Brandon Wehenkel: Flashlight Sleeve

Black Ghosted

Ghosted Colored

Concept:
Word was said that we were making a lightsaber for 3D printing and even if it was a joke I still did it anyways.  I love Star Wars, and if I get a chance to do something related to Star Wars, I will do it.
It may not be 100% original, but I liked Senator Palpatine Aka Darth Sidious's Lightsaber.  So I used it as a reference.  I also used a technique I learned from my Roman column's in the Castle and wanted to add it to the process.

 Keyshot 1

Modeling Techniques:
I used the tutorial shown in class to manipulate a curve and revolve it.  I did this process about 70x because I was looking for a particular amount of curvature to make what I needed. I used the Verticle Helix tool to create the right size and length of the curve, and if I ran into a slight issue with that particular curve, I just projected it onto a flat plane and copied the curve over to the preset curve.  I used insertEditPoint a few times to get the curve just right.  Once I found all the right curves I created the sleeve.  I ran into a slight issue with the wide cutout in the reference image.  What it looked like to me was an inner shell inside the sleeve, so I had to do 2 revolves.  One for the exterior sleeve and one for the minimum sleeve size that way when I make the large cut out of the outside sleeve it won't break the integrity of the sleeve exposing the flashlight within.  By doing that all I did was use a polyline and measured the end distance to .0625 and revolved a new curve around that size.  I used What a few times to see if all my surfaces were closed.  I filletEdge all the major edges.  I created a few ellipses to make a extruded shape that would cut the outside sleeve.  I had to make points and more polylines to make sure the measurement was exact, and I wasn't cutting into the wrong sleeve.  I used BooleanDifference to do the cuts.  To make the divots, I created a pipe from one of my exterior curves that were made for the large concave bulge in the sleeve.  I then ArrayPolar around a center point and duplicated the pipe 50x. I hide half of them to get a proper spacing.  I tried using bend, but it didn't work like I wanted, so I gave up on that.

Keyshot 2

Materials:
I used polished bronze for the interior curve and the bulb at the end. Then changed it to yellow/gold. I increased the roughness to .02
I used polished nickel for the rest of the sleeve.

Keyshot 3

I ran into several problems with the printing process.  The lab technicians had to print my sculpture four times.  Twice, where the whole for the light was filled.  The reason that was discovered was that I had not booleanDifferenced the intersecting parts and instead grouped the objects together.  Even though the model itself had a hole in it and you could clearly see through it, the printer was tricked and assumed it was a closed object.  The 3rd print was a lab technician oversite where one of the parts was hidden unintentionally before print and the 4th attempt was the final product.

Print fail example 1

 3D print colored

For the 3D print I used gold and silver spraypaint.  Rust-Oleum brand.  I had to sand the internal hole to fit the flashlight.  I had got a pvc pipe that was perfect size for the hole and taped a pad of sand paper.  Once the flashlight fit I stuffed cotton balls around the light and taped over the cotton with electrical tape (only thing available).  I cmpletely forgot to photograph this process.  But I also taped the internal cut as well to do the multi-layered color.  I sprayed everything with gold spray paint.  I let it set overnight and came back the next day to fix any areas that bleed through the tape.  I sprayed inside the lid of the silver spray paint and painted the silver on with a paint brush.  I let the paint sit for about 20 minutes and did the same for the gold to do final touch ups and clean up the area inside around the edge of the flashlight. 

Different angles

Functionality