Design Of The Week: Turk’s Head Knot

By on July 23rd, 2012 in Design

Tags:

Thingiverse maker jtbowden created the beautiful “Turk’s Head Knot”. This design caught our eye not only because it’s visually attractive, but also for two other reasons. 
 
First, this design should be very easy to 3D print even on the most basic 3D printers. Some designs can be quite aggressive and require particular resolutions or complex support material, but this item should print quite nicely. 
 
Secondly, we’re fascinated by how the model was created. Apparently jtbowden generated the model by programming Google Sketchup: 
 
The knot path was generated via a Sketchup ruby script I wrote, and then the strand cross-section was extruded along that path. This created some very complex objects and took some work to figure out how to deal with overlapping areas and get a manifold object.
 
Well done! 
 
If you’d like to nominate a design for next week, please let us know
 

By Kerry Stevenson

Kerry Stevenson, aka "General Fabb" has written over 8,000 stories on 3D printing at Fabbaloo since he launched the venture in 2007, with an intention to promote and grow the incredible technology of 3D printing across the world. So far, it seems to be working!