I began my journey with an intense love for the voronoi effect. I wanted to recreate it, so I followed the first tutorial I saw and downloaded blender. I could make a really good voronoi sphere, but any other shape got utterly destroyed. I printed this design in three sizes:

If you’re an astute observer, you’d notice that theres only two objects in this picture. This is because the smallest size broke while printing. However, the middle size (which fit the gumball capsule perfectly) was able to print. Now I knew the correct dimensions and the smallest I could print.

After I printed this, I studied the project requirements and determined that this wasn’t complex enough. I searched through thingiverse, searching for alternatives. I came across a couple, but I just couldn’t fathom copying someone elses design. So I hopped back into blender and added a ball inside the sphere. This makes it more interactive and fun, while also making the design more impossible.

To make the sphere, all I did was add some modifications to a cube.

I printed 4 of these on the Prusa FDM printers and one on the Formlabs SLA printer. I then took all the supports off and sanded the FDM prints, while washing and curing the SLA prints.

Unfortunately the SLA print didn’t come out perfectly. I took into account that the support would be harder, so I moved the ball toward the bottom thinking that I could make the supports smaller and snip it off instead of longer supports. However it ended up staying connected to the outside sphere. Also there was a weird print defect where one of the pieces wasn’t connected on the outside.

I cleaned up the space afterwards: