Printing a skeleton for a cloud
A cloud that has to hang, hold lights and survive being moved between venues needs a skeleton. We started printing one, and the printer did not survive the first attempt unscathed.
Tulle is light and beautiful, but it doesn’t hold a shape on its own. Hung from a single point, the cloud collapses into a drape. To keep its volume, carry LEDs inside it, and survive being packed up and rebuilt in another venue, it needs an internal structure.
We modelled a pyramid-like frame and split it into printable parts, labelled A to E. After the first test prints, we revised them into a second set (“bis” versions), adjusting how the pieces fit together.
This is the model we printed from. Later, for the LED mapping, I added the green planes in Blender: they stand in for the mesh walls that would be stretched across the frame, so I could place each LED where it would actually sit on the mesh. Drag to turn it around.
When the print went wrong
Not everything went to plan. On the printer at Sony CSL Paris, one print failed badly: instead of building up a part, the filament set into a solid blob around the hot end, swallowing the nozzle, the heater wires and part of the print head.
