Sieve Fractal Abstract Sculpture

A spherical hole at one end iteratively splits as it passes through a cylinder, resulting in increasingly fine passages and chambers, exiting the opposite side as a fine mesh pattern.

To create this sculpture, I Boolean subtracted a variation of a double developing dragon curve from a cylinder, then sliced it into four pieces to expose the resulting structure. 

Height range modifiers create lines marking the fractal iteration layers. Note that if you scale the parts, these height range modifiers will no longer align with the iterations unless you scale them as well.

For the pictured pieces I used an Overture Rainbow gradient PLA. I notice that the plates I printed with flow dynamics calibration enabled resulted in better quality. I enjoy the variation in color gradients for each individually printed piece, but you could also print all four pieces at once on the same plate to ensure the gradient is uniform.

The biggest challenge I encountered with printing was quality issues on some of the knife-edge features. Rather than reduce the precision of the source model, I found increasing the Arachne Wall Generator - Minimum Feature Size setting to be useful. Otherwise a few manual supports were helpful on some pieces. You may notice in the photos there is still room for print quality improvement and your feedback is welcome.

This was a very satisfying project. I enjoy and I am proud of the result. I consider it original art. I'm excited to share but I would appreciate it if no one sells prints or shares without crediting me.