3D Printing Solid Mobius Strips
Travis Wert
University of Notre Dame
Danielle Brake
University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire
Abstract
Mobius strips are parameterized explicitly by two variables, and have no thickness. However, surfaces with no thickness cannot be 3D-printed without additional post-processing to the discretization. Hence, we want equations for a naturally printable algebraic approximation of a Mobius strip that has thickness, referred to throughout as a solid Mobius surface. In this paper, we (re-)derive these algebraic equations, demonstrate Matlab code generating solid Mobius surfaces with an arbitrary number of twists, and use Numerical Algebraic Geometry to compute a smoothed numerical cellular decomposition of the objects. We conclude with 3D-printed results.
