On Toys and Tech
3D Printers and a Happy Belated Birthday to Dr. Laurie
Last time I was home in Massachusetts, I started packing up the last remnants of my childhood belongings, including some old toys and clothes. Growing up, Star Wars was a big deal in my family, and we had a number of old toys from the Kenner Star Wars line. They were...not in the best condition.
I was three years old when Return of the Jedi came out in theaters. My sister was four years older. Three- and seven-year-olds aren’t exactly the target demographic for keeping toy collectibles mint-in-packages. I’m pretty sure at some point I tried to recreate the Luke-vs-Wampa fight on the snow planet Hoth by freezing my Luke action figure feet-first in an ice tray. (Evidently, I wasn’t the only one.) I can only imagine the look on my poor parents’ faces as they went to grab some ice for a cool drink after dealing with rambunctious kids on a hot summer day.
All this is a long way of saying that the toys were not in the best condition. Obi-Wan was missing his lightsaber. The Y-Wing was missing its wings. The Ewok Village was missing pretty much everything. Nearly every small part was either broken or gone. Feeling a sense of responsibility, I went to eBay to see if I could find replacement parts. Boy, did I ever. A passionate hobbyist can find just about anything, from replacement X-Wing cannons to the Millennium Falcon chessboard. The only problem was the price—most pieces were in the $10-20 range. Given the number of pieces I was missing, this wasn’t going to be a scalable solution unless I hit the lottery.
The solution? Get a 3D printer. Why pay $10 for a 10-gram piece when you can print a copy for about 10 cents per gram? I decided to get a Bambu A1 Lab Printer, since some quick math showed I would recoup the cost after printing around 30 replacement parts.
After printing the default 3DBenchy boat model, I was immediately hooked. I looked up some 3D replacement part models and got right to work. What followed was a rapid series of larger and larger prints, from Obi-Wan’s lightsaber to the panel doors on the AT-AT.
After a few days of nonstop printing—interspersed only by me immediately yelling out to my wife Anna, “Hey, check out this thing I made!”—I had a realization: Why stop at printing replacement parts? I could print entire figures and vehicles. Heck, I could even re-scale them to make them as big or small as I wanted.1 Then it hit me—my sister’s birthday is coming up.
Laurie’s probably an even bigger Star Wars fan than I am. I wanted to see if I could make a Kenner-style Star Wars action figure of her. Since I’m still new to 3D modeling, I didn’t want to create it from scratch. I purchased a 3D model sculpt of an X-Wing pilot, but I needed a way to make the head look like her rather than some random Twi’lek.
Inspired by the 3D capture work I’d seen at Tylmen Tech, I looked to see if there were any image-to-3D-model tools I could use. I found Meshy.ai, which worked well for the resolution I was planning (albeit with a touch of Uncanny Valley-ness). I simply uploaded an image and was able to download a 3D model of Laurie’s head.
Next, I had to edit the models in Bambu Studio to fine-tune the details and make sure everything fit together properly.
Followed by the print:
After sanding off some rough edges and applying what could charitably be described as a passable paint job at best, miniature Dr. Laurie was finally ready to take on the Empire:
However, something still felt incomplete. There was one last thing I needed to complete the full Kenner experience: the packaging. Fortunately, thanks to the large community of Star Wars collectors and model makers, it was fairly easy to find vintage-style Kenner cardback templates. I was very pleased with the final version:
Technology has come a long way since I was a kid. Three-year-old me would have lost his tiny mind if he knew that one day we’d have AI technology capable of scanning ourselves into 3D computer models, which could then be printed into actual toys. What once seemed like it could only happen in a galaxy far, far away, I can now do in my own home.
Have you gotten a change to play with a 3D printer? What did you make? Join the conversation, and let me know in the comments. Don’t forget to like and share!
Provided it still fits in the machine and is larger than the minimum resolution of the printer.