76 Pencils Sculpture

This design is based on the "72 Pencils" sculptures made by George Hart: https://www.georgehart.com/sculpture/pencils.html. George's design consists of 72 pencils arranged in a triangular lattice. Each bundle consists of 18 pencils arranged in a hollow hexagon pattern. His pencils are held together with rubber bands and then glued. In this version, I create a 3D-printable polyhedron (a truncated octahedron) to hold the standard-sized hexagonal pencils. Each bundle consists of 19 pencils in a filled hexagonal pattern. Thus, it requires 76 pencils.

I was able to print the polyhedron in one piece, with a square face on the build plate. I enabled support, which allowed the printing of the top face. At this size, each pencil fits into the holes and passes through all the other pencils. The fit is tight, but that means it stays together without glue.