Math Monday: Scroll Saw Fractals

Education Science

Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. His free weekly-ish maker tips newsletter can be found at garstipsandtools.com.

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January 8th, 2011August 14th, 2016 4

By the Museum of Mathematics

With just a scroll saw, starting from a cube of wood, it is possible to make a family of complex, cube-based fractals.

$fractals$

Once you’ve mastered the above, try the next level up in this family:

$fractals$

Below is a face-on view, which shows the pattern that has to be cut three times to get the final object. You cut the same outline in the XY plane, the XZ plane, and the YZ plane.

$fractals$

Cory Poole showed me this technique, which I’d not seen before.

[Article written by George Hart]

4 thoughts on “Math Monday: Scroll Saw Fractals”

corypoole says:

January 10th, 2011 at 12:50 pm

http://oceananinchdeep.blogspot.com/2011/01/3d-fractals-cut-on-scroll-saw.html

This has a small blog post on making these and several other objects using this technique.

They’re pretty fun to make.
corypoole says:

January 10th, 2011 at 12:51 pm

http://oceananinchdeep.blogspot.com/2011/01/3d-fractals-cut-on-scroll-saw.html

This has a small blog post on making these and several other objects using this technique.

They’re pretty fun to make.

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Math Monday: Scroll Saw Fractals

By Gareth Branwyn