Conic Sections - Cone slices: Circle, ellipse, parabola and hyperbola

thingiverse

I just took a minute to code this up for the common math exercise that shows how slices of a cone can produce shapes from top to bottom: Circle, Ellipse, Parabola and Hyperbola. Note: This isn't ready to print unless you went wild with supports. Plus I simply cut out sections of the cone using the difference() command for the visual fun of the model. That means if you did print this out, the parts wouldn't actually match up if you tried to stack it. Creating a printable version would probably take another 20-30 minutes of tweaks so they are all separate forms that could match perfectly. It would probably be more useful to make one with pins/pegs or places for magnets so that it can be assembled. If someone is really interested in printing this model, send me a tip for an espresso and I'll put it on my list of things to do next week. Update: 2017-03-12 Fixed the Parabola angle. It didn't match the angle of the cone.