Poly-Snaps: Tiles for Building Polyhedra

pinshape

These tiles snap together to form polyhedra of any type you desire! Regular, semi-regular, truncated, stellated, or anything in between - it's all up to you. Customize your own with the "Open in Customizer" button or download pre-made sets of compact or light Poly-Snap tiles. The compact tiles are the blue, white, and black ones shown; they're sturdy and tough to snap together, making very strong models that can withstand rough handling. The light tiles are larger and shown in the red picture; these are easy to take apart and put together, print up quickly, but the models may not be as sturdy. Depending on your printer, filament, temperature, elevation from sea level, day of the week, etc., you may need different tolerances for your snaps; you can modify this in the Customizer. Unlike the tiles used in http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:185859, these Poly-Snap tiles all have identical snap configurations. As long as you're building an orientable surface, one configuration will suffice. The only trick is to make sure they're attached correctly. On a Replicator 2, the Poly-Snaps print with a shiny side and a matte side; keep one type of finish on the inside of the model and one on the outside, and all your tiles will line up perfectly. You may have to snap and un-snap the tiles a few times to break them in; they can get looser over time. A pair of pliers can help snap them together the first time, if needed. We suggest making the border size close to the thickness. Because of how this model was constructed, you can't make completely solid tiles, and because of reality, you can't have a border larger than the radius, so make sure your border is small enough to fit within the tile. In our experience, clearance works well between 0.1 and 0.2 units, and lengthen works well between 0.3 and 1.2 units. Twitter: twitter.com/mathgrrl Hacktastic blog: www.mathgrrl.com/hacktastic Shapeways geekhaus store: www.shapeways.com/shops/mathgr... This design and all associated pictures and files are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. If you want to use designs, images, or files outside of the terms of this license, please email request@mathgrrl.com.