Remix of the Spaceman of the infamous DJ duo! The helmets were a bit tricky to make because they had somewhat organic shapes. It was a real learning curve to start to work with surfaces in Fusion360 in order to achieve the correct geometries that looked good.
A lot of surface and solid lofting to achieve the correct look
The helmets are a remix of what the real life ones should look on a round LEGO head.
This sketch was pretty fun to draw. A combination of solids and surface lofts.
Lofting is when you transition from one surface to another, or one curve to another to generate a new solid or surface. It’s like morphing 2 lines in 3D space. The most important part of that however is the guides or centerlines. That dictates how the surfaces blend together, otherwise you’re left with a pretty rigid transition.
Designing curves to tell Fusion how to transition from one profile to another is amazing!
This is just an exercise to sharpen my skills in Fusion. The goal was to practice re-creating specific bodies and joints. Learned a lot from doing this. There were a lot of dimensions that I simply assumed were parallel, when in fact there were subtle things that were off.
The arms were the hardest part of this build. Most of the other pieces were pretty parametric. The arms were a little organic and finding the right angles and dimensions was tricky.
Tricks
The outside thigh is not perpendicular to the foot/ground. In fact, there is a slight bow inwards, making the feet wider than the hips.
The face cutout for the helmet is not perpendicular so the shell of the helmet, which means you can not de-boss the cutout. In fact, you need to cut the opening directly from the left/right sides, making the edge of the cutout appear thicker than the actual thickness of the helmet.
The strap around neck (for the tanks on the back) are not a perfect U shape. In fact, the traps bow inwards towards the tank ever so slightly.
Given the properties of PLA, I designed the joints to take advantage of the slight flexibility of the plastic. The male part of the joints are segmented to provide some tolerance, and the female parts of the joints had filets to help guide the parts in to snap together. Once the piece is snapped in, chamfers on the male help to keep it gently in place and allow for some wiggle room.
Here is it printed just for testing purposes. Not for sale or distribution, relax.
I added tolerance in the designs of about 0.1mm to 0.2mm to the joints based on what I know about my 3D printer. However, I think those need to be removed because if I print a scaled version, the tolerance will scale with it, which doesn’t make sense because the accuracy of the printer doesn’t increase with the size.
I previously built a minifig display case but it was big, heavy, and awkward. It also did not have a glass cover in the front and seemed to collect lots of dust, so I decided to redo it.
I decided to make it 5 columns 4 rows of minifigs so 20 per display case. The Fusion360 design is totally parametric (I think) so I can easily adjust these to customize it.
Case put together
There are 3 types of material used. 1/4 MDF for the frame and shelves, the white support board (like you get from cheap bookshelves), and plexiglass for the front cover.
M3 nuts and bolts to hold the frame together
I used bolts for the 4 corners of the frame. I did not want to use glue. Here you can see the notch that holds the M3 bolts.
Glass with magnets holding the cover
I used neodymium magnets, 5x3mm circles, to hold the front glass together. The 1st and 3rd shelves have notches where I used epoxy to glue 4 magnets to the shelf. There are also 3mm holes cut in the plexiglass. It’s kind of weird, but works and I didn’t have to use any hinges.
Added the minifigs
I used a hot glue gun to mount the minifigs using the engraged indicators for perfect spacing!
Small collection of figures
After the first one was a success, I made 2 more. Still need another one!
Mounted using picture frame hangers
I used 2 sawtooth picture frame mounts per display case to mount everything to the wall. All done!
Mistakes
probably could have designed the frame mounts in the other direction so the frame can sit flush on a flat surface
Updates
I created another size for my 4 larger minifigs. It really tested my parametric design, which didn’t do so well so I had to make updates.
I noticed that my MDF was pretty fresh, so it was dry and also not as thick as I spec’d it out for. Also, I put the magnets in the middle, but since there is only 1 shelf, it’s a little wobbly. Going to add stoppers the top and bottom to make sure the glass sits straight.
Instead of a display case, I wanted to make a wall mount with lego pegs that my large LEGO minifig lights and clocks could sit in. They come in 2 different sizes.
