Dronie Trophy 2015

Summaryhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KCvDN2CBWw These are the files for the Drone Trophy, designed by Noe Ruiz and Bruce Yan. "Dronie" is a friendly, cuddly gumdrop looking cartoon. These parts were designed to print in metal filament. Parts are separated into pieces so they can fit inside rotary tumbler. InstructionsThe parts have a snap fit design that has loose tolerance to compensate for expansion when printing with bronzeFill. I sliced these parts with a bit more infill and outline overlap. Extra top and bottoms layers help close off the surface while more shells lets the surface withstand hours of tumbling. Large parts tend to be difficult to remove from the build plate, so I found it easier to use two spatulas. One to peel the corner, and a second one to slide underneath. Printing at 100 microns on the Type A Machine works really well especially with bronzeFill. I set printing speeds around 40mm/sec to help retain surface quality. Some parts are of course easier to remove than others, so it’s important to do it slowly and carefully. Because, you know - it can be a little dangerous, you could break the part or hurt yourself - so be careful These parts tend to come out with stringy bits due to retraction and oozing, but this can easily be cleaned up using diagonal flush snips and a hobby knife to get in between all the nooks and crannies. I let the parts tumble for about 1-2 hours and used stainless steel screws as the medium. Using different sized screws actually help polish the smaller details. The parts came out looking polished and have that bronze cast look. They’re really shiny and feels just like metal - the weight of this stuff is so cool. For making the prop bits, we actually used the Ember Printer from Autodesk. These tiny parts are perfect for DLP,SLA printers and they came out with amazing detail in clear resin. To secure the tower piece to the base of the trophy, I used E600 to bond them together. The bottom part has recessed fittings for the prop arms, and they just snap into place. The tolerances came out pretty good with an offset of 0.4mm, which gives it a slight snap fit. A bit of E6000 adhesive will permanently bond these parts together. I used a clamp that locks to hold it tightly in place while I let the adhesive cure. For the propellers, we wanted them actually spin, so I had to designed it in several parts. The prop piece has a hole in the middle, so a studding can be inserted and held in place with a lock nut - The studding piece has a cap on top. There’s a cavity on the bottom of the arm for the lock nut to snap into, and we’ll just glue it in place - And thats how to make the props freely spin. I thought i’d be cool to use magnets so the Dronie could come off the trophy base. This give it to have a bit of freedom, which I think it's pretty cool. The magnets loosely fit into the parts and are held in place with E600. And now we have Dronie - A 3D printed Trophy in metal filament. So, If you’re thinking about using metal filaments in your next 3d printed project, check out this stuff from colorFabb!