3D Printing + Puppet Building = ?!?!?!?

WillyThePig

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Okay, here's some food for thought: with all this buzz about 3d printing, I've scraped together some cash and ordered myself one. I was wondering, does anyone have any ideas about how I could combine this with puppetry. Could i make parts for puppets that I can't just buy somewhere? All ideas are welcome!!
 

Slackbot

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A while back someone here wsa making noises about making custom puppet parts - "bear comedian eyes," "gofer glasses," and the like. Perhaps bits like those would be a good start.
 

Muppetlab

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Yea eyes, teeth, accessories (jewellery etc) are the parts that initially spring to mind..
 

kumakami

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kind of wanted to figure out how to design a 3d printed blink mechanism....just cause
 

MelissaY1

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I've read that Jeff Dunham has used these new 3D printers to build some of his characters. I find the whole thing amazing.
 

Tioh

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Here are two 3d-printed puppet heads that I made (before the fur is glued on). I made the 3d-models with an old version of Lightwave Modeler (not the best tool for this task, but it does the job). Printed with PLA on my 3d-printer (a Makerbot 1 Dual clone). The parts were glued together with Plaast (http://www.plaast.de/). The inside of the mouth is made of felt and wonderflex.

Each head took about 7 hours to build and weights under 100g.

Some of my simpler models are on Thingiverse:
http://www.thingiverse.com/Tioh/designs
 

Buck-Beaver

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Very cool! Have you considered using Blender instead of Lightwave? There are a ton of tutorials available for doing 3D printing with Blender and it's free.
 
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