3D Central

Skull Suncatcher

Halloween is approaching. It is time for decorations. How about a window suncatcher of a skull?

This project began with a chance encounter (well they did email me) with a soldering skill badge of a skull intended to be put together from a kit you can order from the Maker Shed. I grabbed the image as a template, and used Inkscape to trace around the skull shape, added a couple of oval eyes, along with toothy details and a nose arch.

That step is followed by exporting a polygon (fancy name for outline) file in the file format .scad used by OpenSCAD. That export is one of the options of the built-in Inkscape extensions. Open that exported file with OpenSCAD and added the tweak of a ring at the top of the skull

For the details of the exported polygons, please examine the scad file. The outline is complex, and the details of it don't matter too much for this explanation.

Then, for my own printer, I scaled and rotated the skull which prints in about two hours for the max size. You can scale or modify, as you wish, of course.

$fn=30;
module skull(){
poly_path4271(2);  // this is the polygon path exported from Inkscape
difference(){
 translate([0,15.5,0])
   cylinder(2,2,2);
 translate([0,15.5,-.1])
    cylinder(3,1,1);
}}

//rotated and scaled to fit as big as possible on my printer.
rotate([0,0,45])
scale([5,5,1])
skull();

Added a second stl file (skulls-4.stl) for those who would like to quickly print smaller sized versions.

References:
MakerShed Original Solder Skill Badge
Inkscape Website

Available Files:

SCAD files for study/modification and STL files for quick prints

skull.scad - skull.stl - appx. 2 hr to print on Lulzbot Mini
skulls-4.stl - a set of 4 skulls to print at once - appx. 1 hr to print on Lulzbot Mini
My apologies! sculls-4.stl has been missing for a long time. It is now present and you can download it.
skull.svg - Inkscape design reference file
GPL3 License