Blitzball

thingiverse

Thumbnail: Regular Blitzball (right) vs. 3D Printed Blitzball (TPU, left) I've been itching to get my hands on some blitzballs for ages, so I finally started digging up information on how to make them myself. After an hour of research, I stumbled upon a Wikipedia article about Goldberg polyhedra that resemble soccer balls and blitzballs because they feature pentagons and hexagons. I found the polyhedron called G(2,1) and clicked on the annotation, which led me to a website generating polyhedra based on Conway Polyhedra Notation – essentially a recipe for carving out shapes. It let me download the OBJ file, and after an hour of searching, I was finally able to print it. The website for generating polyhedra is http://levskaya.github.io/polyhedronisme/?recipe=A10wD (it's fun to play around with). If you do decide to print this and toss it around, let me know how it goes, and/or how it compares to a real blitzball. Print Settings Printer: Airwolf AXIOM Rafts: Doesn't Matter Supports: Yes Resolution: .2 or .3 Infill: 10-20% Notes: You may want to add more infill depending on how heavy you want the ball. The official blitzball is supposed to be just under an ounce, FYI. I printed mine in TPU (ninjaflex). How I Designed This A Random Wiki Article While searching, I browsed through this wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldberg_polyhedron#cite_note-18. The shape is called G(2,1). A cool polyhedra generator is linked in the sources of the random wiki article – check it out! http://levskaya.github.io/polyhedronisme/?recipe=A10wD I recommend playing around with this and visiting the wiki page about Conway Polyhedra Notation.