I had the opportunity to attend a magnet high school that focused on Math, Science and Engineering (and it was aptly named the Academy for Math, Science, and Engineering). The summer before my freshman year, I had to attend two weeks of classes in order to acclimate me to the program along with the rest of the admitted students. It was at this time that I was introduced to design and how to use CAD. Needless to say I loved every aspect about design and CAD; I was hooked. This was a defining point in my life as I have never stopped using CAD software since.
Project Description: Back in high school, I was becoming very fluent with the CAD software AutoDesk Inventor. Sometimes I even found myself designing and modeling different objects just to practice using the software. This was also around the time when I was playing popular video game Skyrim every weekend. Part of that game involves slaying dragons, and when you kill the dragon the skin of the dragon evaporates leaving its skeleton. The graphic design of the skeletal dragon model is fantastic, and the dragon skull became synonymous with the game. It then dawned on me that I could model the skull in on Inventor and print it out via the 3D printers I had access to at the high school I attended. And that is exactly what I did.
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The Design: The design of the dragon skull is very complex, having a variety of features that are not easy to model. Naturally, the first step was to look at images of the skull in order to get an idea of its structure. The easiest way I found was to look up an image on Google. There were a plethora of images of the dragon skull design taken from multiple different angles. I imported those images into Inventor and traced in order to get the general shape. From there I got to work on the smaller features. This employed most of my knowledge at the time such as using lofts and sweeps for the horn and teeth features, various cuts, extrusions, and revolutions, and using fillets and chamfers effectively in order to smooth out the design. After a bit of time, I had a 3D model which I thought came out very well. You can download the file of the model by clicking on the link below.
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The Print: The goal was to use the 3D printers at my high school in order to print out my dragon skull. Unfortunately, this would not be the case. The design was too complex for the MakerBot 3D printers to print properly; these printers had no support material option. The school had a more professional 3D printer that would have been able to do this, however it was in use constantly for a class. So this project was tabled for a year. I graduated high school and moved onto Boston University (BU). At BU, all of the engineers had access to a small workshop called the Tinker Lab that was outfitted with useful tools such as mills, lathes, and 3D printers. The best part was that it was open to use whenever I wanted to given I went through the proper training. Seeing this as my opportunity to print out anything I want, I dug through my files until I found the Dragon Skull model, brought it to the lab, and left with a 3D printed dragon skull. Seeing as I was a freshman, this would be the first of many times I would be in this lab.
Future Ideas: While this was a fun project and I ended up with a very nice physical product, this was not the end. I had plans to make the skull out of metal. The idea was to perform investment casting in order to yield a metal dragon skull. Investment casting it a method of casting that destroys the model and results in a mold that can be used to pour molten metal into. I wanted to do this soon after I made the print, however for various reason the project got delayed until I eventually forgot about it. Hopefully one day I will be able to do this however; at the very least I still have the 3D printed Dragon Skull.