haliphax 👾

I was trying to build #Multiboard tile panel stacks using an STL generator in #OpenSCAD, but the sheer number of triangles 📐 caused it to shit the bed on stacks of 9x9 tiles unless a metric tonne of additional `render()` calls were added, slowing the process to an excruciating crawl 🐌. In my journey down this particular rabbit hole 🐇, I stumbled upon `numpy-stl`, which has absolutely no problem dealing with massively complex objects... and I have an STL file for a 9x9 panel...

So, naturally, I whipped up a little #Python 🐍 script! It clones and lifts a provided mesh with a specified gap between each clone. I'm currently testing the results by printing a 9x9 stack of 2 panels. (I really should have gone smaller, but I will actually *use* a 9x9.) We'll see how it goes!🤞Either way, I can easily say that I am *much* more comfortable working with a Python script than OpenSCAD, but I see the power and the appeal. In this case, however, it was a simple task that doesn't warrant the learning curve just yet.

Here's the script: https://gist.github.com/haliphax/e63eb8efba86406862fc71d06a11cda1

Here's the panel I used as the base mesh:
https://thangs.com/designer/MultiBuild/3d-model/9x9%2520MU%2520-%2520Center%2520Grid%2520Interfitted%2520-%2520MultiBoard%2520Octagon%2520Plate-977730

(Yes, they provide stacks up to 4 for 9x9, but I was thoroughly nerd-sniped and I *may* want to print more than 4 eventually without paying their $4/month membership fee.)

STL generator for breakaway stacks

STL generator for breakaway stacks. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

Gist
Jun 2 at 10:49pmWeb
Show threadhaliphax 👾Jun 2

Here's a video from the Multiboard folks explaining stack printing. My script only handles a single mesh, but if you ordered your inputs appropriately, it could be adjusted without much effort to combine stacks of multiple different meshes into a single result (like how they print tiles with different edges in the video and thumbnail). This is how the OpenSCAD Multiboard stack generator I was playing around with works, as well, but it is *so incredibly slow* due to the complexity of the geometry--at least for this particular mesh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs2urfM0MRM

Multiboard: What Is Stack 3D Printing

YouTube
Show threadhaliphax 👾Jun 2

And here's the OpenSCAD script I started off with. It works very well for most use cases; it just fell apart (due to no fault of its own) trying to build 9x9 tile plate stacks, because numbers. It's still perfectly serviceable otherwise. Huge hat tip to @asciipip!

https://github.com/asciipip/multiboard-parametric-stacked/blob/master/multiboard_base.scad

multiboard-parametric-stacked/multiboard_base.scad at master · asciipip/multiboard-parametric-stacked

Stacked parametric multiboard tile. Contribute to asciipip/multiboard-parametric-stacked development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
Show threadhaliphax 👾Jun 3
Follow-up: It worked! The stack of 2 printed successfully, and I was able to separate them cleanly! (Well, pretty cleanly, anyway.) I'll be trying with a taller stack tomorrow.
Show threadhaliphax 👾Jun 3
Show threadhaliphax 👾Jun 8
The script has been updated to support multiple different meshes and different counts for each. I was able to generate a single STL mesh from 3 different multiboard tile configurations!