My latest polyhedral is a Dual of 4 Frequency Icosahedral Geodesic Sphere that uses a new “lego-like” technique for assembly of a polyhedral using 3D printed internal pieces with laser cut faces. This has been in the works for months, and wasn’t exactly sure it would work. I designed each connector to also house an LED pixel bulb so each face will light up. The faces were laser cut on the using Milky White Cast Acrylic from Houston Acrylic. Polyhedral face pieces were 3D printed on a Bambu X1-Carbon. The internal WLED controller is a Dig2Go powered by plugging into socket power adapter.
Design:
Stella4D was used to generate STL of the shape to import into Fusion360.
This polyhedral has 162 sides comprised of 4 different face shapes. I designed the parts to be lego-like and interlock together. Fusion 360 was used to create all 3D printed parts.
Each part uses 3 colors of PLA filament and has a 1/8" indentation to house the laser cut faces. The LED pixel bulb pressure fit into hole from behind.
The bottom 5 blue faces are a single 3D printed part that rests on lamp light socket. The only parts that are glued together are the first 5 connectors on the bottom lamp base. Everything else is pressure and fits together with much satisfaction.
What a creation. I love the first video, it explained the apparent sacrifice of your miniature humanoid servants to build this. The photo showing ‘Assembly’ had all these cast-off torsos and lower limbs in blue and orange. Oh, the humanoidity!
False alarm, it’s just the remains of the (what’s the correct word?) climbing vines that ensure a stud is made, or a divot is closed at the top–to make sure there’s enough material at critical points so you don’t end up with a defect.
I love it! I wants it, but I’m never gonna build it…at least not without some serious learning first!!
If I’m seeing it correctly the base is wired so you have a plug to power all the lights inside - rather than the base holding a bulb. Did you hand wire/program each bulb or is that a string one can buy that has an app or something to make the patterns? Did you have to keep track of which bulb when where or did you leave it to chance?
Yes, there is a bulb socket adapter that I plug in a USB-C power brick which then goes via a 6-in USB-C cable to the WLED controller. From there, the bulbs are wired in a circular pattern all the way to the top. I thought about wiring it so that all of the different color faces are in sequence, but that would require some splicing and it would probably break a lot of the built-in effects. To get custom colors on the different faces you can use segments in WLED, but mine has too many faces for that to work properly so I gave up on the idea of lighting each face based upon the color that it was.
The Pixel bulbs that I bought come pre-wired in strings of 50 that already have the appropriate wire connectors at the ends. I think most people use these types of lights for outdoor Christmas lights and light shows because they’re meant to be outside. The individually addressable pixel lights work great for these custom polyhedrals that I’ve made. This is only my second one
When I made word clocks I would remap the led numbers so they were more u rustie and even build a wrapper function so I could choose light by coordinates on the grid (light up the led at coordinates 3,4, for example).
All a question of how much time you want to spend on that aspect of the project
I wish I had even a quarter of your brain. There is absolutely no way I could ever do anything like that. It is amazing! I’m so glad you share your creations with us.
It’s just not possible using the default WLED interface. Basically you use segments, and it’s limited to 16 at this point. Maybe in the future they’ll expand it. If you don’t wire the colors sequentially, then you have to create segments and since the colors change either every one or two pieces, you run out of available segments quickly. I think it’s a limitation of ESP32. I’m fault I’m fine with I’m fine with a default effects in colors for now.
Mind-blowing. I appreciate all the polyhedra posts, but I was expecting it to be the same thing again with a slightly different shape. But wow, this takes it to an entirely new dimension! (see what I did there?) Seriously though, what an amazing way to do it, and the result is just beyond incredible.
using Milky White Cast Acrylic from Houston Acrylic. Polyhedral face pieces were 3D printed on a Bambu X1-Carbon. The internal WLED controller is a Dig2Go powered by plugging into socket power adapter.
It’s like the polyhedral assembly version of duct tape.
