At the ART-MATH-98 Conference in Berkeley, several od my friends played
with the Sculpture Generator.
John Sullivan and Nat Friedman collaborated on this configuration.
Nat made the final fine-tunings on the parameters.
This shape demonstrates a very simple version of the self-interlocking
double-toroidal loop series.
See also the "Mweave" in this group.
This design and fabrication effort is part of a research program sponsored by NSF to streamline the process of rapid prototyping of free form parts, by defining a clean separation and interface between designers and fabricators.
Orientation is not critical either. However, for a layered manufacturing
process (SLA, SLS, etc), it might be best to turn the
object 90 degrees around the x-axis, thereby giving the part
minimal height, and preserving its 3-fold symmetry ideally.
In the .STL file describing this part, the contours from different surfaces (e.g. around the equator) have not been merged -- but the cracks should be very small. Thus this requires software that does some polygon closing across small gaps automatically.
The compressed files can be downloaded from our anonymous FTP
site with:
ftp ftp.cs.berkeley.edu {login as "anonymous"; use your full
e-mail address as password.}
Then change directory: cd ucb/projects/unigrafix/STL99
Fetch desired file: get FILE.stl.gz
The FILE.stl.gz file can be uncompressed with gunzip.
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