3D-Box-Sphere 2

thingiverse

In the mid 1980's, A major national laboratory purchased a first generation Stereolithography machine (uses a laser to harden a liquid resin). One of the first things they printed was this design. This was revolutionary because this particular object in nearly impossible to manufacture in any other way from one piece of material. Now, 30 years later, I have my very own desktop 3D printer and I duplicated this design. It's quite difficult to print, as the bridging at the top is quite severe. Also, the very tall, thin legs wobble badly as they get near the top. Print Settings Printer Brand: RepRap Printer: Prusa Mendel i2 Rafts: Doesn't Matter Supports: Doesn't Matter Resolution: 0.1mm Infill: 50% Hilbert Curve Notes: I added a 10mm Brim on this one because it is so tall, and its base is fairly narrow. Even so, the tall thin legs do tend to move around during printing. I tried generating supports, but they were nearly impossible to remove afterwards. Post-Printing Cut the small ring with a pointy X-acto knife. I usually stab it to start the cut, then a bit of pressure on the ball and it breaks away. Clean up where the ring touches the base and the ball, and any extra stringing at the roof. How I Designed This TinkerCAD I created the main block in TinkerCAD, and pushed through 4 cylindrical holes, and 2 rectangular holes through the middle. Then I save that as a block, and added a sphere in the center. I had to create a custom thin standoff ring at the bottom to hold the sphere, because the default ring in TinkerCAD was too thick and very difficult to cut through with a knife.