Ball and Chain (Gravity Illusion)

Show off your 3D printing skills with this model of a “ball and chain” appearing to hang in the air above a brick wall.  The base is 120 mm long and 80 mm deep and the chain extends to a height of 140 mm, which makes this a nice piece to sit on a desk or elsewhere and serve as a conversation starter.  Although that's a fairly large area, the core model only uses about 40 grams of filament (and up to around 70 grams total, depending on the settings you use for the supports.)

Printing tips:

• I printed this at a .2 mm layer height with an infill of 15%, using PLA
• Adjust the “Seam position” setting in the slicer to “Random”
• Add a color change at the layer just past 12 mm
• Enable supports (on build plate only)
• Decrease the “Support material → Overhang threshold” to minimize extraneous supports (in my case I used a value of “30” degrees)
• Optionally enable ironing on top surfaces between layers 5 and 20 mm only
• Take your time and be gentle when removing the supports

I'd recommend slicing on your own, but I also attached the gcode that I used on my Prusa Mini (which matches the above settings) in case you want to just try downloading and printing.

I had a lot of fun trying to model this one out in a way that it would actually work when printed, so I hope you enjoy and let me know how it works out for you.  :-)