3D printed buckyball

I found this model of buckyball created by the 3D printing technique through googling a few weeks ago. It is cool. One can simply print a 3D molecular structure with a 3D printer. I wonder how much it would cost to have a printer like this and how much it would cost to print a model.


(wiki)

It is worthy of mentioning that this model is not a beaded structure. In fact, I believe it is not possible to create a beaded structure with this kind of connectivity by using the standard beads with a single hole. The beads we normally use should represent the edges, instead of vertices of a graph.

Pentanuclear EMAC

There is a whole family of EMACs with different chain lengths and different metal atoms.
Qian-Rui made this first bead model of EMAC with five metal atoms.


The sizes of beads are 8mm and 6mm, respectively.

Effect of bead sizes on the pitch angle of EMACs

Here I'd to show a few photos of EMACs to how the ratio of two kind of bead sizes on the pitch angles.

1. Correct pitch angle by using 8mm and 6mm beads.


2. Ligands spiral around the central metal string too fast if we use the same kind of beads for both ligands and metal string.


3. No pitch angle if we use 10mm and 14mm beads.

Alternative weaving path of EMACs

Qian-Rui told me that it is easier to use the following weaving path for creating beaded EMACs. The one-end weaving is quite odd to me. This one uses one-end weaving for the pyridyl-groups at chain ends only.

Weaving path for EMACs with 1,8-naphthyridine ligands

A simple weaving path for EMACs that contain 1,8-naphthyridine (萘啶) ligands:



I am not sure if Chern Chuang followed this path when he made the first beaded EMAC. Unlike EMACs with pyridyl-ligands, here one can use the same type of two-end weaving technique we used for making bead models of fullerenes.

Structure of nonanickel EMACs