Math Monday: Color 3D Printing

By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics

Color 3D printing allows one to make beautiful objects that are pretty much impossible to fabricate by any other technique. Here is a 9-inch diameter sculpture I designed and built on a 3D Systems Zprinter 450. The underlying geometry is based on one of the well-known stellations of the icosahedron, but I modified it, punctured it, and colored it to suit my taste.

If you are lucky enough to have access to a color 3D printer, you can make a copy for yourself using the data file available here. Below is a closeup shot of another example in this series, which emphasizes curves and gradations of color. You can see the rest of it and a series of related 3D printed color forms see here.

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