About two weeks ago, Thingiverse user this 3d Warehouse blaster, modified it to be printable, removed the trigger, and uploaded it to Thingiverse. This bothered me for a few reasons. First off, the model originally designed and uploaded to 3d Warehouse wasn't too accurate to the screen used prop. It wasn't designed for 3d printing, and isn't very smooth either. It had to be glued together, and you couldn't see through the scope. Nonetheless, this blaster got lots of attention the RPF on facebook and from the 501st Legion. Lucasfilm/Disney copyright issues aside, it bugged me that the 3d Warehouse model was uploaded under a free and nonrestrictive licence, yet the Thingiverse one was under a noncommercial license. I felt I could do a better job slicing it up for 3d printing, make it smooth and accurate, be able to be assembled with no glue, and I wanted to put it up under a less restrictive licence.
On Wednesday I used a few reference pictures of the original screen used prop, and started sculpting the blaster from scratch in AutoCAD. Friday I brought the files and my MakerBot into MarsCon where I had an artist's table set up. The rules of the sci-fi convention specifically stated that you couldn't bring in realistic-looking weapons, so I didn't; I made it there. The print takes about 6 hours at 120mm/s using the new 7.0 firmware at .2mm layer height. It's very fun to take apart and play with.
I actually printed two blasters over the weekend and sold one to one of the Scout Troopers from the Tyranus Garrison. The files for this project are uploaded here
More pics:
https://picasaweb.google.com/101160511147073331023/Scout?authuser=0&feat=directlink
