Aries Figurine

If you are one of my followers I'm sure you have seen several posts about this little dragon and where it originates. If not check out this post for all the details.

When designing something for use in a 3D printer you have to consider a lot of little things that you don't consider when making a 3D model for simple renders.

For one, the wings on this wee dragon were thin, far too thin for the printer to even attempt the job. Secondly the tail, though playfully drawn by @kristyglas it wouldn't have printed cleanly on anything but a dual head extruder (which I don't own). So I positioned the tail around her body and thickened her wings, but the model was lacking something. I wanted that Sky Lander / Amibo look so I gave her a nice solid base to sit on and still it didn't seem complete. So quickly I added the fire in the back and once that was there I truly had my piece. It may not be exactly like the source material but sometimes we have to find a happy medium and I think I have in this model.

Printing (Birth)

Once I had the model clear of issues I loaded it into Cura and tweaked a few of the settings I really wanted this model to come out well so I enlarged the model and set the print mode to "fine detail" loaded up this beautiful translucent PLA from Polylite (orange of course) and hit go. This was the first time I've used a translucent filament, but within an hour of the print job I was satisfied that I wouldn't be wasting plastic and went on to bed.

And so it was born at 2:30 AM a 3 1/2" baby complete with all its structural supports.

Life

I gently removed all the large supports careful not to hurt her wings or horns, oh how nice she looks in real life, and how irritating it was that the camera couldn't capture her right, and those HAIRS those blasted hairs! I tried cleaning them but this was going to need a better, more drastic approach.

See the hairs?

So I took her around throughout the day, rubbing gently, removing little strands here and there. Everyone seemed to like the little girl, but they couldn't get over the hair either SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE! That is where everything went wrong.

Death

One of the tricks of the trade, when it comes to 3D printing, is using heat to smooth the model. It can also get rid of hair as the smaller plastic strands will melt and fall back into the model. Most use a heat gun for this, but as I don't have a heat gun I decided that the toaster oven would be a good place to autoclave off the offending fur. I carefully placed the oven on the right temperature, just a hair under the filaments melting point, I waited patiently for it to get to temperature and placed my new work on a saucer to protect it from the metal in the oven. Just a few minutes, that's all it would take....

20 minutes later I remembered the oven... my dragon is gone. All that remains is a plastic puddle of smooth translucent orange plastic. Had I known its life was going to be so short I would have taken more pictures, maybe even avoided the toaster all together. However, I did learn an important lesson in this. Slow down, focus on one thing at a time, and change the settings on the printer to avoid the hairs in the future.

Anyway if you want to follow me you know how to do so, if you want to check out what inspired me check out @kristyglas and do the liking and following if you find it to your liking.

IPFS: Download

Till the next print,
Ben out