With a conceptual design for a Wizard Staff in hand the next step was to prepare a budget proposal for a 3D printer and submit it to my CFO. Or, to put it differently, tell She Who Must Be Obeyed that I need a Bambu X1C 3D printer for my projects. The response was “how much is it and will it do what you need?” Answer: “yes, it does what I need. And it is on sale right now.” Her response: “OK. Order it before the price goes up.” What did I ever do to deserve this lady?
As I may have previously mentioned I am an engineer and I am artistically declined. So I started searching for 3D models. Wanted something better than a ball glued to the end of a stick. Couldn’t find a good cobra head but I did find a dragon paw and a Gandalf staff from Lord of the Rings. Grab both models and print small versions of them – small versions to minimize the amount of printer filament used.
The Gandalf staff has a kind of basket to hold the orb. The description recommends starting the print, stopping it half way through, inserting an orb, and then finishing the print. This works but makes it difficult to change or work on the orb.
The dragon paw is available with or without the orb. You can print it without the orb and insert the orb later. And there is a design for the orb that splits the orb into two halves with a separate structure that holds the two halves together and provides support for LEDs.
I rather like the way the dragon paw looks. And I can definitely design a sphere! So let’s start off by building a prototype based on the dragon paw and an orb that contains programmable LED strips.
As a side note there are a huge number of 3D models that people share. These can be printed directly or modified. The dragon paw model I’m starting with is the Orb in Dragon Claw model posted on Thingiverse by Argasman. This model is licensed under the Creative Commons – Attribution license, which means that I’m free to use the model as long as I give credit to Argasman.