A set of Penrose P2 tiles annotated with guides for matching rules
In the contest Tessellating Tiles
10
36
2
481
updated December 31, 2022

Description

PDF

This model is an aperiodic tessellation – the P2 Penrose Tile pair.  To form an aperiodic tiling, the tiles must be connected according to the matching rules.  The model includes two versions that have different annotations on the tile to guide the matching rule.  The annotations are designed to be colored, so they are at different heights (2mm to 2.5 mm and 2.5 mm to 3 mm) so that they can be colored differently by layer changes on a single-extruder printer.  The two annotations are: 

  • Vertex matching - the corners of the tiles are annotated with parts of a star pattern and must be connected so that the same star patterns meet.  The star patterns are different, so they should be usable for matching even if the whole tile is printed in a single color.  
  • Arc matching - each tile has two arcs, one on the long side and one on the short side, that must meet for the matching rule to be correct.  The arc edges meet at unique locations, so they will still work for matching if the whole tile is printed in one color.  

Each 3mf file contains a set of tile pairs laid out to fill as much of the printer bed as possible.  After inserting the model in the slicer, you can find the best alignment for your printer bed and then delete any tiles that is outside the printable area of the bed.  An example is shown in the bed layout photo.  

Suggestions for printing:

  • Make sure the bed is very clean The model is a flat thin plates, so poor bed adhesion is particularly troublesome.
  • After you delete the parts that won't fit on the bed, select the remaining parts and merge them into a single part.  This will allow you to set the adaptive layers for all of them at once, all the same. 
  • Use the adaptive layer settings to get well-aligned top layers.  With an 0.6mm nozzle set to 0.30mm, you end up with 10 layers (see the adaptive_layers image).  An 0.4 mm nozzle should have similar results, but more layers.
  • Make the skirt taller to help prevent warping.  Using the adaptive layers described above, I set the skirt at 6 layers
  • Add a color change at 2mm and 2.5 mm.  Using the adaptive layers above, this means the top two layers are one annotation color, the next two layers are the other annotation color, and the rest of the layers are the base tile color. (see the color_changes image).

If you expect to leave the printer for any period of time, I suggest you add custom G-code to turn the part cooling fan off during the color change.  Otherwise, it will blow on the bed and cause the parts near the corner to lift.  This can cause the print to fail if it's bad enough, but at least those tiles will be ruined because the hot end will dig into them.  

The G-code for color changes can be accessed from Printer Settings tab > Custom G-code item > scroll down to the Color Change G-code text box.  The default G-code is:

M600
G1 E0.4 F1500 ; prime after color change

I suggest changing it to:

M107 ; Fan off before color change
M600
M106 S255 ; Fan on after color change
G1 E0.4 F1500 ; prime after color change
 

The M107 code turns the fan off, and the M106 sets it back to 255 (max).  Note that the fan speed has to be set to a fixed number – the placeholder variable to know the current fan speed is not available in this part of the slicer.  So if you use part cooling other than max, you should adjust the value accordingly.  This also assumes that the color change happens after the part-cooling fan should be on.  If you were doing a color change on a very low layer (when the part cooling fan should be off), you might have to manually edit the generated gcode to leave the part fan off after the color change on those layers only.
 

Tags



Model origin

The author marked this model as their own original creation.

License