Maze Bowl

From virtuality model to reality for a maze bowl :

After some encouragements in August 2016, I decided in December 2016 to made a real Maze Bowl similar to this one

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/photo/maze-bowl?context=album&albu...

Here is the steps I had to get through in order to make it for real.

I began with a simple revolution form

This surface is then meshed with Meshmachine from Daniel Piker.

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/profiles/blogs/meshmachine-update

This mesh is used to generate 2 maze paths

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/maze-from-mesh?page=2&...

which are thickened using (not exactly the same indeed)

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/thicken-a-network-of-line...

These new meshes are now smoothed using Catmull&Clarck Subdivision from Giulo Piacento

http://www.giuliopiacentino.com/weaverbird/

Then in order to unroll the mesh, all inner points are suppressed. I tested Meshmachine and MeshMixer, but I finished by doing a special script in order to do that. Mesh are spaced accordingly to the thickness that is planned to be used.

Lines are added and will be used to add the hole for rivets.

These lines and these 2 meshes are the unrolled. I made a new script to take into account the mesh but also the holes (lines), so I get a contour and hole center for rivets, screws ... Contour of mesh is smoothed with splines.

Theses curves are then nested (by hands) and saved with a SVG export I did for Rhino

http://www.food4rhino.com/app/save-scalable-vector-graphics

As I haven't access to a laser cut I had some difficulties finding the good laser cut, the good material and the good size.

Online http://www.formulor.de seems to be good but size is limited, SVG must have some very special features (very very thin lines widths) and I didn't find the interface to control the scale of what I send. But formulor.de has the advantage of the number of materials available.

I instead choose SCULPTEO, they are specialized in 3d printing but they began laser cutting some months ago. I wanted some flexible plastic but I finished with 2 mm grey solid cardboard 780 x 580 mm. I choose aluminium rivets 3.2 mm x 8 mm (thickness of plastic from 3.5 to 5 mm)

My SVG export worked well, I didn't send the numbering in order to lower the cost, bad idea because I finished by doing it by hand. Less than a week after I went to Sculpteo. I get this. After making my bowl I discover that I mirrored the bowl!