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Artistic speaker stand

A procedurally generated speaker stand

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The general idea was there would be a curved thing sitting under the speaker, but a solid hunk of PLA with infill was too boring.  The part would be iterated to get the angle & size right, so any artwork had to be procedural.

The concept resembles this $30 brick.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002ATK2OS/

But it needs more rear support to prevent the speaker from falling backward.

The lion kingdom had a sick fascination with the 3D printed cast in Stowaway, not because it wasn't ridiculous & didn't exist just to sell Makerbots, but because of the design.  The lion kingdom figured it was painstakingly modeled by paw since it didn't fit the actor & they couldn't iterate the design.  The sponge was a creative way to add artistic value to a piece which would normally be made of infill.  It would be the ultimate speaker stand, but modeling was difficult.

It turns out there are 3D printed casts like that.  They're printed without supports & they're procedurally generated.  The journey begins with the voronoi algorithm.

Wherever there have been 3D printed sponges, they were generated by the voronoi algorithm.

The voronoi algorithm gives us structures which can be printed without supports & which are more appealing than infill.

This page describes a process using mesh mixer, then rhino3D, then Grasshopper.  


http://www.piper3dp.com/blogs/how-to-design-custom-3d-printable-casts-for-broken-bones/


The idea is to get the model in a surface form.  Grasshopper converts the surface directly to the exact movie structure, using the voronoi algorithm.  Most of the work seems to be converting a mesh to a nurb for Grasshopper to operate on.

There's a process using Blender

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMpGmFNXSKI

The general idea is to subdivide, then decimate, which recombines the new subdivisions with randomness.  The random subdivisions are the voronoi pattern.  Finally, there's a wireframe modifier which converts the wireframe into new solids.  Then the new solids are subdivided again to get smooth holes.  Helas, this works better on a sphere than a plane.

  • Minimal stand

    lion mclionhead09/26/2021 at 02:38 0 comments

    With peak artwork unprintable & 1 week wasted, the lion kingdom switched to peak efficiency.

    A simple cross would do the job in the least space.  It's barely visible, so artwork would be a waste of time.  It's true that the front corners have no support, but these speakers haven't had any diagonal falls.  

    This design worked & was parametric, so changing the angle was just a matter of changing a number & printing out another one.  The ideal angle is between 25 & 28 deg.  It also depends on how high the seat is, how close the speakers are.

  • Procedural hex cylinders

    lion mclionhead09/24/2021 at 05:49 0 comments

    The long process of chasing shrinkwrap algorithms & voronoi algorithms finally led to a procedurally generated, straight cylinder.  It was an epic procedurally generated hex tube to be carved into a cylindrical stand.

    A 250 line python script generating paw coded faces was deemed the easiest way to make a hex cylinder surface.  Then, the solidify modifier & some paw coded mesh editing could extrude it.

    A gap in the back would be filled with foam.

    Unfortunately, once the top layer was added, it had horizontal overhangs.  It could be printed in sections, but would always have some overhangs.

    The hex tube & outline can be separate segments, but still have a lot of junk to remove.  The top hexes would have to be solid, but that would add a lot of material.

    To be sure, a solid cylinder would be instantly printable, definitely more artistic than the commercial options, but it wouldn't be the most artistic or efficient.  For someone who just needs a speaker stand, the solid cylinder is a good compromise between art & function.

  • Shrinkwrap a grid on an arbitrary surface

    lion mclionhead09/22/2021 at 05:24 0 comments

    The decision was made to shrinkwrap a traditional printable grid pattern on a smooth speaker stand shell.  The thinnest horizontal walls in PLA are .4mm.  A .4mm vertical wall requires a .2mm nozzle & a lot of time, so it would be a .5mm thick shell.

    Blender happens to shrinkwrap surfaces on surfaces.  The trick is selecting Project, X & Y axis.  Then, it properly creates a solid with the solidify modifier.  

    The target needs to have parallel walls.  The process leaves a lot of junk.  It's not parametric.  After creating a generic corner section, the corner sections would have to be fused & transformed in Blender to make the stand.  There would be a solid column where the corners joined & the fusion would just use booleans.

    There could be a simple python program which mapped a sketch on a hard coded corner section.

  • Voronoi patterns in blender

    lion mclionhead09/16/2021 at 05:07 0 comments

    So tesselation in Freecad with netgen -> very coarse was a starting point for a voronoi pattern.  1 problem is the fatness of the corners depends on the number of faces in the polygons.  Triangles give the fattest corners.  Circles give the thinnest corners.  The most efficient structure would have circular holes.

    This method requires being in face select mode instead of vertex select mode when beveling the vertices.  Face select mode causes it to not bevel some of the vertices, so you have to do a 2nd pass after manually selecting the missing vertices in vertex mode.

    Also, it can't select a face loop for the speaker stand.  Instead, you have to select the top & bottom vertices with ALT +SHIFT, then invert the selection to select all the vertices between the top & bottom.

    The tesselation was done with netgen -> fine.  The vertex beveling was 100%.  Some booleans could flatten the top & bottom surfaces.  The mane problem is it has too many horizontal overhangs.  The vertex beveling needs to create no horizontal overhangs.

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Joseph M. Harwood wrote 09/15/2021 at 09:45 point

The original plan of Signature speaker stand was for a curved object to sit behind the speaker, but a solid piece of PLA with infill was too boring.  Any artwork has to be procedural because the part would be iterated to get the angle and size just right. The goal is to get the model onto a flat surface. I'm patiently waiting for it and while waiting, you should check angry birds star wars free download | emulatorpc.



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