Thingiverse user virtox created the Heatwave Vase. It’s a lovely, flourishing bit of solid fabric. I love this. I wanted to print this because I hadn’t yet really printed one of these wonderful geometric art pieces.

I saw the potential here for the Afinia Natural filament for this print. That particular filament is near-white, but not solid white. There is a translucency about it that would make this object stand out as a real art piece. The translucency will allow light to hit it in various ways making all of the fabric-like detail really stand out.

I’m shooting video in bits so I can later put together a cross-fade time-lapse of the entire print. If it works.

It’s about 1/3 of the way done and is looking rather good. There were a few places where it needed support, but mostly it printed without support.

People on Thingiverse were suggesting this vase (which was modeled as a solid with 1-2mm walls) be re-uploaded as a thin shell because printing it that way would be easier. As a double-walled vase, the print head would probably rip itself apart printing the thickness, whereas if you were to print it as a shell on a single-sided wall, it would simply whip around the shape layer after layer, which I’m pretty sure would result in a better print.

The creator has said, so far, he/she doesn’t want to upload any variants on it, and it’s under the “no derivatives” license, meaning people can’t upload versions based on it.

But that didn’t stop me from printing my own derivative. I just won’t upload it.

So this is printing rather nicely, and I hope photos of it will do it justice. This is the kind of piece I’d be proud to display alongside our real artworks in our living room, which include some lovely native Canadian carvings and other craft work from serious artists.

Update: Here it is, printed.