DRK-1 Probe Droid

[savagecreature]

If I understand how your describing it, we've considered (and even tried) a lot of your suggestions. It's definitely the plan to require as few supports as possible, as print quality on top of supports is usually awful.  We just wanted to establish best practices for printing (where we should separate things into pieces, what orientations for printing, etc) before we chopped it up and included alignment tabs and the like.

So keep those ideas coming. That's exactly why we're doing this  (images would help make things clear)

[kresty]

My plan was to print body_sphere_front on it's back like a dome - without supports... - maybe the back too, though that seems iffier.

[kresty]

Savage, now that I have a handful of various "sensor" bits that all look very similar and no clue which one is which - do you know how to tell them apart?

[savagecreature]

Besides comparing it to images of the model I honestly don't know. I suppose I could go back and key the parts uniquely so they only fit one way, if people would like. In the mean time I'll post some images with descriptions.

[kresty]

I guess if I can't tell the difference it doesn't matter

Maybe a little pattern of dots or letter or something on the inside stud of the little parts? Not a big deal in any event.

[savagecreature]

 I guess if I can't tell the difference it doesn't matter  

Maybe a little pattern of dots or letter or something on the inside stud of the little parts?  Not a big deal in any event.

This should be enough to be able to figure out which parts are which. (they're all unique)

'course, the other method is just keep track of which pieces are which in the first place
All the files are named

[Voice]

I'm curious about the chosen scale for the models. The droid is supposed to have a 0.3m diameter, but the body sphere seems to take up almost that entire distance, meaning the skid plates, hood, etc. will extend beyond that distance. What measurement did you decide constituted the 0.3m when building the model?

I've just started a first test print of body_sphere_front. I'm pushing my luck a bit, by setting it to only require supports for overhangs greater than 55 degrees, but I think it'll be ok. (Using the experimental adaptive layers setting in Cura trims off almost 9 hours of print time). Estimated print time 21h 29m. 245 grams of filament.

[savagecreature]

.3 meter is of course 30 cm

The size of the hood is 33.12 at it's widest point, which is reasonably close to .3 meters. If it were a sphere without the odd protrusion on the right of the image below it would be .3 meters or maybe even a little less.

Where does the .3 meters measurement come from? Which dimension of the droid is .3 meters?  It's difficult to say exactly what the margin of error is there,  and I know from experience that even Lucas Film doesn't know a lot of these things for sure.  (Just ask them what the detail under a pit droid dome is ) 

I can tell you I didn't just guess, but I can't look you in the eye and tell you that I know for 100% sure that it's exactly the size of the droid from the film that never actually existed in the real world. I got it as close as I could with the data available to me. 

Thanks for giving the files a trial run. That many hours of print time is no small investment on something that hasn't been proven yet.  I look forward to your results and feedback.

[kresty]

Savage is pretty convinced of the scale. I think his sources are probably pretty good. It's certainly "in the ballpark", though I agree it seems a bit larger than I'd expected - however, it is "about head sized" compared to some of the heads, and the hood is close to that.

I'll see how I feel after it's printed. Most of the droids seem "bigger" than expected (Artoo's feet are HUGE, and Mice always surprise folks). I'm not 100% certain that the shots are even entirely consistent with themselves. It's CG, not practical. It seems maybe a little different to me compared to the head sizes "in town" compared to near Darth Maul's head. It's also possible that it was shrunk a little in the film.

I believe the 0.3m figure comes from a vague statement in an art book. I presume that was pulled out of thin air. It's also unclear which parts the 0.3m talks about. Most of those figures for other characters include things like antennae, however it's pretty clear that the antennae can't be part of the number.

All that aside, I think it'd be a perfectly viable option for someone to do a print at 80% or 90% if they think 100% is too large. Certainly nobody seeing it is going to know any better.

[savagecreature]

kresty said it better