Note: This blog is to be read after watching the Pokémon title sequence and while listening to Mr. Blue Sky on repeat.

One day in the Rice region, Matthew and Odnan were frolicking in the OEDK. All of a sudden, the Poképrofessor in the region–Dr. Wettergreen–challenged this young pair to become the very best team of Poképroduct manufacturers, like no one ever was. After a brief journey to the open-source market of Thingiverse, Matthew and Odnan carefully chose a design and began their journey to fabricate Poképawns.  

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1482617

As the assignment had been given to them, Odnan and Matthew were to take this design and Transform two positive Pokémolds for their Poképawn. Using these positive Pokémolds, they could make corresponding negative Pokémolds out of silicone which could fit together to make one, whole, positively-cast Poképawn.

To verify that their design could be reasonably fabricated and was appropriately sized, Matthew and Odnan decided to 3D Poképrint a sample Poképawn with the original .stl from Thingiverse. Reviewing the Poképart, they decided to use Growth to increase the size of the Poképawn by a factor of 1.4 to improve the machinability of detailed and rounded contours in the Poképarts.

The difficult task of creating a Poképiece now lay before them. From Thingiverse, the .stl file was downloaded and imported into the mythical software MeshMixer which manipulated their design (by magically making triangles disappear from their files).

This step involved using Cut on the file to make two Poképieces, one for the front side and one for the back. Later, the front would be 3D Poképrinted and the back would be CNC milled. Matthew and Odnan took great care during this Poképrocess to ensure that their design did not lose any necessary resolution and was scaled to an appropriate size. As a result of this step, the design was divided so that the more detailed half of the Poképiece could be made using Fused Deposition Modeling (3D Poképrinting) and the lesser half with Computer Numerically Controlled Routing (CNC milling).

With their divided files on their Poké-C: drives, it was now time for the team to try their hand at using the unexplored tools of Fusion 360. They quickly developed their files through Synthesis by importing the .stl for each Poképiece and meshing it to a solid body in this new software. There were many new tools to explore and lots of Poképlaces to get lost along the way, so Matthew and Odnan decided to follow the steps left to them by their Poképrofessor as they began the treacherous task of Poképath-file preparation. While they were mere trainers in the Fusion’s League, Matthew and Odnan were determined to learn enough so that they might navigate it again without a Strategy Guide in the future. 

They started with their 3D Poképrinted Poképart. They designed a rectangular block to serve as the base of their Poképiece so that their negative Pokémold had a reference geometry to sit against. The pair either used Dig to add a hole or Earth power to add a peg at each corner of the block to help line up the negative Pokémolds when they were put together. The clever pair drafted the angle of the holes (by 5°) so that when the negative Pokémold formed pegs they would be conic and not cylindrical (just in case the peg sizing was distorted in their fabrication Poképrocess). Having finished with all this digital Poképrocessing, Odnan exported the new file and sent it on its way to the 3D Poképrinters. But he sent a pegless file to the mystical Form 2, a catastrophic mistake… or was it? The pair would go on to Poképrint a new Poképart with pegs on an FDM printer and soon realize that their peg design, as wise and creative as it was in the eyes of Pokémaker Master Danny Blacker, was ultimately ineffective and had to be removed due to meshing issues with the CNC Poképart. 

The milling Poképart began similarly to the FDM, but required a bit more work. After creating the rectangular base with pegs and holes, they needed to define the material to be milled out. They selected a piece of wood that was 200 mm X 135 mm X 35 mm and modeled it in the CAM interface of Fusion 360. After the material was correctly positioned relative to the Poképart, Matthew began designing the tool-Poképath. 

Matthew read through and completed the steps in the Poképath-Poképrocessing document very thoroughly. First, he imported the Inventables tool library into Fusion so that he would not have to define the tools himself. But!!! Upon further investigation, the Pokéball mill bit was not defined, so Matthew daringly ventured to create a new tool so that he could use the ⅛” Pokéball mill bit for the roughing path. After creating a successful path which he named ‘roughing’, he then created a second tool-Poképath from the same file and changed the milling style in order to produce a more precise part. To Matthew’s future dismay, using the same bit for both passes would not provide his positive Pokémold with the same level of precision he needed to easily and accurately reproduce Poképawns…

As a result of using the Pokéball mill, Matthew and Odnan now faced a new challenge, the milling positive Pokémold had small bumps all along its surface. Not only that, but some of the contours did not mill out as much as they needed to. But the solution came easily to them: Drill Run and Sand Attack. They used a hand drill to emphasize the contours that needed to be deepened and sanded out any bumps and large inconsistencies remaining. Matthew then came up with the incredible idea of using cutting board oil to cure the surface of the wooden positive Pokémold.

Now with a smoother Poképart, the pair set out to create a silicone Pokémold. They built cardboard walls around their Poképieces and sealed the gaps with hot glue. As the hot glue cooled and the walls used Harden, they mixed (with a ratio of 1:1 by weight) parts A and B of their silicone. The silicone was then poured over their positive Pokémolds, being held in place by the cardboard walls and left to cure for 6 hours.

That night Odnan set out to create the first four of their Poképawns. He placed one negative Pokémold on top of the other, making sure the pegs aligned with the holes and secured the two halves together with numerous rubber bands. He read the instructions for the EasyFlo liquid resin and got nervous as he realized that once parts A and B (with a 1:1 ratio by volume) were mixed, he would have a mere two minutes to pour it into the Pokémold. He poured the EasyFlo mix into the Pokémold and let cure for 30 minutes. It was upon removing the Poképawn from the Pokémold that Odnan realized that the two halves were misaligned and the pegs were useless. And here is where the biggest challenge of all began for our two Poképroduct manufacturers as they set out to get the right positioning and reduce the amount of wasted EasyFlo per pawn. 

Never would they have expected it to be so tedious and irritating to get two Pokémolds to align with each other. It took 5 failed attempts, a lot of marking the Pokémolds with a sharpie, and ultimately the need for Matthew used X-scissor to round off the small misalignment of each Poképawn with an X-Acto knife to finally achieve a somewhat decent-looking pawn. Odnan also found out that about 28mL were needed to fill up the Pokémold and that tilting it in every direction before the EasyFlo began to cure made sure it did not have an unwarranted Bubble on the Poképawn. Although the battle was difficult, Odnan’s stats were boosted with the help of Plusle and Minum, the cheering Pokémon. With this victory, Odnan decided to Rest to replenish his HP for the next challenge.

Beginning the next day, Matthew came into the OEDK and finished casting all the necessary Poképawns and then Poképrocessed them with Slash to cut off even more material with an X-Acto knife and sanding all the remaining surfaces for reasonable smoothness, like Smooth Rock. After repeating this Poképrocess with the other 7 successful Poképawns, Matthew displayed all the Poképarts, took some Poképictures, and put everything away.

To complete their journey, the pair began writing an Epic Narrative…

… and that is the story of how Matthew and Odnan became Pokémaker Masters Poképroducing Poképawns using Pokémolds formed by Poképarts from Poképath-files for their Poképrofessor, and they have the Poképictures to Poképrove it.

Estimating the Cost: (in PokéCoin)

Design Cost:

• The file was free. roshandp1 designed it and put it on Thingiverse! https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1482617
• Access to MeshMixer and Fusion 360 is free to students using the educational Poképackage (or access would be included per a monthly membership to a Pokémaker space)
• Time spent learning, using, and documenting these processes was appoképroximately 9 hours at 137,829POKE/hour, for a cost of 1,240,461POKE.
• Consumable Cost:

3D Poképrinted Poképart 3,584POKE

• Silicone Pokémold: volume was 7oz. Silicone costs 3,445,719POKE/2gallons of cured silicone and 1 gallon = 128 oz. So our Pokémold cost 94,219POKE.
• 13 Liquid Resin Cast Poképawns. 30mL cured resin per Poképawn, 1,502,333POKE/ 2 gallons, 1 gal=37,585 mL. Poképawn total cost was 7,794POKE
• Accidental Form 2 Print: 82 mL at 2,067,431POKE/L cost 169,529POKE
• Electricity: Pikapower is free to Poképeople

Machine Use and Time:

• Access to a 3D printer, CNC Mill, and Computer with necessary CAD capabilities can all be found within a monthly membership to a Pokémaker space
• 3D printing is an unmonitored task and takes no appreciable time. 
• Milling is a passive supervision task and took 2.5 hours to complete both items at 68,841POKE/hour, for a total of 172,103POKE.

Documentation:

•  The cost of Poképroducing one season (13 episodes) of Pokémon is appoképroximately 27,536,223,903POKE. Therefore, each episode costs appoképroximately 2107481560POKE. Considering that approximately 77 Poképeople contribute to this Poképroduction, and the role of series design is one of the few upper-level Poképositions which require a staff member to dedicate almost all of their time to the show. Therefore, the Poképroduction cost of this series-designed episode is approximately 68,869,101POKE.
• Total Expense: 70,556,791POKE

To convert to USD from PokéCoin, please use the following website:

https://walletinvestor.com/converter/pokecoin/usd/1

For a more efficient way to produce these parts, consider: Routing in the LEGO Universe