Marco Mahler (previously), an artist and musician based in Portland, Oregon, has released new collection of kinetic sculptures on his site, which were created in a collaborative effort with Henry Segerman, a research fellow in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Melbourne. Mahler claims that these are the first fully 3D printed mobile sculptures in the world.
Made out of laser sintered nylon plastic – one of the most popular materials used for 3D printing – the intricately designed mobiles come out of the printers in a completely assembled state, and are heatproof up to 80 °C / 176 °F.
More about the making process:
The balance points for these mobiles were calculated to 1/1000th of a millimeter (1/25360th of an inch). The models for some of these mobiles were drawn up “by hand”, others were created utilizing scripts that we wrote. Some of the mobiles, like Mobile 4.2, are designed with a very small increase or decrease in thickness from one part to the next, something that is not possible to do with conventional handmade mobiles. Utilizing scripts also allows for designs that would be very time consuming to make by hand, such as the Quaternary Tree (Level 6), which has 1365 pieces.
You can buy these kinetic sculptures at their Shapeways online store, for prices ranging from $10 to $600.
Here are a few more images of the sculptures.