Mandelbowl! (Patreon)

More fractals!

That's right, my wonderful friends, more math nerdery, and once again produced programmatically.  If you already recognised this famous and beloved shape, then you already knew all that!

If that spiky black shape is new to you, it's the Mandelbrot Set:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set

The Mandelbrot set is a fascinating and mind-bending example of some very simple rules leading to immense complexity.  The outline of the shape is kind of infinitely convoluted - if you zoomed in on any part that looked like a straight line you'd find it was endlessly complicated with smaller wiggly bits.  

The process for this one was fairly  similar to that for the Fern Vase - grid calculated first (though rather than ones and zeroes we have a series of values that correspond to those "contour" lines).  Then, OpenSCAD was used to calculate individual slabs as printable parts.

I've called this thing Mandelbowl, but it's more of a display piece than a functional vessel for holding things.  Except complexity, it does hold complexity.

Printing Tips

So, those colours! All I've done there is change filament for each of those levels, which are 1mm tall.  Oh, and I printed the first 3mm layer in black, along with the very top rim.

Now, if you do want to use a multimaterial system to manage the colours, there is a Multimaterial folder that contains the slabs individually to make that easier.

And, of course, the whole thing will print just fine in a single colour!

In terms of print settings, though, there's nothing overly complicated here - no angles to deal with, certainly.  Making sure you don't have stringing in your print is probably a good plan, though, or else it'll be a bit of a pain to clean up :)

Print Dimensions

The model occupies 100mm x 100mm on the print bed and is 22mm tall.

File Locations

You'll find this one on dropbox under 699 Mandelbowl

Link to dropbox post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/31697592

Further Thoughts

I was fascinated by fractals as a kid, and would explore the Mandelbrot and Julia sets in particular, waiting endlessly for my poor computer to crunch numbers and reveal the amazing patterns and structure hidden away in there.  

I did think about using a different view of the set (or even a different fractal entirely) but it was hard to go past the iconic shape that is the Mandelbrot Set 😍 

Happy fractal-ing!

xoxo

Sven.