Pyritohedra/Dodecahedra Magnetic Tile by eshira

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

This OpenSCAD (http://www.openscad.org/) script generates dodecahedra. Using a single parameter, you can go from a cube to a rhombic dodecahedron. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodecahedron for more information. You can use the script to customize the magnet holes and the size of the tiles as well.
You'll need a total of 12 tiles, and 4 or 6 disc magnets per tile (axially magnetized). The script will figure out if 2 magnets can comfortably fit on the 'base edge' of the pentagon. Because these edges are always matched together, they cannot accommodate a single magnet in the center position. In the rhombic dodecahedron case, that edge has zero length and cannot accommodate any magnets.
Magnet orientation:
The pair of base edge magnets, if present, must have opposite polarity to each other
The edges to the left and right of the base need to have opposite polarity to each other
The 'top' edges (the 'peak') need to have opposite polarity to each other
All the tiles have to be identical with regard to the magnet alignment. A good way to keep track is to make your first tile according to the rules above, and use it as a references for every subsequent tile (test your magnets against it).
Note that for the cube and for the regular dodecahedron, the magnet pattern will not work as designed, so 'legal' placements of tiles will be sometimes repelled (we want face transitivity, but not edge transitivity for the magnet patterns to work).
Scroll to the bottom of the script to see examples that create the solid model instead, or the assembly of tiles.
I printed mine with the ReplicatorG accelerated defaults and no raft or support. They printed in about 20 minutes each.
Check it out on github: https://github.com/eshira/polyhedra