After the prototype of my Jetpack was finished, I spent some time adding detail to the back of the jetpack and refining other aspects, such as how the jet arms attached, how much access you had to the thumbwheel, I was ready to print the final version.

I was approached by Afinia (the manufacturers of my printer) and asked if I had anything I wanted to show at their CES 2014 show coming up. I showed them the video of the prototype and they thought it would be very fitting for their show. I am readying this final print now to send to them for the show (along with a GI Joe to pose it with.)

At around the same time, I saw a posting by 3DAGOGO, a web site startup whose intent is to provide a market for designers to sell their 3D print designs. I signed up and noticed several contests, one of which is for Household Item and that includes toys, so when I showed them some of my designs, including the prototype video, they thought it would be a perfect candidate for the Household Items category, and encouraged me to enter their contest.

This weekend I shot the Jetpack in a sort of short photo story, intended to show off the various features, and I will be preparing the files for print so I can upload it to their contest, and perhaps to sell as a design there.

I also shot a second video, this time of the first finished print.

So here it is, the first photo story I’ve done in years, and I did it just to show off the awesomeness that is the new GI Joe Adventure Team Action Pack Jetpack!

And to show off the thumbwheel, (which I do in the video) I took a series of three photos showing the thumbwheel in action:

Update – Nov 19, 2013

The helmet I designed to go with this jetpack was fun to model. I made a highly-tesselated sphere and used a lattice grid to shape it until I got a fairly pleasant shape. I hollowed it out using measurements of a GI Joe head, and did a test print. It didn’t fit. It also printed fairly badly because it’s completely round. I want it to look its best, so I printed it with the back of the helmet as the floor of the model.

With current 3D printing technology, the floor of the model is supported by a raft and scaffolding material to lay the base of the model on. On a rounded model, this causes some very ugly ringing, so I figured it would be fine at the back, and it is. But I still want to improve it.

Here is the first test-print. (The ringing on the back is not visible.)

Then I modeled a visor cap and a “virtual vision” visor – (the thing is not see-through, but uses enhanced virtual 3D imaging to see), and printed a version in red (because my printer wouldn’t extrude the yellow due to a head clog which I fixed by replacing the head.)

Then I printed a yellow version with black visor cap and silver visor:

And here is how it looks worn with the jetpack.

This past weekend my printer showed signs it was slipping. The X axis (which moves the bed back and forth) slipped, which showed in one small piece I printed. It weirded me out, but I passed it off as an anomaly.

I printed another piece and it shifted the raft layer a bit. Now I was worried.

So I printed a couple of other pieces without issue. Then I printed a Plush Russ, which is a model of a plush figure, modeled by one of my co-workers as a caricature of another of my co-workers.

This time, 3 hours into a 4 hour print, the bed slipped again.

You can see at the neck level the whole print shifted.

So I printed it again hoping it would finish. But no… this time it did the same thing at about the same level, only after that, it printed very badly for the rest of the head.

Yikes!

So I contacted Afinia. They sent me a document on changing the bed heating element (because it showed how to open the X-Axis arm.)

Side note: I feel partly responsible for the existence of this document. The printer spent a few weeks on the road last month getting a new bed heating element. When I asked if they had a document on changing one out they said they did not. They had previously sent me a doc on unclogging the print head, but they didn’t have one on replacing the heating element.

Now they do.

Anyway, I opened the X Axis arm and saw this:

Ah. Yup. That would do it. That plastic piece has teeth that grip the belt, sliding the print bed back and forth. It broke.

So Afinia said they would send me another one right away, which they did.

It is important to note that in the Afinia software directories is a directory filled with spare parts for the Afinia printer. A lot of the internal parts (as well as the protective print head housing and the fan housing and the filament feeder, the reel holder, etc, are modeled and printed on an Afinia printer.

Of course I could print my own replacement part. But with this part broken, I couldn’t.

But that same day Afinia sent me the part I realized that the break was nice and clean, so I tried a bit of superglue, and the glue held. Nervously I set the printer up and set it to printing this replacement part.

It printed! The whole thing. Without issue!

So I cleaned up the part, re-opened the printer, and removed the broken part (which was still nice and solidly held by Superglue) and replaced it.

That’s right. My printer repaired my printer. Again.

So the very next thing I did was print 9 parts that looked to be integral to the function of the printer and put them in my Afinia tool box in case another part breaks.

And the replacement part arrived today. Thanks, Afinia! I’ll hold onto that one as well in case I need it. I appreciate your swift, helpful action. Again!

I can’t tell you how much I love this machine!

For the past two days I noticed some slippage in the front/back motor mechanism of my printer.

I first noticed it on a small print. Part of the whole print just shifted about .25cm.

Then later I noticed it shifted during the raft printing, in the first few layers.

I hoped it was an isolated incident (or two) but then I started a 4 hour print of a small figure:

At about 3 hours, the print bed slipped backward just about .5cm. The rest of the print went fine, but the damage had been done.

I printed a few smaller items after this with no problems. I made sure I used the software’s maintenance window to move the bed back and forth to see if I could catch any problem. It looked fine. So I printed a few small things, and they all worked ok.

Then Sunday morning I decided perhaps it was just a momentary problem and it had worked itself out. I re-printed the figure.

As you can see, at around the same place it slipped again. The height is not likely the issue because the first two slippages happened far lower in the model.

But what’s particularly disturbing in this case is that it slipped twice, and after the slippage the print just went all to crap. It seems to be a progressive problem now.

I will try one more test print tonight, but nothing that’s going to take 4 hours.

Looks like she’s goin’ back to the shop again.

Now, some may think: “I told you. This tech isn’t ready yet”, I hear ya. However, when I opted to buy into a 3D printer at this fairly early stage in its development for the home, I knew full-well what I was getting into. I knew I was basically beta-testing the technology, but hey, I bought in figuratively and literally. I do not mind being part of the crowd that helps perfect this technology.

In a few years I expect to be printing in much higher resolution, with no support material, and in multi-colors. I expect the 3D printer progression to be similar to the home paper printing progression. Right now we’re at the dot-matrix stage. It won’t be long before I have a color laser printer (like I actually do for printing on paper.)

The GI Joe Adventure Team ATV is a six-wheeled all-terrain vehicle loosely based on the Amphicat from the 1970s. It was sold with various wonderful adventure sets, but the best-known is the “Secret of the Mummy’s Tomb”.

Here you see the ATV with a winch in the back. The winch slots into four holes in the back of the ATV’s body. When the winch is not in place, there are usually two rails for carrying cargo:

Here’s a pair of them, alone:

These often went missing. So I’m trying my hand at reproducing them using the Afinia 3D printer.

I’m almost out of black filament at the moment, so I’m test-printing them in green.

Here’s the first model:

I decided to try printing them in this orientation to see which would work better. Because the additive 3D printing process prints in layers, and in the upper left version there are large areas suspended above nothing, rafting and support material will have to be printed. The one on its side would require minimal support, but the rounded edges on the underside might suffer from the support that does print.

How I’d print these best depended on this test print.

Turns out the side-ways version was bad. There were a number of issues that I thought would be minimized printing it on its side. I was wrong.

And it turns out removing the rafting from the upright version was not as bad as I thought and the result was a far better product.

And here’s a first test-print, attached to the ATV:

Oct 28, 2013 – Update:

I have now printed several sets of rails and I have found that the cleanup is hard. Cleaning material around the smaller pin is risky, and often breaks the pin, but I usually end up with enough good ones to make it worthwhile.

Here is a photo of some of the rails:

The originals are at the upper left, closest to the ruler. They have a mold seam running down the surface. The prints do not. They have a diagonal hatching which comes from the print method.

Mine are sharper-edged, (a result of not rounding the model) but I like it. I don’t think I’ll shoot for 100% accuracy. I’m happy with them as they are.

Also, note the longer green ones. Those are my first custom rails, printed in green only as a test. But they turned out rather nicely, and show that I can really go crazy making different rails.

Here is a photo showing the differences between the original (again, top left) and the 3D printed replicas: