This structure is about 10 feet tall, has 60 3D-printed connectors, and 168 wooden dowels. The connectors took somewhere between 150 and 200 hours to print on my Replicator 2 (including failed prints). Currently the dowels just press fit into the connectors, but I will probably glue them at some point. This project was inspired by my desire to use my 3D printer to build a large-scale object.

I started by doing a handful of test prints to figure out the ideal hole size.

Next I started playing around with different designs. I used SolidPython to generate scad files.

Once I had the design, I needed to design the connector function. It needed to take a list of vectors, and output a scad file that could be printed without supports. This took a couple of days of experimentation to figure out. Once done, I only needed to print the connectors.

The connectors are printed with an ID number to facilitate construction.

Dealing with failed prints and cutting out dowels took a while, but I made steady progress over the 2 weeks it took to print.