Tesselation Cats - coaster & Trivet

prusaprinters

This is a nice cat mosaic / tesselation  model for coasters (separate) or trivet with x6 of them assembled together.There are 2 models - small and largeFor coaster PLA is good enough but you want to use TPU / Flex if you want to use this with hot dishes and TPU will give a nice flexible feeling.Be careful though with using TPU on PEI, this is a large model and it will be very sticky and could damage your PEI Plate. I would advise using talc powder to limit adhesion and protect you PEI sheet (I did warn you:) The nice thing about this model is that it could be customized in many ways.You can print the name of your family / friends for a great gift.I've added a SketchUp file with 6 names already to give you an idea and you could customize your name from this file. This is done using the Edit3DText (free) plugin so you can change for the names you want and bent them accordingly.I also added an stl file with a sample name. Even nicer, you could further customize this by putting the photo of your family / friends using litophane principle.For that I'll take a nice head pictureI'll go to the site https://3dp.rocks/lithophane/ Download the image, change setting to have a positive lithophane (this is key to be a positive litophane so the image could pop up from the coaster which you can not do with a standard negative litophane which you will use for light effect).Download the stl litophane.Import the litophane stl in PrusaSlicer with the cat coaster (I found it easier to do it in Prusaslicer than Sketchup). Resize the litophane so it matches the coaster size. You will have to cut the litophane “plate” to keep only the upper part (the one just with the photo but without the plate of the litophane)Merge the objects (resized & cut litophane + coaster) - you can then raise the litophane so it could be just showing up on the top of the coaster.I have added two stl samples with one litophane (out of the site) and one with the full coaster with the litophane so it should give you a better idea how it is done.You certainly will have to play with the image / setting / heights / resolution but it is working quite nicely and I found the outcome quite satisfying. You then want to do a color change layer for the litophane. I've added a sample litophane if you want to test it.That also works for both PLA and TPU.You may want to use a 0.1 resolution for best details.I would advise having a low infill (10% or less) for using TPU to have a very flexible model. I found an alternate scheme of black and white TPU coaster is nice.For PLA you can be as colorful as you wantFor customization and image black and white is also working well.Hope you will enjoy this model. This is still though work in progress so more images and details to come.