Swirly-Whirly Egg! (vase mode!) (Patreon)

Hey there, eggselent people!

It's vase mode time!  And screw-together vase mode time, at that!  Here we have an egg that is comprised of two individual vase mode prints, one of which forms a thread on its exterior, while the other forms a matching one on its interior (with a little tolerance gap for good measure). 

So, what's the deal with those swirly lines?  Well, obviously they're decorative, for a start, and add some fun texture to the classic egg form.  What they also do, though, is provide the ability for a vase mode print to have different interior and exterior profiles.  This is most obvious in the top half, where the outside is oval, but the inside is a threaded shape that fits onto the base.  Since we only have a single line to draw our walls, this dual profile is achieved by drawing back and forth between them, which gives us our curving lines down the outside.

There's a second benefit, too - those lines provide rigidity and strength!  Don't get me wrong, this is still vase mode, and you are always going to be able to crush such a print in your hand if you really try (well, until you print the 1.0mm version, but that's a subject for another post).  But, the lines provide some basic strength to the overall shape.

Early prototypes of this egg had a problem: if you screwed it down too tight, you'd never get it open again!  The lines would lock against each other, and there was no real way to get them apart again.  How did this get solved?  

Well, firstly, the angles on the edges of those lines were shifted so that they'd be much less resistant to opening, and secondly there's a slight raised section below the threads that prevents the egg screwing down so far in the first place.  Naturally, if you really try to screw it down, you might get there anyway, but there's a good chance you'll either crush the outside or tear the threads apart first!  It's vase mode, be nice to it :)

Printing Tips

This is a vase mode print!  So, set your slicer accordingly.  It should be an easy, neat print.  

The outer surfaces are all neatly angled, but there are a few interior links that will probably look slightly spider web-like.  You can see it in the photos here if you look closely enough.  Those are the surfaces that work against the parts locking up, so they're angled very generously to allow parts to move.

Note that this is specifically sized for a 0.4mm nozzle (or something around that size, anyway!)  I have a 1.0mm nozzle version under way, but it still needs some attention.

You'll obviously be printing these one at a time, but they should be oriented like so:

Oh, and those crazy textured prints in the pic up top?  Those are just using spliced filament that changes colour repeatedly, and are taking advantage of the fact that the profile length changes as the model prints, which in turn changes the way the colour changes align with each other.  You could just swap filaments during the print, but that's a tricky game with vase mode, since any failure to restart printing properly means disaster! :)

File Location

You'll find this on dropbox under 764 Swirly Whirly Egg

(Dropbox link post:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/dropbox-and-are-31697592 )

Further Thoughts

Vase mode is always so much fun!  I do love pushing it a little to get slightly more practical shapes than a single wall often achieves.  I mentioned the 1.0mm nozzle version that's under way at the moment - that thing is just solid!  Just so much fun.

May your prints be... eggceptional :P

xoxo

Sven.