My printer is back from the shop. It was three weeks to the day since I sent it. And it’s working.

I tested it by printing a small 1:6 scale Space 1999 Stun Gun for GI Joe. Just a quick print. No cleanup or optimization so it wasn’t perfect. I also found that at 1:6 size, it’s a bit small for a GI Joe hand. Will have to try 1:5.

But I began printing the real parts for my first prototype test print.

Here you see the setting switch housing and switch. The model of the gun I have shows the two colors under the switch as dark brown and red for STUN and KILL. I don’t have a dark brown, and I don’t want to use black. Besides red and green works.

For this test print the red and green are just thin sheets. I will hopefully eventually carve the words KILL and STUN in them and print those in white.

The slider works nicely. But it’s a bit loose. I’ll have to print a few of those before I get it right, I’m sure. Also, I intend to put a magnet in the slider, and one under each of the colors so the switch will be drawn to the correct position for both STUN and KILL.

Here you also see the four gun barrels, two nubs that are at the top of the gun, and the handle pips in green and red.

Here is the 3D model, with most of the work finished. I just have to etch out holes for the magnets now.

Update – Sept 21, 2013

Here are all of the parts printed. I kept the black parts on the rafting to keep track of them. Some of them are similar but not identical, so keeping them in this layout helps me place them.

A while back I bought some rare earth magnets. Very strong but tiny. I decided to put magnets into the slider and under the slider so the sliding switch itself would be attracted to the two switch positions.

I cut holes in the model to accommodate the magnets and attached them to the gun. The attraction is weak from a distance though, so it doesn’t work as nicely as intended for this first prototype.

Here is the first finished model prototype:

This is a photo of a prop. There are many versions of them, so I’m not sure how accurate it is, but you can see I’ve got it pretty close.

Problems:

I forgot to cut holes for the two upper pips, so these are just glued in place. Also, the front barrel appears to be too short. I will have to check some other models and make adjustments. It’s shorter than my resin model. But it was modeled using a photo of a prop from the internet, so I don’t really know which is more accurate.

The magnets are powerful when close together but weak when far apart. The sliders work, but the attraction can hardly be felt. I’m probably going to go with bigger magnets that I have.

Otherwise for a first attempt, it’s not at all bad.

A few weeks ago I had to send my Afinia H479 back to its home for a repair. Nothing major. The heating element for the print bed failed, and was intermittently usable until one day it just stopped working altogether. While I was able to print small things on an unheated bed, large things were impossible. They lifted off the bed ruining the print.

Tomorrow I get it back.

Before I sent it away I did a test to see how small I could create a reasonable little robot, with the final intent of using it as a game piece.

Here’s the result.

With some changes, I made it better, and I printed it in multiple colors:

You can see that it printed remarkably well for an additive extrusion printer.

However, Thingiverse user Brian Evans made one using a Form-1, which prints by laser-hardening light-sensitive liquid resin. The resolution is far superior to most home-priced extrusion printers, but they’re also not easily available yet.

Here’s his result:

I was pretty impressed. This is the first, early version of Treadbot, not the improved one, but you can see by the angles of the body and the curves of every piece that it’s next to impossible to notice any layer striations at all.

My ultimate goal now is to have my Afinia for quick, iterative prototyping and printing larger things, but to have a Form-1 to make model kits I can actually sell.

Not going to say much about today’s project, except to say this was one of my favorite Science Fiction weapons when I was a kid. I bought a finished resin model of one some months ago and recently designed and modeled a display stand for it, which you can see here:

And here is today’s progress. I was right. Modeling the basic gun body didn’t take much more than an hour with a highly tesselated cylinder and a few lattices applied.

Honestly, all that needs to be done on this model now is to add the trigger and setting slider. Then I just have to make holes for all of the small pieces (which I intend to model in color and glue in place) and print them.

As a child, the 1970s GI Joe Adventure Team were some of my favorite toys. For a while, Hasbro made some very nice equipment for Joe that could be broken down and slipped on his back to carry. Some of the gear was practical rescue gear, but some were vehicles.

There was a motor tricycle called the Drag Bike:

Even a full four-wheeled car-type vehicle, the Escape Car:

Also there was an Underwater Explorer:

But my absolute favorite, (and I’m not alone) was the GI Joe Turbo Copter.

When the GI Joe View Master reels were released, several of these were seen in use:

In the past decade, Hasbro re-introduced the Turbo Copter in black for a set called Black Spider Rendezvous.

And the GI Joe Collector’s Club re-introduced the Underwater Explorer for the Terror on the Sea Floor Convention set.

They also made it available in white for individual sale:

The 1970s Adventure Team tradition continued into the re-launch of GI Joe in the late 1980s when the 12″ Hall of Fame GI Joes appeared, and they gave a backpack helicopter to GI Joe’s enemies: Cobra. And the theme continued into the 3.75″ Real American Heroes line.

MY PLAN

A couple of years ago I bought one of the coolest toys ever made – the GI Joe Sigma Six Dragonhawk. It was a large, jet-prop aircraft designed to carry a payload and drop it on the fly, and pick it up later. Rather than use helicopter blades, it used ducted fans, later popularized in the Avatar movie.

Dragonhawk:

Here is my page outlining my project which was to convert the Dragonhawk into a substantial backpack vehicle for a 12″ GI Joe.

I never finished the project for a couple of reasons, but here’s how far I got:

What’s missing? A pad for the back, or some kind of seating ledge or seat to support the weight of the pilot, and some kind of harness, as well as support arms. There is also nothing to cover the opening where I cut the cockpit off the body.

New Plan

And now here I am with a 3D color printer. Now I can fairly easily design and print the back-pad, or seat, or harness, or control arms, and the top bit that’s missing. And I probably will, later this year.

But I thought: Now that I have my very own 3D printer, why not just design one from scratch.

So this page is introducing my new project – the GI Joe Adventure Team Action Pack Jetpack!

I began by drawing some basic designs, which included a thumbwheel which would allow the person using this toy to rotate the ducted fan engines. I originally thought of putting a convenient handle on the backpack so a kid could hold it like a gun, using the thumb to rotate the engines, but so far I could not see a way to do that that would just make it look like an add-on that just doesn’t belong. So I figured that, like the Turbo Copter, you could just hold it normally and perhaps use your pointer finger to rotate the engines.

So here’s the first released image of the concept. This has no detail yet, and is just a rough body shape now, which may change completely before I’m done. For now my aim was to make a body that would hold the support arms for the engines, attached to a central thumbwheel to rotate them. This design will be printed in several parts, attached by screws, and should be solid, and support a 12″ GI Joe figure in a harness.

I will update this page, or make new pages, as I progress.

Right now my printer has gone to its home for a repair. When I get it back, I will likely test-print some part of this. By then I hope to have the basic axle and thumbwheel mechanism fully modeled and fitted into the body correctly so that when the printer gets back, I can print a fully working prototype, even if the detail won’t yet be there.

Yes. Depending on the filament being used, the 3D printer does emit fumes. Quite strong for some colors. Almost non-existent for others. At least by smell. This does not mean, however, that it’s not constantly filling the air with microscopic ABS particles.

And everyone I know has sent me the link this week, to this, or similar, articles. And I appreciate the thought, if not the sheer volume.

But fear not. I will now show you something. This is page ONE of a sketchbook I bought in order to jot down design ideas for my 3D printing. I drew this up several weeks ago, just after I got my printer.

I appreciate all the concern for my health. I do not take this lightly, as it is burgeoning tech, and can have unforeseen hazards. But I’m all over it.

This is a design for a hood to go over the printer, made from white PBC piping and connectors. And some of the connectors, if I can’t buy the exact ones I need, will be printed with my printer.

The printer at this moment is directly above an A/C duct, and directly next to a window which so far has been open during all printing. But it doesn’t suck the air away from the printer and out, so this hood design should do that for me.

You might say “I got it covered.” Well, not built yet, but I’m planning on upping the priority of building it.

Fred Fields is a colleague and friend. He’s an amazingly talented artist. A while ago, Pete Anderson, another talented colleague and friend decided he wanted to model Fred’s head. (I didn’t ask.)

When I saw the model, I thought that this would be an ideal thing to print. So with Pete and Fred’s permission, I got the file and printed Fred’s head, a 4.5″ tall print, in .15mm mode, which means it prints 10 layers for 1.5mm in height. This print took 6.5 hours.

It is not without its problems.

In fact, when the print got to the shoulders near the neck, some scaffolding it had printed to support the ears fell over and I had to pause the print. I glued the scaffold back in, revealing to me an amazing thing: This printer can repair scaffolding. By printing the current layer where it is supposed to go, if there is anything supporting this level, even if it’s out of place, it will support the printing of it in place, and if for some reason it isn’t perfect, it’s there to support the next layer better, and over a few layers, it can actually be back printing fully perfect scaffolding. I have to say – that surprised me.

But the pause may have caused some heat differences, because around that point, at the back (thankfully) there is a stress crack that you don’t see in these photos.

I will be printing this again, one without a crack, hopefully, for Pete, another one for Fred (so I can retrieve the cracked one) and one for me.