Star Dome

thingiverse

My attempt at a stunning star projection dome. Features the 500 brightest stars, precisely positioned and sized according to their relative apparent magnitudes. The holes are arranged in graduated sizes, determined by the rounded up value of each star's magnitude, with negative values replaced by tiny positive counterparts (such as Arcturus). The next iteration should showcase gradually increasing holes instead (once I master logarithms). Print Settings Printer Brand: LulzBot Printer: TAZ 5 Rafts: No Supports: No Notes: I struggled to get Simplify3D to print this correctly, so I switched to Cura and it worked smoothly. The Blender object is far from perfect - numerous manifold errors, some 'holes within holes' that produce strange artifacts, and a lot of manual error-correction were necessary. However, it serves as a decent first attempt. A significant amount of cleanup was done in NetFabb, resulting in an acceptable STL file. You only need the STL file; the others are provided for those who want to refine it within Blender. Design Process The Blender python script generates cylinders of varying sizes through the origin, pointing in the correct direction to intersect the dome. Then, I manually remove the bottom half of the dome. The dome creation process is somewhat lacking - there must be more efficient methods.