The product I decided to design is the Triumphal Arc of Titus, which is a monument constructed by Roman Emperor Titus during the ancient times. The product itself was very interesting to make and overall not too complex to design. If you look at the actual monument you can tell the design is basically a large rectangle with the center of it cut out to be arc shaped and then cut straight down from each side of the arc. Each grove and bump on the arc is based on what the actual monument contains and I had tried to make it the most historically correct appearing replica. My motivation to this was when looking on the site for any replica’s of buildings, statues, or wonders the choices were limited to a bare minimum. So I decided to design a monument based off of Roman architecture, basically a replica of the original. I personally am interested in Roman history and thought this would be a fun project to undergo. Although I couldn’t have an exact model it still came out to be fairly similar.
The process in designing this was really basic. First having already downloaded the Autodesk Inventor program you must find your constraints to the Makerbot, which in my case was to be 4x4 inches maximum. Then I designed the actual piece in the inventor program. My first step was to make a rectangle only 2x3 inches so it would print out well and the details would show more clearly. Then I had extruded my piece to one inch. Looking at it you have a rectangle, but this is when the arc comes into play. I then sketched an arc about 3/4th of an inch down the center of the rectangle and had it have a diameter of about 1.5 inches. After that I extruded the arc and everything under it within the 1.5 inch diameter. I followed up by adding extrusions outwards from the design, giving it bumps along the service to give it the authentic look. After completing the design I uploaded it to the Makerbot and waited almost 1 hour and 30 minutes for it print.
The overall product came out nicely, although some faults involving the cooling process affected the overall shape of the design. After printing out most of the design, by the time it was half way over the cool down process had the plastic contract upwards basically warping it. If you have a heated platform to keep a consecutive heat flow to the product then you shouldn’t have a problem with the shape. The overall more important part of it looks good, but I was going to have the design printed twice so I could glue them together to actually have the triumphal arc completed, not just half of it.
If anyone enjoys this at all or finds ways of improving it please feel free to try it yourself or give me constructive criticism. One thing that would be cool that I thought of doing, but couldn’t manage to do so was to have the design of the actual Latin inscription printed out on the design. Well hopefully you can make something similar or other cool building replicas! Good Luck!