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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See all of George Hart’s Math Monday columns
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