Hyperbolic Paraboloid

thingiverse

A 3D rendering of a hyperbolic paraboloid ("saddle" or "potato chip" surface) comes from my "Gallery of Quadric Surfaces." The design begins in Sage, where it's exported to X3D (the resulting file is included). Then, the X3D file is imported into Blender. In Blender, I edit to remove artifacts left behind by Sage, like a cube of lines around the figure. Next, I "thicken" the surface so that Cura can recognize it as a solid object: I select Properties -> Modifiers (wrench icon) -> Add Modifier -> Solidify. The Thickness is set to 0.1 and Apply is clicked. Now, export to STL, then import STL into Cura. In Cura, I scale (because graph units in Sage become millimeters in Cura) and position the figure on the print platform. Then, export STL again to form the STL thing file here. The Sage code to generate the figure is as follows: x, y = var('x,y'); plot3d(x^2-y^2, (x,-1.2,1.2), (y,-1.2,1.2), aspect_ratio=1); Since Sage is Python-based, be sure to check line breaks.