Tunable Tolerance Tetrahedron Twist Timewasting Toy

18 (likes)
5034 (views)
This product is available only if you have an account in My Mini Factory service
×
Color:

This tunable tolerance tetrahedron twist timewasting toy thing was inspired by http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:186372 . The problem with that thing was that it was just an STL file, with no means for adjusting the "fit" tolerance or scaling. So, one of the students in my lab, Zachary Snyder, spent valuable should-have-been-studying-for-final-exams time on deriving his own formula for it in OpenSCAD... and then I spent too much time trying to print it with various parameters and tweaking the design. Oh yeah, it also can take a shockingly long time to solve the puzzle... especially shocking given that it's just two pieces! The 20160630 version has a few minor, but significant improvements. The original version uses a turn of 1.0, which makes the parts not fit with those from the new design unless tenth_turns is set to 10 rather than the new default value of 12.

About the author:
ProfHankD
I'm a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Kentucky, best known for things like having built the world's first Linux PC cluster supercomputer in 1994... although around the 3D-printing world I'm probably best known for my HingeBox (which Tested popularized). My research group (Aggregate.Org) really is about improving computing systems by making the various SW+HW components work better together, which we do for many different types of computer systems: supercomputers, digital cameras, ... and now 3D printers. I had some experience with tool and die making using Bridgeport Series I CNCs as far back as the late 1970s, but my 3D printing adventure started in late 2012 with purchase of a MakerGear M2 for my lab to make custom camera parts in support of computational photography research. I now use multiple MakerGear M2 and Wanhao I3 3D printers, several semiconductor laser cutters, a 3040T CNC mill, a programmable paper cutter, and a small vacuum forming machine.

Reviews

This model have no reviews. Would you like to be the first to review? You need to print it first.