The short version is, these are awesome. This project took an unexpected surprise turn, and what you see below is my printed and painted base cuff next to...a machined aluminum cuff. YEP
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| My printed cuff is on the right, and yes, that is a machined cuff on the left! |
So how did that suddenly end up happening? The last time I wrote about the cuff, I had just finished printing the final prototype, which looked like this around the end of September:
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| Black on black. |
It was rough off of the printer because I don't have dual extrusion for water soluble support material (but hey, a girl can dream), so I cleaned it up and started painting it with a silver that I was going to blacken a bit. Right before that happened though, BB-8 and I went to the Rocklin Mini Maker Faire, which was awesome and I should definitely write about. While I was there with the droid builders, I started talking to a friend about this project. Said friend has a giant shop, that's getting even bigger, and I'm pretty envious. I showed him this cuff and asked if he had any advice for machining it, and we talked through turning the main part on a lathe, machining the chain link, and then tig welding everything together. He asked if I could send him the blueprints out of Fusion360, so I did.
Well, like most droid builders, my friend is A) awesome and B) doesn't do anything less than 110%. I'm not exaggerating when I saw I received this photo an hour or so later.
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| That looks familiar. |
Over the next few days, we exchanged methods, measurements, ideas, and final tweaks to get the final cuff made. I got to see progress photos as he moved along.
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| Turning the basic shape on the lathe, with the link sitting on top for size and placement checking. |
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| Adding the ridges. |
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| Suddenly a cuff! |
Like any artist, he kept telling me he wasn't happy with certain things and wanted to improve them, but I was so blown away and excited - and to be honest, it's pretty perfect. The craziest is the before and after.
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| Let me just take this scrap metal and make it F'ING AWESOME |
I'm going to line it with felt, but I am not going to paint or touch it at all just yet. It's way too cool as it is, and makes the lovely clink just like it does in the show.
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| How do people take good selfies |
Four days. Augh.
Edit: I've received a ton of interest regarding this cuff, and the biggest one is "can I buy one?" I think that my friend may be able to make a small number more, but I am not going to promise anything. The biggest issue with mass production is time vs. cost, and also that my design is made to fit me specifically, since it has to barely slip over my hand. I want to try to make a version with a hidden screws as well so that is can be even more fitted, and both of us want to improve on the link attachment.
What I will end up doing is releasing the STL on
Grabcad, and then people can take it, mod it, improve it, and make their own if they want to. This will probably happen after Halloween, since I want to make sure everything is solid before sending my little design into the world. Feel free to e-mail or comment with any questions though :]
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