So here is the Digital Sundial – working for real – in the garden – between all the clouds.

Radio-Controlled clock next to it for accurate time.

The 3D print collection so far:

Here is a working 3D printed digital sundial showing the correct time in the New Forest Observatory garden.

Compass is to point the sundial North and protractor is to set the sundial angle to location latitude.

Digital Sundial??  Gotta be joking right??  Nope – some genius out there has created a 3D printable Digital Sundial with 20-minute resolution (at 0.1mm printing resolution).

It is a remarkable piece of work.

Only gripe is – it was 10:23 a.m. when I took the picture, not 10:20 a.m.  Just kidding – it’s remarkable!!

Here is a rather large 6th order Sierpinski sponge printed on the Anet A6 3D printer using Rigid.Ink white PLA.

All was going well 120-hours into the print – when I got a nozzle clog.  This meant the top portion of the pyramid didn’t get printed.

Luckily there are some pretty clever people on the 3D printer forums and one guy suggested I use Ideamaker to just select the missing bit of print and then print out the missing top section separately.  First attempt at doing this I didn’t choose a big enough section to reprint and it only just slightly didn’t fit.  Wanting a perfect fit I had a second go, this was in itself a 9-hour print just for the missing top bit – and fortunately this time all was o.k.

So here is the longest print to-date on the little Anet A6 – 129-hours on a Sierpinski sponge.

A Klein bottle only makes sense if it’s transparent so you can see what’s going on inside.  Not that easy to make transparent/translucent 3D prints.  Here you can see 3 different Klein bottle prints using an Anet A6 3D printer and Rigid.Ink Trans Blue PLA filament.

The leftmost bottle is a 0.8mm solid double-wall print – even back-illuminated you cannot see what is going on inside.

For the middle Klein bottle – I have cheated.  That is a 0.8mm solid double-wall print of a half Klein bottle – the bottle has effectively been cut right through the middle, at least that way it is clear what is going on inside.

The right-hand Klein bottle is a 0.8mm SINGLE-WALLED print!  Being translucent you can at least see what is going on inside.

I think we need a 3D glass printer to get what I’m really after.

 

The longest print I have made to date!  This is a 115-hour print of a 4th order Menger Sponge 122mm on a side.  Printed on an Anet A6 3D printer using Rigid.Ink white PLA.

I’m not sure if I will go for a longer print time than this again, it was a pretty nerve-wracking experience, particularly once it exceeded the 100-hours.

The latest 3D prints are the objects in blue.

Can you spot – T Rex skull, Reuleaux Tetrahedron, nested Dodecahedra, small Klein bottle with very thin walls?

In Rigid.Ink Trans Blue filament we have a 42 hour long print of 4 nested Dodecahedra.

0.4mm nozzle and 0.2mm resolution.

It will take about a week to remove all that support structure.