3D Printed Self-Assembling Cells

These neutrally buoyant 3D printed shapes self-assemble into interesting cellular growths and patterns.

To really appreciate these little lifeforms, you’ve got to see them in motion! If you watch them long enough, you might even start to imagine chapters of a primordial drama unfolding before you.

You can watch them frolicking in the sun: https://youtu.be/xugOeGLqwfI

Or cavorting after dark: https://youtu.be/ictRHrvacI8

See here for stable download: https://thangs.com/mythangs/file/61122

The shapes look deceptively simple, but the design constraints involve balancing magnetism, geometry, surface topology and buoyancy.

The magnets are paired such that any face can connect to any other face in either direction.

The three faces that orient the magnets on each piece are derived from the rhombic dodecahedron in such a way that if they were all joined together, they would form a chiral version of Laves graph. The Laves graph is related to the gyroid triply period min