Mercury In Transit (Multi-Material version included)

thingiverse

After watching the movie Sunshine by Danny Boyle many years ago, I fell deeply in love with it. To this day, whenever I watch it, many parts of it still fill me with awe. One scene in particular has always stuck with me, and that was when the crew of the Icarus II gathered to watch the transit of Mercury. Two minutes of pure silence, John Murphy's soothing score, and the incredible visual of Mercury passing in front of the sun left an indelible mark on my mind. After witnessing this breathtaking scene, I drew a series of artwork based on it. Now, many years later, I'm continuing my series with 3D printing. I designed this set of five panels to be printed six different ways, mostly to set up for multi-material printing so when my MMU2 arrives, I'll be ready to print it myself. Until then, I made mine with filament layer changes. The black border around the flames is at the three-millimeter mark. The bottom flame layer is at the four-millimeter mark. The middle flame layer is at the five-millimeter mark. The top flame layer is at the five-millimeter mark and Mercury, on the fourth panel, is at the seven-millimeter mark. The version with the higher flame border has the border at the six-millimeter mark. Printing this up with a .20mm thickness for each layer works perfectly. For the multi-material versions, I've included four options. Two versions have the bottom, mid, and top flames levels grouped up so each level can be assigned to a filament color as well as Mercury, and both options for a sunk-in or raised flame border. Then there are two versions where you can choose the filament for each and every single flame for every level. Both high and low flame borders are available for this option as well. The five panels are meant to be lined up in the order the pictures are in and spaced half an inch apart from each other, as many of the flames flow from one panel to the next. Plan your filament colors accordingly with that in mind. I hope you enjoy this artwork. If you haven't seen Sunshine, go check it out on YouTube: https://youtu.be/UcNu3AML1L0 . Here's the Mercury in transit clip that started all of this: https://youtu.be/aYKq1qfdmWk Edit 11/9/18: I've added numbers to the bottom for easy identification of the layout sequence. Edit 12/29/18: I've also added frames for both versions so you can hang them on the wall.