Daily Printable Equation Collection

This thing collects together all of my printable equations (see http://www.thingiverse.com/tag:Daily_Equation). For more detail and photos of each equation, see individual things. To just see each new equation as I post it, put a watch this thing.

I've always been interested in different ways to visualize and explore data. I thought it would be cool to try to print 3d representations of equations. The graphing libraries I could find weren't flexible enough for what I needed, so I wrote a Python program to take an equation and plot it in Openscad using the polygon command. The 3d equation is mounted on a stand that also displays the text form of the equation (write.scad used for text).

I'm going to post one equation per day until get bored or people lose interest. If there's a particular equation you'd like to see, leave a comment and I'll give it a shot.

Day 1 - y = asin(bx)

(http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:227223)

Day 2 - x^(2/3) + y^(2/3) = a

(http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:228112)

Day 3 - Spiral r = a*theta

(http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:228425)

Day 4 - Normal Distribution y = e^(-x^2/2) / (2pi)^0.5

(http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:230906)

Day 5 - Fermat's Spiral r = +/- theta^0.5

(http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:231587)

Day 6 - |x + y| = a

(http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:232332)

Day 7 - |x^(5/3) + y^(5/3)| = a

(http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:232990)

Day 8 - Circle - x^2 + y^2 = a

(http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:233659)

Day 9 - x^20 + y^20 = a

(http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:234465)

Day 10 - Sinc Function - y = asin(bx)/(b*x)

(http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:235141)

Day 11 - y = sin(cos(x/7)+sin(x))*x

(http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:236050)

Day 12 - Ellipse - x^2/a + y^2/b = 1

(http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:237496)

Day 13 - Line - y = m*x + b

(http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:238243)

Day 14 - Parabola - y = a*x^2

(http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:238911)

Day 15 - y = a*x^3

(http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:240435)

Technical Note:

• To thickness in the y-direction is created by plotting a second curve whose points are a constant distance in the direction perpendicular to the tangent of the first curve. This can create artifacts at regions of rapidly changing slope. However, the lower or inner curve is always correct.

Instructions

All files can be printed without support. Photos shown were printed on a Replicator 2 and sliced using the standard setting on Makerware.

To generate your own printable equations, download the file 2D Function to STL.zip and unzip into a new folder. The workflow is as follows: Edit the constants in "printable 2D graph.py" to select your equation. The included equations are in "custom equations.py", add your own if you feel up to it. Run "printable 2D graph.py" to generate and OSCAD file. Then open the OSCAD file, compile, and convert to stl.

Note: It will require a basic understanding of python to edit or create new equations. I also apologize for the clunky code. Please feel free to improve it (or rewrite).

Category: Math