Every year, my robotics team traditionally has a senior night to celebrate the graduating class where groups of underclassmen assemble speeches and gifts for individual seniors. This year, I was assigned to prepare a gift for a friend and the team captain, Andrew. I had spent a lot of time with Andrew in the past 2 years, whether during robotics, marching band, or late-night gaming. I wanted to do something special for Andrew. Because we knew he loves Star Wars, my group decided to 3D print a lightsaber.
At first, I made a 1:1 copy of Obi-wan Kenobi’s lightsaber in Onshape. Then I added some team symbols to the design, such as the Daisy face to the butt of the hilt, the words “Flower Power!”- our teams chant - to the power button. To make the blade, I split it into 12 pieces, each with dovetails and pinholes that I could connect after printing. After sending the hilt file to a friend to print as my print bed was not big enough, I got to work printing the blade in the two team colors, blue and gold.
Because of my printer’s recent inconsistency, I decided to design everything with no tolerances and then spend time filing everything so that it would fit. While the gold section had virtually no problems, I had troubles with the blue portion as my bed kept shifting, ruining my print. This happened three times. In fear of running out of time, I had a back up plan of splitting the last print with the aforementioned friend, so I would be able to restart in time if my bed shifted again. Fortunately, my bed did not shift on the final print. This incident showed that my printer needed some maintenance. In the next week, I plan to spend some time fixing my printer by tensioning the belts and cleaning the guide rods.
While in retrospect, I spent way more time than I would like to admit filing. I think it was the right decision; if a dovetail was too loose, I would have to reprint, but if a dovetail was too tight, I could just file it down. No matter the amount of time or filament I wasted, I was very proud to present it to Andrew on senior night. May the Force be always with him!
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