3D Printing Stuff

Over the Christmas break I got the family 3D printer, and it’s been way more fun than I thought it would be. After doing the usual routine of printing out a bunch of silly stuff from the internet I set about trying to make some of my own models.

I started watching some great tutorials on how to use Fusion called Learn Fusion in 30 Days. Once I had a grasp on the basics, I set about creating some Crossy Road characters.

(FYI - The Zote Model was from Maker World)

Chicken

First up was the Chicken character. It was a relatively straight forward shape with limited colors. I had considered printing it attempting to print it as one big piece, but that would have produced a bunch of waste. So, instead I set it up so that the various colors could be printed as separate parts and easily glued together.

All in all, it turned out pretty well.

Mallard

Up next was mallard - which was a bit more complicated. The shape was not much more difficult than Chicken, but there were may more changes in the colors.

I too a similar approach to how I put the chicken together where I split the different pieces up into colors. To improve the result though, I laid out the main body as one piece made up of 4 colours. Because the colours of mallards body was layered pretty eveny vertically, I could print it with minimal waste.

Crashy Cart #1

Just before getting my printer I had seen that one of the clever fans on the Crossy Road discord server had created a Crashy Cart Play Set that I thought was really cool. It got me wondering if it would be possible to make one that could actually move.

I found some pull back motors online, like what you would find in some childrens toys, then set about building a Trolley that would fit it. I worked out a size that would match both the motor and the wheels that came with it. There was a lot of trial enrror in regards to layouts, axels placements, etc. but I eventually got it to work.

Unfortunately it didn’t work well.

The size of the trolley was rather large, and the weight of it was too much for the small motor. It was barely able to move the cart - even before I put a chicken character in it :|

Crashy Cart #2

I decided to try again, but this time making everyhing much smaller. I based everything around the size of the motor, attempting to make it as small as possible. I even cut down the size of the axels and made my own wheels.

I was able to get it pretty close, but the prints were not quite accurate enough to do what I wanted. I ended up printing out some of the smaller sections using a 0.2mm nozzle, which greatly improved the quality of the small joins I was creating.

It took a number of experiments to get “right” but once it worked, it moved way faster. It even handled having a chicken character along for the ride.

Unfortunately, it was pretty fragile. One of them had a wheel fail and jam up the movement. Another test had a motore jam up for some reason and not move at all. Neither could really be recovered because the entire model had been glued together.

Crashy Cart #3

So, I started again… well, not entirely again - just about half way.

I kept the basic layout of most of the model, but reworked the section that held in the motor and front wheels. Instead of needing to be glued into place I instead used screws to hold it all down. This worked much better and means that if I break something, I can usually fix it without printing a whole new thing.

As an extra bonus, I also created a mallard character that fits in the trolley. It’s not technically Canon, but I can dream :)

Bride and Groom

Not long after all of that, we launched a limited time character for Valentines Day - Tuxedo Mallard. In the intro to his level, he is left at the alter by his Chicken Bride.

The art for these two characters (and their respective families) are just amazing, and because I was on a roll with all the previous character work, I set about trying to re-create some of them myself.

Once again, Mallard was the hardest. He already had a lot of colours before, but now he had a shirt, suit and tie to go with it. I did a similar approach to the previous mallard, where I printed most of the body in one print, then attached the other elements after. This time though I had to make a design that allowed the suit to wrap around the body parts.

It wasa bit fidelly, but I think it came out pretty well.

The Chicken Bride was easy in comparison. It was pretty much the same character as before, but with a number of floral arrangements. I printed the head band as part of the main body, and then printed out a number of flowers which I glued on by hand.

Wooden Unihorse

I later got a hold of a sample pack of some wood infused filaments. There were four brown colours in the set that kinda matched up with Uni Horse, so of course, that is was I did.

The wood infused filaments are a bit rough and I didn’t want to try any multi-colour prints with them, so I designed the model to be all individual pieces which I later glued together.

Unfortunately, the pieces got a bit rounded on the edges so the pieces didn’t that snap together as sharply as I would have liked. I still liked the way that it turned out.

Other prints

Since then I have created a number of different characters - some from the game, and others from the personal avatars that Hipster Whale staff get when they join the crew.

I swear that I have also been printing stuff that is not Crossy Road related - they have mostly been functional, and not as much fun to talk about.