Week 5 - GCode Rings

Creating my own gcode, I was able to create a series of rings for MAT238! You can print your own here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GVblPtOIHvH1bcm4h9L0c1yhdqvsr2XC/view?usp=sharing

I first started designing a ring by using Turtle. This let me create code in a simpler format, and I started off with a 16-sided ring.

I wanted my rings to be more interesting than just a panel of 16 walls, so I looked up other examples of 3d printed items using Turtle graphics. I came across http://davidbriddock.blogspot.com/2014/12/python-turtle-graphics-for-3d-printing.html, which showcased a design with a spiral effect. I thought that this was super interesting, so I played around with its Turtle graphics code to recreate the design, but with a square shape.

After that, I experimented with adding something similar to the rings I had created. This created a small spiral effect with the rings, all of which were adjustable based on the additional parameter I added. I created multiple prototypes with different skews, ranging from none, to 0.20

By the end, I had printed 5 rings, most of which had different parameters. The Turtle graphics made it easy to create different sizes and different amounts of "skew" was added through a slider parameter. I found that changing the range of Forward motion by 0.5 allowed all of the printed rings to fit within each other. My first test prints were over-extruding, so I changed the layer height from 0.1mm to 0.15mm. Another thing I had to adjust was that the rings were much taller than I expected, so I changed the overall height from 15mm to 10mm. Overall, I had a lot of fun with this project!