mean that it would not be possible to create with a slicer.
3D Prints
Dang. You have gotten really good at 3D printing. Your designs, your prints, they are all so solid. All of your shapes are clearly only doable without a slicer.
For your 3rd design, does your turtle just go in a circle for each layer, but at certain points it keeps going in the circle while pulling up, extruding extra, coming back down and returning to the normal extrusion rate?
Thanks! For that design, I found a function in the Turtle library called “forward_lift” that basically makes a diagonal line that goes up or down. I can’t put images in comments but I’ll put the code snippet in my post if you want to see how it works.
Hey Ben,
So did your sin wave end up being flexible? For your shape with the bridges across the circle, did you end up with a somewhat solid center where each of the bridges overlap? Very nice designs and prints!