The luck of the Irish

A St. Patrick's Day shamrock! This was designed (or rather recycled) in OpenSCAD by combining four Valentine's hearts and throwing in the green filament. Only the stem had to be newly designed. I also added a snap off support annulus for the dual printing purpose of holding up the stem and to help avoid warp.

Shown with the printing annulus on the build plate

Four Valentine's Hearts = One Shamrock Leaf

Learning through creation: 3D Printing in the calculus classroom

Just finished printing out the first set of prints created by multivariable calculus students. The students worked in groups of three, modeling these prints in Mathematica. The mathematical topic is quadric surfaces, but they had quite a lot of leeway as to how to define both the plot limits and how to define a solid based on the surfaces. With the happy and somewhat unexpected result that the shapes are not redundant, and they do not look like the quadric surfaces in the book or those that I created for class demonstrations. The objects are now residing in the display case. Below is the blurb about them that is hanging next to them in the case. 

Learning through creation: 3D Printing in the calculus classroom

The 3D printed objects are modeled by students in multivariable calculus labs with instructor Dr. Evelyn Sander in Spring 2015. This is a rotating display that will be updated with new student prints throughout the semester. 

This is part of a pilot project to incorporate 3D printing into the Calculus 1 and 3 classrooms in Spring 2015. In addition to  developing 3D classroom demonstration pieces, one lecture session per week runs as a lab session. Students learn the material through creation of 3D models, which are then printed by LA Eric Cawi. The labs allow students the freedom to incorporate creativity and artistic abilities into the

mathematics.  For more information, see  http://gmumathmaker.blogspot.com .  

On May 4th 9-10am and 2:30-3:30pm, the students will present their 3D prints at a public display in the Exploratory Hall Annex. Feel free to join us on May 4th. 

Happy Mardi Gras

Laissez les bons temps roulez! Here's a seasonal Mardi Gras jester hat for all your Tuesday needs. Modeled in Open SCAD. 

Click here to download the Open SCAD code.

Happy Valentine's Day

A Valentine

A simple heart with a twist, designed in OpenSCAD. Printing 12 per build plate 

 allowed for short and easy print of Valentines for an entire class.

Impossible Key

As a followup to a standard key, I made this impossible (or at least useless) key for my friend Jeff Offutt (photo credit). It is inspired by the Catalog of Impossible Objects.

Eggs Cooked Three Ways

Here are four ellipsoids. Sometimes an egg, sometimes an M&M, but always the same shape name.

The first two - though different color schemes - both show a polar coordinate parametrization. 

Here are the level sets of constant height.  The level sets all are ellipses - hence the name of the shape!

Here are the level sets of constant x-value.  The level sets are all ellipses in this direction as well!

Unlocking OpenSCAD

Here is my first model using OpenSCAD. It is an easy language if you are used to coding. Evidently if those used to CAD do not like it. (But like the Latex/Power Point divide, it is hard to see a difference in the final product.)

Here is the code. The cubes are the teeth, the cylinders are the stem, and the difference section creates the bow:

cube([21,10,1]);

translate([0,10,0]) cube([5,5,1]);

translate([8,10,0]) cube([5,5,1]);

translate([16,10,0]) cube([5,5,1]);

rotate([0,90,0]) cylinder(r=5,h=104,$fn=80);

rotate([0,90,0]) translate([0,0,80]) cylinder(r=7,h=2,$fn=80);

rotate([0,90,0]) translate([0,0,90]) cylinder(r=7,h=2,$fn=80);

difference(){

translate([122.5,0,-5]) scale([.75,1,1]) cylinder(r=30,h=10,$fn=80);

translate([122.5,0,-5]) scale([.75,1,1]) cylinder(r=20,h=10,$fn=80);

}