In the late 1990s I created a robot in Lightwave, and called him JANI-TOR. The idea was that he was a menial sanitation robot sweeping the floor of a lab he’s not necessarily supposed to be in. His broom bumps a ball (a familiar one to Canadian children in the 1970s, and is NOT, I repeat, NOT the PEPSI logo!) and follows the ball to where it rolls to a halt under a huge Van de Graaf generator, where he reaches down to pick it up as the sparks get increasingly closer to him, and then he stands up, the generator waning, and examines the ball, tosses it in the air where a huge spark disintegrates it, turning it into dust. Undaunted by any of this, JANI-TOR continues about his business.

I put the video together but never did the sound.

This week I decided I wanted to 3D print him. Actually, I decided this many years ago when 3D printing became possible.

This week I remodeled him (can’t find the original Lightwave files), updated a few things, like his hands, and beefed up his feet, and printed him in his broom-carrying, ball-surveying pose.

Here is a tray filled with all of the parts: The dark teal of the original was not available, so I used a lighter version, and I still think he turned out well:

And here he is, printed out. As you can see by the parts, it’s all tab and slot connections, and so he’s not articulated. He’s a statue. But a nice one.

I posed his eyes looking a bit too high. I can fix that by printing a new head for a different version.

Note the broom. I could have 3D printed that too, but guess what? Sometimes 3D printing is not the only, and not necessarily ideal, method to make something. This time I used two paint brushes (one for the wooden base, and one for the bristles) and a piece of wooden dowel. The hand has a cylindrical space in it so the broom can slide into place easily.

Here are the movies, one is a walk test, and the other the full video. These are tiny because it was the late 1990s and this size took long enough to render. It was also a test only.

Here is a series of single frames from the animation. Each one mimics the storyboard frame I created for them very closely. I stuck to my storyboard fairly strictly.

The Jetson Cruiser

This is my latest UFO print:

Admittedly, I grabbed the idea from this wonderful model I saw on the web:

I did make my own alterations and adjustments, though.

What I was aiming for was something out of the Jetsons, a flying saucer that invoked a 1950s car feel with fins and chrome lights. I have no chrome, so I was stuck with a gray filament that is called silver but is not.

Here are all of the parts that make up the Jetson Cruiser:

Assembly

Gluing the bumper to the bottom half:

Here the cockpit assembly (console, pilot seat and comfy couch for five passengers) is attached to the bottom of the saucer:

Then the semi-spherical bubble capsule cap is put in place. The fit is so perfect I don’t need to glue it:

Then I blue the six clear translucent lights to the light covers:

And I attach those to the body:

The tail-light rims go on next:

Followed by the customary navigational lights, green on the left, red on the right:  

And then the actual tail lights:

I glue tires into the three wheel housings. Note: These wheels are printed in a flexible black, so they feel like rubber and have some bounce. In a future version I may add axles and allow them to roll:

Inserting the vertical thruster. The thruster is printed in a translucent glow-in-the-dark icy blue. So when it’s glued to the underneath, it shows the orange (and gray from the cockpit) through. To avoid this, I attached a circle of tin foil to reflect light back out:

Then I glue the thruster in place underneath, and attach the wheels:

Now the two halves get joined, for a completed model:

The Showroom

Cute Prototype

When I prototype, I use colors I normally have a lot of, but don’t use a lot of, like purple, pink, neon yellow, etc. In the first print of this model, I used purple and pink with green and white.

It was intended only for fit and to determine what issues the model would have.

But my daughter loved the color scheme and basically demanded it, so it’s now hers. Here it is.

A couple of years ago I bought a Pegasus Hobbies model kit called “Apollo 27” because it looked awesome. I haven’t built it yet, but I will get to it.  It has these four rocket engines offset from the body with a solid structure holding them in place. I looked at it and thought “Hey, what if they swung in and out?”

Apollo 42 is born. (42 – Reference to the Ultimate Answer.)

I changed the design naturally, but I liked the original enough to keep the basic shape.

Here are the parts: One engine has been assembled to show how the parts fit together.

A bit about the design:

Like many of my rockets, it prints in multiple colors. I design it so that body stripes are individual cylindrical pieces, and I use holes and pegs to align them for gluing (the black mass in the picture is a group of pegs.)

Each hinge arm has a hole in either end. In the body of the rocket and in each engine, there are four hemispherical bumps that the hinge arms get pushed onto. Once in place, this acts as a very solid hinge. In a future design I may change how this works, but for this one it works well. A careful eye can detect that at each end of the hinge arms there is a funneled channel carved in to make sliding these onto the bumps a bit easier (though it’s no easy task.) Once snapped on, however, they work very well.

The number 42 is inlaid using four individually printed numbers, booleaned into the body and angled correctly. I do this by making the letters, the making a cutting tool object that is just a bit larger all around, so the number can slip into the cavity without too much difficulty.

I designed the rocket with two hinged arms for each rocket engine. Each engine retracts to a recessed section of the main body, and extends outward to a maximum distance.

As it is now, each engine can be pulled in and out individually, and because each uses two hinged arms, the angle stays correct as you extend them and retract them.

I will note that during assembly I came up with a great way of making it so that when you pull out one engine, the other three will also pull out, and in. I will be working on that in the future, perhaps Version 2.0 of Apollo 42.

I wanted to make another UFO, this time using a 2.25″ spherical vending machine bubble capsule, one of the newer versions, not the acorn-shaped ones.

So I perused the internet for ideas and found one that I really really liked. I admit I took a lot of the design directly, and then added some stuff of my own, including re-using legs I created for Thunderbird 1’s display stand, with some alteration.

Here’s the final result:

Here are the constituent parts:

The bubble is clearly not 3D printed – it’s the clear half of a vending machine spherical capsule.

Assembly:

Two halves of the saucer, along with the purple interior console and green seat:

Front grill and green headlights:

Green vertical thruster and legs:

Five green tail lights:

Beauty shots:

Inspiration:

I am often inspired by models, things I see in every day life, and in searching the web. I found this one and liked it so much I only made small modifications. Apologies to the original artist. I loved your work so much I had to use it.