Toy Helicopter

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Published on December 20, 2010
This thing was Featured on December 20, 2010

Description

I was looking for a Duplo helicopter for my nephew for Christmas but couldn't find one with just a helicopter so I made one. He's 3 so I wanted to keep it simple and only put 2x2 Duplo sized studs in the cockpit for a Duplo figure and made the rest kind of fisher-pricey. Works well with all the Duplo bricks I have tried with it so far. I was having some printing issues with larger objects so I also tried it at 1/2 scale which makes the studs regular lego size. I guess the printer isn't up to the tighter tolerances needed for lego because at this scale the lego parts are a bit hard to get on though they do work.

I think of my self as an artist and not an engineer so the tolerances are less than great and it may have some pretty big design and structural issues. My 1:1 Duplo print mostly clicked together and holds without glue but I had to clean and sand some of the parts a little bit more than I would have liked to make it work. Had to really sand the holes for the rotors so they would spin freely. I printed these on my UP! with the normal and .25 mm settings. Maybe with fine and .20mm settings it would work a bit better?

Instructions

Print and clean up parts. Sand top, bottom and inside of rotor holes and the post part of the rotor pegs till they slide on and spin freely.

Snap together.

Mine all clicked together and held. Might be a good idea to add a little glue before snapping together to make it a bit stronger.

Oh, there are two rotors. I liked the original slightly larger rotor I made but it didn't fit on my UP! so I made a slightly smaller version. Either will work and the smaller UP! version is in my photos on the Duplo 1:1 print while the 1/2 scale print has the full size rotor since it fit on the printer at that size.
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Very, very cool. I'm about to print one right now on my Cupcake! :)

That came out awesome! 8-) With what printer did you print that out?

Really nice work! Snap fittings, always a challenge. Clearly modeled and not scanned, all edges filleted. Where did you find those colors? I thought the Up! printer only used that white ABS.

MakerGear is selling colors that are UP! compatible. They seem to mostly work well. Wish they came on UP! spools as it was a bit of work to figure out how to get them on one spool or feed them without putting them on a spool. Ended up doing about 3 different things to be able to use the MakerGear colors but it all worked out in the end ad you can see.

It is supercool!!

Did you paint them? What with? :)

looks like he made the different parts in different coloured plastics.

cuuuuuuuuute~ i even want a gift like that , hehe

Cool! What software did you design it in? Also reminds me of Playmobil. Went to your website too, but it seems a bit out of date. Can you post some more work? Like, a robot with interchangable Speedo's or a her's version ...

I used 3ds max (2011 on this particular model).

Wish I had more time to update my site(s) but I do try to when ever I get a chance.

If I can find some silvery filament that works with my printer I may give speedo bot a go but I really don't like painting models so untill I find some silver I'll probably not make anything that should be silver.
I have been slowly working on STLifying some other boring3d things and will post them as they get finished up.