Science and Math 3D prints

We’ve used the 3D printer to make all sorts of things but the bulk of what we’ve made has something to do with science or math.

An older post discussed 3d printed meissner tetrahedra and I’ve made more of them but smaller and in blue filament.  The first photo shows them as they’re being built.  You can see how the printer deals fills internal space of a solid object with a certain amount of infill.  You can set the infill from 0% (open space) to 100% (solid plastic).  This is about 40% infill.

Tetrahedra under construction. You can see the raft they're sitting on and the infill filling the void inside the shapes.
Tetrahedra under construction. You can see the raft they’re sitting on and the infill filling the void inside the shapes.

Small Meissner tetrahedra
Small Meissner tetrahedra

 

One of our faculty members made a little setup for measuring light transmission through a liquid sample in a cuvette.  It’s a nice little compact setup that is properly aligned right from the start.

Cuvette holder for transmission measurement
Cuvette holder for transmission measurement (drawn in Solidworks).

Greta and a student made up a pipette holder to mount on the wall in the lab.

Wall-mount pipette holder
Wall-mount pipette holder

I think this is some sort of molecular orbital model.

Model of molecular orbital
Model of molecular orbital

Print of a pseudosphere.

Pseudosphere from Thingverse
Pseudosphere from Thingverse

The bio department is going to use these microscope clamps from Thingverse to attach mobile phones to eyepieces on microscopes.  They’re easy to assemble from a few 3D printed parts and work great.  Here’s a photo of a whole bunch of the parts being printed at once.

3D printed microscope phone mounts
3D printed microscope phone mounts

Here’s a photo of the final product in action: