Sine Wave Vase
Story
I've long worried that my oeuvre doesn't reflect my status as a sine wave aficionado. With this vase I set out to remedy that gap.
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Unlike every other piece in the Living Room Collection, this was a straightforward maneuver.
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I tracked down the equation for a dampened sine wave, plugged it into my CAD software to get the desired curve, made minor adjustments for printability and aesthetics, and then revolved the curve to get the desired shape. Fin.
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The difficulty was more in executing the shape via 3D printer. Due to the steep slope of the walls, there is barely any overlap from layer to layer. Without enough overlap, cracks form and water seeps out.
My solution was to rebuild my 3D printer's extruder so it could lay down lines of double the width of a normal printer's. This was tricky.
My surgeries in the end were a success, which prompted me to move on to the material side of the equation. I tried out a range of filaments I'd never used before, most notably a color-changing variety called simply "Quantum". The results were resplendent.
Quantum filaments come in color pairings of all sorts. Pictured: gold/fuchsia and white/green
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This vase is now my go-to for gifts, given its playful simplicity, printability, and if I may be so bold, overall quality.
Up next: more sine waves!
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