3D Printed Super Mario Inspired Planter
Tools & Materials
Project Description
How can we design and 3D print a planter inspired by the piranha plant in Super Mario?
My fiancé loves playing video games and one of her favorite classics is the Super Mario franchise. While she was playing one of the old games, I thought it could be a fun project to design the pipe and piranha as a planter for my snake plants.
Using a software called Rhinoceros, I developed a 3D model with simple commands including line, copy, move, sweep, dome, boolean difference, and offset. I started with the pipe and drew a circle, offset it slightly inwards, and extruded it. I followed these steps with a slightly larger circle and moved it to the top of the first portion of the pipe. I offset the outermost circle inwards so that the smaller circle aligned with the inside wall of the top of the pipe and extruded it. To round off the area of the pipe where the top connects to the bottom, I drew a curve and used the sweep command to round the edge.
Next, I drew a 3D dome and drew a triangle in a side view. I extruded the triangle so that it would be longer than the full diameter of the dome, moved it so it was centered, on the dome, and used the boolean difference command to subtract the triangle from the dome. This created the open mouth of the piranha plant. The last step was to extrude a small circle around the base of the piranha so that it can sit above the open top of the pipe.
