Astrological Zodiac Wheel

cults3d

This is an astrological zodiac done in the traditional style with the start of the year in Aries at the left hand side or 9 o'clock position. The time of year progresses clockwise through each of the constellations which also include the Modes or Quadruplicities (Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable or C, F and M in each constellation symbol), the Elemental signs (Fire, Earth, Air and Water) and the classical planetary rulers (before Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were discovered). The outer star ring contains symbols for the equinoxes and solstices. Each quadrant is contained in a separate .STL file and printed at the default size just fits the print bed on my Prusa i3 Mk2.5S printer. Printed at 200 microns (0.2mm) each quadrant takes about 4.5 hrs to print. I used PET as it adheres to the print bed extremely well with no lifting whatsoever. The black and orange print shown in the photo is Prusa orange PET which happens to be UV reactive and looks stunning with a UV lamp in the dark! The other pictures show the entire model in Blender and some of the quadrants in Slic3r Prusa Edition as well a my final antique copper. The disk is about 15.5 inches (39 cm) and is an impessive bit of wall art! You can put whatever you want in the centre which is designed for a 130mm perspex disc which you can get from eBay suppliers and I eventually want to put moving gears behind it to look like the wheel works of the cosmos. I may add a pointer and ESP8266 micro-controller to move a pointer to show lunar ingress.