Spherical Meso Material

SummaryThis Meso Material (mm scale material) is based on a sphere composed of orthogonal circles. It forms a cartesian grid in which none of the balls touches another when spaced apart. Physically, of course, they will touch and act springy which will give the material interesting properties most likely. If you wish to publish, copyright, or patent this thing then please contact me. InstructionsPlease use the balls4.scad file for Customizer and OpenSCAD runs, and the corresponding output file of balls4_3-3-3.stl which is the 3x3x3 version of balls4.scad. All other files remain included for reference only. I have had these things printed at Shapeways, and they found that the earlier files could only be printed about half of the time with success due to design rule violation (thickness 0.71mm instead of 0.8mm, slightly too thin). The balls4.scad file uses minimum feature size of sort(2) mm (about 1.4 mm) so much larger and round too. Also please note that the ball size is larger on balls4.scad outputs so the cost is higher. The shape to be printed at shape ways is available in my shape ways account (user ID same as thingiverse: CreatorLes), or you can open your own account at any printer that can do the job and use your own stl file. For printing technology please note that these balls are not attached to each other and there is a small clearance between them, so they cannot be easily printed on MakerBot printers. You might want to make a version that is printable on MakerBot printers, or perhaps I will upon request.