Andreas Bastian works as an artist in residence at Autodesk. Since last October he has been experimenting with creating hexagonal meshes for applications in low-cost 3D printed prosthetics. To create these “mesostructured materials”, as Andreas likes to call them, he has been using a MakerBot Replicator 2 3D Printer. Head over to Andres’ blog for more details on the printing process, and to check out the stunning images of some of Andreas’ prototypes. Below you can see two videos exploring how the mesostructured materials flex, and the effects of light passing through the structures. The source files can be downloaded at Thingiverse if you want to try printing these yourself.
This would be great to build a chair out of, because it could flex to hold you and be printed at whichever thickness is needed to support your weight!
Rendering time is huge.
There is nothing special at the edges of his design to attach other pieces, nor any way to expand the design yourself, so all you get is a sample.
But cool.