Lebronopus’s Garden | ENGI 210: Prototyping and Fabrication

This week in EDES 210, I created 5 of my own tiny children, in the form of a Lebronopus, the mythical combination of Lebron James and an Octopus. These Lebronopuses (Lebronopi?) are intended to go into tiny capsules and placed in the OEDK toy machine.

Figure 1: Lebronopus File Preview

After downloading the file for Lebronopus off of Thingiverse, it was time to expriment with sizing. I attempted to print Lebronopus using the Bambu 3D printer, and setup the file using Bambu studio. Before printing, I made sure to add the appropriate supports, adjusted the sizing to be at 1/4 scale a rough ballpark for the capsule size, and left all other settings at default before slicing the Lebronopus. After a short wait, the first Lebronopus was printed, but unfortunately, it came out a tad too small for the capsule. I repeated this process with a half scale Lebronopus, and unfortunately this one fell short as well.

Figure 2: Too small Lebronopus

After this failure, I decided to reprint Lebronopus again, this time at 2/3 scale of the model’s original size. I was pretty confident this size would be right, so I went ahead at printed 4 Lebronopi using these settings. The sizing ended up being the right choice for my Lebronopi!

Figure 3: Final PLA Lebronopus

Figure 4: Lebronopus size demonstration

Next it was time to print my 5th and final Lebronopus. In fact, this would be the most challenging Lebronopus yet, as I decided to print him with the FormLabs resin printer. I began by asking Robert for help (he is so awesome), and he showed me how to prep my Lebronopus file correctly in the FormLabs slicer and load the platform onto the printer (I’m now very confident about it). I set Lebronopus to be at full scale, as I hoped this would help the joints articulate better. After Lebronopus was done printing, I blew him with compressed air to get gunk out of his joints, bathed him in the alcohol bath for 20 minutes, then cured him for 30 min.

Figure 5: Blowing Lebronopus with Compressed Air

Figure 6: Lebronopus after curing

Once these steps were done, I removed Lebronopus’ supports with clippers, and gave his joints a test drive. I’m happy to say that resin Lebronopus has great working joints, and fits in the capsule perfectly!