MakerBot Industries

Cooling ducts by wurp

With Wurp’s “simple model slicer” and OpenSCAD you can easily slice up a large model into smaller parts for printing.  While the script, is as the name suggests, simple it is also elegant.

Wurp’s solution to the limitations of his print area was to design a script that can chop up a model into different cube shaped sections.  As you can see from the image of his Cooling Duct above, he was able to slice that model into three large segments that could be printed separately and then assembled.

Interestingly, there’s no special reason for using a cube shaped.  You could just as easily use cube shaped sections with symmetric keyed spans along all of the edges.  That way, you could conceivably print several models and just slot them together right off of the print bed – without having to spend too much time actually designing the connections.

Simple model slicer by wurp

This OpenScad file can slice up larger models into printable pieces. I used it to make thingiverse.com/thing:6721 This is pretty trivial, but can be handy for a lot of objects, and gives a template for more sophisticated slicing.

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Symmetric Keyed Connectors / Spans / Tiles by relet

An update to the scad file to include - a parametric symmetric joint, consisting of a combined male+female connector. - a parametric symmetric span, having a combined male+female connector on each end. - a parametric symmetric tile, having a combined male+female connector on each side. - a parametric rectangle with symmetric connectors, having a combined male+female connector on each side. Feel free to flattr this design or any derivatives if it was useful for you. update: 2011-02-08 16:04 - some of the parameters were not used correctly, resulting in asymmetry if you changed the settings. Should be fixed now.

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