Scale Cube

Scale cubes were first used by NASA to give a size and orientation reference in photographs of meteorites and moon rocks. I recently saw them in a Smarter Every Day video about NASA's storage of moon rocks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxZ_iPldGtI) and decided that I needed my own.

I've designed the text orientation to match what I've seen of the NASA scale cubes. NASA looks like they use 10mm cubes, but I've printed mine at 20mm. I haven't seen the text size legend on the NASA cubes, but I found other cubes online that included it.

The design is rather parametric, so you should be able to easily modify the SCAD file to produce a cube of whatever size you desire. I've included 10mm and 20mm for download.

Post-Printing

For the black on the outside, yellow lettering cube, I used a flat foam brush to paint the outside of the cube with a black acrylic paint (Black 3.0) then scraped the edges of the cube with an xacto knife to let the yellow show through. That black paint isn't overly sturdy, so I finished the whole cube with a clear lacquer spray.

For the yellow cube with black letters, I used a cheap black acrylic paint in a squeeze bottle with a fine plastic tip to paint in the letters.

Category: Tools