Shaky Flower

Description

Lesson Plan and Constraints: 

Our task was to create a 3D-printed shaky object where the inner layers shook when the item is shook

• All designs must be made from an initial shape, which is then offset numerous times, then extruded and cut to make a shape with smaller versions of the shape inside
• They must fit into a 8 cm by 8 cm square and the height must be 1 cm tall
• All cuts and extrudes must have a draft (this means angled inwards)
• Must not require ANY supports, (no supports).
• NO moving parts, (no gyroscopes, fidget spinners, etc.)

Summary and General Advice:

My object consists of a flower sketch that was offset on the same sketch 20 times (21 flowers total). I wanted my design to be a flower because I like flowers.

For anyone making their own shaky flower, I would advise using the offset tool to make the rest of the flowers (all the flowers except the first). This will make creating the different flowers more efficient.

Overview and Design Choices:

Before I created my shaky flower I browsed Google for inspiration. This gave me the idea to create a flower. The greatest piece of inspiration is shown below. 

Once I figured out what I wanted to create, I started designing my object in Solidworks. First, I created my constraint box and started off with my initial sketch of a flower. I created 2 construction circles, the inner one has a diameter of 5.80 cm and the outer one has a diameter of 6.50 cm. Then, I created 8, evenly spaced points on the 6.50 cm diameter circle. Then, I created 8 arcs of equal height with their ends touching the different points on the circle in a way that formed a flower. The difference between version 1.0 and version 1.1 is that I made the height of all the arcs the same.

Next, I offset the shape outwards twice and inwards 11 times by 0.1 to have a total of 14 flower outlines on my sketch.

Once completing the sketch, I exited out of the sketch. First, I boss extruded the outside line with the direction facing downwards. I set the extrude height to 0.50 cm. I also set the degree to 15.00 (25 in version 1.1). Next, I extrude cut the second most outer layer. I ensured that the direction was facing down, set the height to 0.50 cm and set the degree to 15.00 (25 in version 1.1). I then repeated the above steps until I ran out of layers to offset. 

After that I had to mirror my whole design. I selected the plane the sketch was on and added all extrudes to the “bodies” box.

Then they were printed. 

Version 1.0 had some issues. As you can see, the different petals of the flower in version 1 are unsymmetrical so I fixed that in version 1.1. I also changed the cut angle from 15 degrees to 25 degrees.

Then I realized that it would be best to try it again except offset outwards instead of going inwards. Version 2.0 and 2.1 was born.

For version 2, first I created my constraint box and started off with my initial sketch of a flower. I created 3 ellipses which I centered around the center of my constraint box. Each has a radius of 0.05 cm.

Then I offset my sketch outwards 21 times (total of 22 layers). Each offset was 0.1 cm apart.

After that I exited out of the sketch and extruded or cut every other sketch (outermost is extruded, then second outermost is cut, etc.). I didn’t do this for the two innermost layers of the sketch in version 2.1 (it caused issues in version 2.0). All cuts and offsets were of height 0.5 and at a 25 degree angle in version 2.0 and 30 in version 2.1. Then I mirrored my creation.

Then they were printed

The issue with version 2.0 was that the innermost cut had to be 15 degrees to work, which caused issues with the printer. These can be seen in the top view of version 2.0. Also, the degree angle of the extrudes and cuts were too small. Additionally, I also changed the type of filament used to print.

For versions 2.2 and 2.3 I changed the height to 0.75. For version 2.2 I changed the extrude/cut angle to 20 degrees. For version 2.3 I changed the extrude/cut angle to 15 degrees.

Version 2.3 is my final version. You can download it above. Enjoy!