Find content
Male
Since the summer time I have been working on designing my own robot toys, starting with a power suit design influenced by classic series like MaK nd Dorvack. The Bounce Tortoise was my first design. I have gone through a through iterations through 3D printing service websites Shapeways and i.materialise. The prints were nice and the services very friendly, but the turnaround time can be long, and the prints get quite expensive as size increases. After attending MakerFaire NYC back in September, I finally saw a consumer-grade printer that I could afford, would fit within my limited living space, and could make quality enough prints for me to work with. I posted a big blog post about the printer and my experiences so far on my site:
UP! Mini on Prometheus Rising Studios
The printer is not why we're here, though. Having my own printer allows me to make much larger prints than I could afford from a service, so I whipped up a 1:18 scale (Microman/GI Joe scale) Bounce Tortoise and took it to completion.
The 1:18 Bounce Tortoise stands around five inches tall and is articulated at the shoulders using polycaps.
I'm curious to hear what you guys think both of the design and of the finished print. Before painting, I did some finishing to the surfaces of the figure. I first used 240 and 600 grit sandpaper to clean off the larges ridges between layers. Then I coated the figure in a healthy coat of grey automotive primer, which filled in some of the deeper gaps between layers. A final run at the figure with 600 grit sandpaper smoothed the flat surfaces back out and made the figure ready for printing. More extensive filling and sanding could have been done to get a smoother surface, but I like the effect of a little surface texture on the finished figure.
The next step for this guy is a partial redesign, both to enable a better and more efficient printing process, and to take advantage of what having my own printer and being able to make sure large prints affords. I want to break the model down into smaller parts to enable faster and smoother printing, as well as allow for more articulation. I also want to redesign the legs to get rid of the twinkle toes and make them more cohesive with the upper half of the design. Hopefully around the holidays I'll have a chance to make some progress on the redesign.
Thanks for looking!
