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3D Printed Velociraptor mongoliensis


Isaac P

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Hi. I'm new here, but I thought this may be of interest.

IMG_0327.thumb.JPG.57ebfb7633bda156534abd956cab56c0.JPGFor my senior project, I 3D printed a life size Velociraptor mongoliensis. It isn't quite perfect, but I think I beat Jurassic World. :) 

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Very cool!

Thanks for showing us.

 

Would you mind explaining the process to us? 

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    Tim    -  VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

   MOTM.png.61350469b02f439fd4d5d77c2c69da85.png      PaleoPartner.png.30c01982e09b0cc0b7d9d6a7a21f56c6.png.a600039856933851eeea617ca3f2d15f.png     Postmaster1.jpg.900efa599049929531fa81981f028e24.jpg    VFOTM.png.f1b09c78bf88298b009b0da14ef44cf0.png  VFOTM  --- APRIL - 2015  

__________________________________________________
"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."

John Muir ~ ~ ~ ~   ><))))( *>  About Me      

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Hello, Isaac and welcome to TFF from Austin, Tx. That is quite an impressive senior project.  Like @Fossildude19 I would love to hear more about the process that produced such a fine specimen.

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Thirded! 

Hello, and a very warm welcome to TFF from Morocco. :)

That looks pretty realistic. 

It actually quite scared Tidgy. 

Life's Good!

Tortoise Friend.

MOTM.png.61350469b02f439fd4d5d77c2c69da85.png.a47e14d65deb3f8b242019b3a81d8160-1.png.60b8b8c07f6fa194511f8b7cfb7cc190.png

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That's a cool print!

I would love to hear the plastic and printer used,

I feel like my tiny ender 3 would never be able to handle a project like that

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First off, thanks for the warm welcome! I'm glad my model stands up to some criticism.

 

Sorry to be a bit delayed, but I managed to dig up my graduation presentation. It includes a few images and some info I won't go into in this post.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1D-nEzjdUOcinAFC27TLZzjyB15H0ZUujotSUIeK-k6o/edit?usp=sharing

 

A few people have asked for me to explain the process I used to make this. The link should explain the process (I made it to do so), but I will do my best to condense this into what matters and not rant about things that didn't want to work. I'll just leave that at the software and plastic was a headache at times.

 

What took most of the time, and I assume what warrants the most explanation, was modeling the dinosaur. Just to make sure everyone knows, I made the model myself instead of stealing one off the internet. It was tempting some days. I used the Autodesk Inventor modeling program. Just a side note, this program is designed to make machine parts and blocky-ish shapes with limited animation, so an organic design is hard to get. It is possible, though. I used the loft tool, which lets me make several work planes and draw a 2d picture on each. The loft tool connects those 2d shapes as a solid figure. You can see in this screenshot the work planes and my reference picture I built the model around to preserve proper proportions. It's just a skeletal picture off Google.

 

_d7oqZ1n546pFPSuE_HD4xHb-7YGU76UgxrXZPFWYqUz9kUfqaKqz6BGdPDwJ5tknTDSz-bY3i1CZWakmm3qOX-Ianyad9pgAIecyVEY4HRlnRkzvG92Ufkgn0nVGUlzMKf3MxNUcNk
This screenshot shows the individual shapes from the side. The green lines are my 2d drawings. The raptor shape is obvious. The orange section is a work plane that I had not yet made invisible. Trust me, I had over 100. I couldn't see anything if they couldn't disappear. It is turned a bit diagonal for the fingers. I had to make each finger, toe, and claw in their own separate loft. The loft tool only takes one line of shapes at a time. In other words, it will not branch off in one loft to make a forked shape. The forks must be made one at a time.

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Lo and behold! I just found another screenshot that shows the curvature of the green lines! (it was literally on the first slide of my presentation, duh)

jmrflCFyVEWbZitADrs236-zkvMaB1QIcEqqmLQusCWmEDMIcIwooJoVN3UGA-x1d4ibfOQANhJfvuG4XHDd4zisEsUenrnfngJs9dOdiCjNvkIFRjCZ7jkexmqyAqITfd9Aa2CXf5g
 

I don't think I have cut the nostrils in the previous picture. They were not a loft but an extrude which takes a 2d shape and either cuts or builds according to the specified operation. It was the only part of the main piece that was not a loft.

QBZEzYl6VNkuO8bfYKCTACthWprgBihKBix5hqT0GtDA72UCDoGQylpBJsZMFO7c9wli1q9nAi751uTSMo7WmtIhTSajmqYMQsV5KHs8xVGErLvzp3D4MQ3waNk0LtdJ7OeVkdODiDA
I said main piece because there are probably close to 200 digital pieces of this bad boy. There is one big one comprised of most of the raptor, and then there are numerous smaller scales for the feet and hands, feather supports (about 101 if I remember correctly), and lots of teeth. I made two teeth sizes and just copied a bunch into the assembly feature. The same was done for the scales and feather supports. The feather supports were extrusions that were solid instead of cuts. The teeth were lofts. I have no idea exactly how I got the scales, but I know somewhere along the way I used the fillet feature to round off the corners. Just so you can see the scales and teeth better, here is a closer look.

IMG_0330.thumb.JPG.a05fe88b087613a752f3b0cd613750a1.JPG.

IMG_0333.thumb.JPG.1c8b1a287dc6f04255b945e737c0c408.JPG

Almost forgot to explain the eyes. They were made  from a rotated half circle and then placed into the skull later. The assembly allows me to put a bunch of pieces where I want instead of tediously modeling them in a single position. It also lets the pieces slide freely through each other, so I could push features into each other without consequence. I could additionally rotate them as needed. Still tedious, but easier than making 500 new work planes. 

 

I'll just throw in here that all along I was researching to see how I wanted this to look. I referenced Zhenyuanlong for the feathers. I assume everyone here knows that fossil so I will spare further explanation. The colors are based on roadrunners (even down to the eyes), as both Velociraptor and roadrunners share similar niches and habitats. The pupils are round due to most birds having round pupils and vertical slits being only beneficial for very short animals. I decided Velociraptor fell above the 2 foot line where most animal species switch to round pupils. There is a study I found that explained this in more depth. I would link it, but I doubt I ever find it again. I was foolish enough not to save my website references. I only saved images I needed. Hindsight is 20-20. I designed the tongue with studies of tyrannosaur tongues in mind.

 

I should also probably address the pedestal. It was part of the main piece, not a separate part. It was a loft. It only serves the purpose of balancing the model so it can stand. The program should be able to do stress analysis and find centers of gravity, but do I know how to use those features? No. So I guessed, and it miraculously worked.

 

Once I had everything put together, I started taking it back apart. No joke. I made a bunch of copies of the assembly and started cutting the model into pieces that would fit in the 3D printer. I'm not really too worried about my picture on the internet, so here is the printer next to me to show the size.

ZStC626KmmM2gufkkGiR-eaNd79dRhBzGiMftN0eb-Q-lwG26JZXdPYkb-pP6dPsCsGWUuay8l6FrMgUJk522KeCWBeSwAJ8ZDNGRxh2qWwGlojVolvNPNiPDh-d3aN3yJJ9Ypg7RVI
If you look closely, you can see a small amount of material printed on the plate. I believe the plate was about 14 inches square and at least a foot tall. That particular piece is the head, sliced into the skull and jaw.

 

Misha, you commented about your tiny ender 3 not being able to handle this. I feel sure it could, although it would be a much bigger pain than the printer I used as you would need more and smaller pieces. I believe it was a Fusion 3 I used, but I am not sure. You see, the plastic nor printer was mine. I'm poor folk. Can't afford this level of tech for myself. If you looked at my presentation, you saw I got a generous donation of free plastic from my community college and they also supplied the printer for my use (or as I commonly say, I hijacked the system and mooched off otherwise expensive equipment). The plastic was mostly PLA for ease of printing, but the pedestal and part of the leg attached to it are ABS to be stronger. I also set those pieces to much higher density, both in the internal honeycomb and number of shell layers. This picture may help explain what I just said. Also, if anyone could tell me how to reply to an individual post, that would be cool. Is it possible on this platform?

IaUyFLG5OXUNtp6pzcedhkEeuC0VbHVVs0SnA-nU-fp-IuFHEtUbZTvZN9NsAQQFsBcZcmm_7EhqWDl2XHlxBtmE58ZfA2swcpsxN1fbw_SHu3Cz75CVdgYdwDis52KuaZkY7CqTe5A
Don't ask why. It messed up. I said I wouldn't rant about this or any of its kin.

 

I kind of skipped a step here. Once the pieces were cut up, they were converted to stl files. The stl files were uploaded to the software the 3D printer could read and I changed the settings for density and orientation as needed. Then I exported the file and just printed it. This sounds simple, but it wasn't. Autodesk Inventor apparently does not communicate well with anything, so I had major issues from the time I started cutting up the model until I had the last piece completely printed. Unless anyone really wants to know what kinds of technical difficulties I had, I will fast forward through a frustrating 2-3 weeks and show you this beautiful pile of plastic. 

IkSpyhPweSzQyWpQdrX113ZWzNvjpj6qXJ93Prq_r5AGftDPjS-8dDsf0qEGznay2bS27HDFfJpZ9zvORdaPETMaeCbMlaby0tQ896WMGE5fsVMfcIkQ02TaGDSQgSmtQG1QvpTFO34

Also, the 3D printer friendly program looked like this

6S2Pg9V5lDWmWokXjPIH3oUiqiuJj83tbnCX-w0Iqbc66-mwgfyPsUUZniHnm0WceZ-nxi1cDJ80Pr01XFucC_HRvyC-ZjvIH6DgiJMq36GRetTM4F5txrZoVaMvpRU1sUik7fDd5S4

This is what all 18 pieces of the model looked like fully printed. You may notice the pegs at the base of the tail. I originally planned pegs to connect everything, but that idea was tossed out during my tumultuous period and only those three survived to permit the tail and body to be separate but joinable pieces. Velociraptor is small, but it is not easy transport even when cut in half. Just to clarify, the pegs are joined by epoxy/plastic glue to the tail and there are holes in the base section of the tail they slide into. Lining that up took some doing, both in the real and digital world.

 

Between epoxy and superglue, I think you can all fill in the blanks on how I got from that pile to this.

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Sorry it got squashed, but the original is in the link. You get the idea.

 

I won't include pictures for most of the rest, as it gets easier to explain form here. Clearly this multicolored marvel is not what I first posted. It also would look like trash even when painted. Trust me. Where the plastic connected there was always a crack just because of the shape. I epoxied over most cracks, but then the epoxy stood out when painted over. But never fear, Velociraptor had feathers! I cheated! There is no way I could model good feathers, so I never tried. I spray glued human hair (I washed it, he is clean) and various bird feathers (I washed them, he is clean) to the model to cover most of the body and make the wings/tail feathers. The hair represents proto-feathers for warmth on the body. You probably knew that. Oh well. The wing and tail feathers were cut to size by yours truly and I had one for each side of every feather support. Oh, and did you know you can't spray paint a feather? Spray paint is too thin and runs through them. You have to paint both sides white (the bottom is white so it was productive anyhow) and then spray paint them once they are in position. Hair is much more cooperative, although is feel disgusting when you get spray glue on the wads and it sticks to you. I sprayed over the outside of the hair as well to prevent most shedding. 

 

After this I was pretty much home free. Spray paint the body tan, cut some holes in poster-board to make brown spray paint stripes, make the bottom white, hand paint the eyes, feet, mouth, and hands, and it is done. And now we circle back to this.

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Oh, I forgot to mention that I bought a cat toy mouse to be the prey for my "exhibit" and made a somewhat informative sign. I practically had to beg anyone to read it, but it is there. They took little work compared to the raptor for obvious reasons. I haggled for the sign holder with a local gardening center and managed to get it for free.

 

Perhaps earlier when I said "condensed" it was a poor choice of words. I tend to ramble at times about this, but it did legitimately take a lot of time and work and covering most of what I did takes many words. Blame Ruger9a for requesting the "complete process." I hope you guys find this interesting.

 

Also, for Tidgy's Dad, I donated it temporarily it to my public library (movability features paid off!) and brought it to my graduation presentation. I know I inadvertently scared at least a few kids and teachers with it. A teacher in another room kept seeing it out of the corner of her eye and thought it was coming to get her. She had to close a door. At the library, it was up on a shelf where it constantly looked poised to jump down on somebody. Just proof feathered raptors can be scary too. Poor Tidgy isn't alone. This message brought to you by the help kids not be scared of dinosaurs foundation.

 

One final note. My parents say the pictures don't do justice. I, the more practical one, say they do more than justice. In person, you could inspect this thing and find some minor flaws. The pictures take you too far back to see the few visible cracks and kind of blur/cut out other minor flaws in the paint. There are places on this where I could have structurally improved, namely the skull and hands, but I was looking at deadlines. The wings could have stood to be a little bigger, but it barely fits though doorways at it is. The entire model is generally  paired with a couple of posts when standing. It made one to go under the tail and chest. They are not attached in any way, but they do slightly detract from the view. Keep in mind this is only a lump of plastic and adhesive. I trust it not even as far as I can throw it while standing. It doesn't need those posts to stand, but for me to sleep at night when it was at the library it did. I try to be self aware, There are reasons I said it isn't perfect. However, I do still think it looks pretty nice. Just so you all know I'm not too egotistical about this. I feel like I sound like I am sometimes.

 

Again, thanks for all of the feedback and the warm welcome! I look forward to seeing what everyone else has not only in paleo-art but fossils too. You guys have a great day!

 

 

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Welcome to the Forum. You made a grand entrance! :) 
 

This is very cool and you did a great job!

 

Sure it’s not perfect, but nothing is. We are our own worst critics, and you are being too critical of yourself. It looks great! Learn from the process and what issues you ran into. You won’t make the same mistakes next time. ;) 
 

Thanks for showing your creation to us and taking the time to give a very detailed explanation of how it was made.

 

 

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.  -Neil deGrasse Tyson

 

Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't. -Bill Nye (The Science Guy)

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