Allomantic Symbol Bookends (Steel)

thingiverse

Allomantic Symbol Bookends (Steel) ## General: I needed bookends for my bookshelf, but didn't want to spend $20 on random decorative rocks or anything like that. So I spent about $80 experimenting and making my own. It was a lot of fun. The symbol is from Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy. In that series, people can draw magic from various metals, and this symbol represents Steel. I plan to make additional ones for other symbols, starting with Iron, as Steel and Iron are the symbols on the covers of special editions of these books, which I'm planning to order soon. ## How I Designed This: Brandon Sanderson graciously provided SVG files for the symbols on a wiki. Originally, I wanted to just print the symbol in 3D, but it wasn't quite right. So I manually traced each part in Photoshop and vectorized them. Then, I imported those vector files into a CAD program and gave them different heights and curves. ## Assembly Details: The symbol is suspended using 1.5mm carbon fiber rods cut to 41mm long. The rods are held in place with clear 2-part epoxy. The base is hollow to be filled with sand, then plugged with the printed plug that's part of the STL files. I used vinyl rubber self-adhesive anti-slip things on the bottom as "feet". ## Printing Details: These were printed out of Priline wood fill filament using the wood.py script, ranging from 210 to 240 degrees. They were printed at .2mm layer height with 25% infill and no support or raft. Two shells are best, one shell works with a .8mm nozzle. ## Post Printing/Assembly: I spent about 45 minutes writing up a solid "post-printing" workflow using Thingiverse, but after saving it all the images were gone. So I went in to edit it, and all my steps were also gone. Then, I made an imgur album with the steps detailed in the captions of the photos. You can find that album here: https://imgur.com/a/xnKsQy