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Hexaflexafail
Sep. 14th, 2013 11:17 pmI've always wanted a hexaflexagon.
On the surface this is an idiotic statement. A handful of index cards, some tape, and a pair of scissors, and anyone can have one. It's not rocket science. But it's always been on my "next time I'm bored for an hour" list and I've never gotten around to it.
Then I saw this on Thingiverse, and decided I'd make one.
Wow, what a pain.
The first attempt was a total failure. It was actually too big for the sheet of glass I printed it on, so I aborted it after a few minutes. My fault.
Second attempt had problems sticking to the (now larger) glass sheet. Don't know why, I didn't watch it start, but I killed it too.
Third attempt stuck. It started curling at the corners almost immediately but not badly enough to hurt, and when it finished (two hours later) it looked beautiful. But the hinges were fused into solid blocks and when I broke them trying to get it to fold, I saw that inside they were just wads of plastic. Never gonna work.
At this point though, this problem has gone from "idle interest" to "pissing me off that I can't do it." I've sunk most of the day into making this, and as god is my witness I will print a hexaflexagon this weekend.
I can do hinges. I have a model on Tinkercad of a totally printable working hinge, I can import it into any model I want. It was going to be the first of a set of pluggable connectors I was going to make (next up, snappy pegs), but it's enough for a hexaflexagon. I'll redo this guy's model tomorrow with my hinges instead of his, and split it into three pieces for easier printing.
Hexaflexagons in our time!
On the surface this is an idiotic statement. A handful of index cards, some tape, and a pair of scissors, and anyone can have one. It's not rocket science. But it's always been on my "next time I'm bored for an hour" list and I've never gotten around to it.
Then I saw this on Thingiverse, and decided I'd make one.
Wow, what a pain.
The first attempt was a total failure. It was actually too big for the sheet of glass I printed it on, so I aborted it after a few minutes. My fault.
Second attempt had problems sticking to the (now larger) glass sheet. Don't know why, I didn't watch it start, but I killed it too.
Third attempt stuck. It started curling at the corners almost immediately but not badly enough to hurt, and when it finished (two hours later) it looked beautiful. But the hinges were fused into solid blocks and when I broke them trying to get it to fold, I saw that inside they were just wads of plastic. Never gonna work.
At this point though, this problem has gone from "idle interest" to "pissing me off that I can't do it." I've sunk most of the day into making this, and as god is my witness I will print a hexaflexagon this weekend.
I can do hinges. I have a model on Tinkercad of a totally printable working hinge, I can import it into any model I want. It was going to be the first of a set of pluggable connectors I was going to make (next up, snappy pegs), but it's enough for a hexaflexagon. I'll redo this guy's model tomorrow with my hinges instead of his, and split it into three pieces for easier printing.
Hexaflexagons in our time!
