Blizzard of Unique Snowflakes

I made a unique line of Kickstarter snowflakes back in in 2014. If you'd like to see the project, see https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/laird/snowburst-2014 .

Snowflakes are unique. So why not be able to generate and print unique snowflakes? I've seen a snowflake generator that generates gcode, but I wanted one that generated 3D geometry, which I could then slice and print, so I wrote one.

The code is a bit strange, as OpenSCAD doesn't support recursion, and barely supports arrays. But with persistence I think I've come up with something pretty cool.

Note that this is designed in OpenSCAD, using the “customizer” capability built into OpenSCAD. To use this file, download the OpenSCAD app from http://www.openscad.org .

I've uploaded 8 ready-to-print snowflakes! And you can generate all you like!

So let's make a million unique snowflakes!

Inspired by (though no code from) Dave Menninger's Parametric Snowflakes.

Updated: added bash script to generate a blizzard of snowflakes, and modified script to run with proper randomness.

Updated: created http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:40959 which is Customizable.

Instructions

Print the STL files. Slice them at layer height 0.25mm or less (the thinnest part of the snowflakes is just over 0.5mm, so 0.25mm gives you two layers). I use 3 shells, because that looks nice to me.

To generate unique snowflakes, load the script into OpenSCAD. Every time you change the 'seed' and run it, it will generate a unique 3D snowflake. Export the ones you like as STL files and print them. And upload photo's, so that we can all appreciate a 'blizzard' of unique snowflakes.

Or download the bash file, and generate a 'blizzard' of snowflakes automatically!

Category: 2D Art