Two ornaments made from layers of overlapping cubes stacked vertically. The larger version approximates a cube and is made from 206 cubes with sides 8 mm long.

There are also two ornaments made from rectangular blocks - "lattice ornaments" - calculated using the same openSCAD code but with different parameters for the cube. They contain channels which allow light to pass through.

OpenSCAD code is included and can be used to create a variety of similar ornaments.

MakerBot

MakerBot Replicator (5th Generation)

Yes

No

0.2 mm

The ornaments print cleanly without support on my makerbot printer; the small overhangs are handled well.

The ornaments are created from layers of cubes. The illustration below shows a single layer; a checkerboard pattern with the red cubes and blue cubes separated vertically. The blue cubes are lower and just touch the red cubes at the corners. Say edge lengths equal 1. To make a layer the cubes are doubled in size so that faces touch. When this is done the vertical separation of the red and blue cubes is one half the side of a cube; they overlap.

The layers are then stacked. The small ornament has 3 layers; the large ornament 4 layers. A small decorative layer, which maintains the 4 fold rotation axis, is added at the top of the ornaments. The number of layers is a parameter in the openSCAD code.

The size of the cube in openSCAD's cube command is a vector; that is the edge lengths of the cube can be specified. Say the cube edges are x,y, and z with z the vertical direction - i.e. rectangular solids. As long as x and y are 1 or greater, and z is 2 or greater the array, described above, is connected. A variety of ornaments can be created by varying the number of layers and the size of the cubes. The lattice ornaments use rectangular blocks, with x and y scaled by 1.1 and z by 2. More details in the openSCAD code.