Pokeball Build

Yeah that works great if you have a kicker for the Cyanoacrylate that way you can sand it right away. I always have a bunch of projects on the workbench so I put spot putty on something and move on to the next project till the putty sets up. I like how easy putty is to sand. Let me know if you do use super glue and baby powder, i'm curious how it sands.

The Schlitzie said:

Yeah that works great if you have a kicker for the Cyanoacrylate that way you can sand it right away. I always have a bunch of projects on the workbench so I put spot putty on something and move on to the next project till the putty sets up. I like how easy putty is to sand. Let me know if you do use super glue and baby powder, i'm curious how it sands.

Click to expand...

Yeah my space unfortunately doesn't work with most body fillers because they usually have crazy fumes and there is like no air flow here :\. I did the glue/baby powder on the lid's iris bit and it sands incredibly well! Sooooo smooth :3 I don't have a kicker which I should definitely invest in but I usually only have an hour every few days to devote to this project anyway so the waiting is fine. The only problem is you can only do a little bit at a time but for those nasty little print errors and holes it does the job really well.



Just got back from my new years trip and got some priming/sanding/priming done. I used rustolium automotive primer like Schlitzie suggested and omg this stuff is great. The bottom lid is really smooth and almost all of the print lines are gone. I used painters tape to mask off the knurling because I feel like they will fill it too much and I'll lose the detail. Gonna let it fully dry, hit it with the filler on a few of the spots and then give it a clear coat. I will remove the tape for the clear coat so it will fill the lines a smidge without removing the grip all together (hopefully lol).

Next I'll be casting it which I am really excited about. Never actually done it before but I've seen enough tutorials/streams about mold making that I think I've got a good understanding. There's a few things I'm uncertain about though. 1) What silicone/resin I should use? I was thinking smoothon's oomoo for the mold since I don't have a scale or a vacuum chamber but I'm undecided on the resin (I would like something that cures white). 2) how I'm going to make the molds for the hemispheres. I'm worried that if I lay them flat like in the picture above, the little flab of silicone the fills in from the iris hole will fall when I go to poor the resin and it won't work correctly (I hope I'm explaining that in a way that makes sense lol). Maybe it will have to be a two part silicon mold? Would prefer not making little standoffs to poor the resin in later and then clip them off, I feel like they introduce bubbles too easily.

Hey, glad to hear! I just recently used Duplicolor Filler Primer:

It works great for 3d print lines because it fills large scratches(or print lines), also they have a sandable automotive primer which is good for light scratches and it isn't as aggressive so you retain more detail like panel lines and such. I think I got the spray bottle of kicker for like $8 shipped on ebay. It has alcohol in it so it evaporates very quickly. It's worth the money if you are usually holding something together while waiting for the glue to go off.

I've only cast a couple things in 1 part molds in oomoo but I hear that it's not that great. I've found that it tears very easily especially if you have anything with undercuts. Maybe someone more experienced could fill you in on that, but since you don't have a vacuum chamber you're gonna want something that sets up slowly to give the air bubbles more time to evacuate.

holy hell that is amazing! i want to learn how to 3d model.

Bigtony08 said:

holy hell that is amazing! i want to learn how to 3d model.

Click to expand...

Haha thanks! Modeling is so much fun, I made a career out of it XD. Try picking up blender to start out (that's what I did anyway). There's some great entry level tuts out there now which I really wish I had when I was starting out

I decided against oomoo as you said Schlitzie, apparently it's not super strong so you don't get too many casts out of it. I ended up getting a gallon of Mold star 15. It has like a 50 minute pot life and a 4 hour cure time. It's agonizingly slow but there are almost no bubbles and no vacuum required at all. It's also incredibly strong, should be able to get a ton of casts out of this.


so yeah I got the iris and the bottom hemisphere casted in silicone. The iris was my first cast and it was a bit ugly if I'm honest (which is why there are no pictures lol) but it works fine. I then did the bottom hemisphere because it would be easier to practice 2 part molds compared to the knurled one. I first hot glued the sphere to some target brand foam core board along with 6 3d printed 10mm cylinders for the key. A huge thank you to Frank Ippolito from Tested and his awesome 2 part mold video. They have a good formula for calculating how much silicone to use and since I have just enough for all the molds for this project that is immensely helpful! I molded out the top part of the sphere and after it cured I busted it open and glued in five 1/4" dowel rods for poor spouts and air vents. I think going 1/2" might have been a better idea as I'm not sure how viscus my resin is but I guess we'll find out lol. Then I sprayed it down with some Crystal Clear (cuz I'm dumb and forgot to buy actual mold release, luckily this stuff worked just fine). Pulled the mold out and it looks excellent, though I should have either used less crystal clear or let it dry longer as it is still a bit tacky on the top mold and it caused a few bubbles to form. No worries though, that's the interior of the ball anyway which isn't visible. Gonna work on getting the last few molds finished this week and get onto casting and painting.

I'll be honest, I have never actually painted a model in my whole life and I always hated classical painting so I am once again in completely uncharted territory lol. I know for the bottom half of the ball I want to have a creamier matte white color and the red to be fairly shiny (though not like chrome or anything super metallic) but as far as what primers and paints and stuff to use I am at a loss lol. There are tons to chose from and everybody has their favorite brand. I also don't have an air brush so I have to stick to rattle cans for now. Then for the weathering I'll look for some good acrylics for dirt n grime and dry brush some metallic paints I've picked up for the edges, but I'm not sure about what I should use to clear coat the paint. I can use the crstal clear I have I guess but I'm not sure if it's all the durable. Plus it's a gloss finish and, as I said, I want a matte finish for the bottom half. Would love to hear good suggestions for what people use to coat gun props and things that get carried often at cons .

Pretty small update this week. I ran out of silicone for the last part and a half . Didn't realize how much of that stuff it takes to make a mold but oh well. While I wait for more to arrive in the mail I went ahead and did a few resin casts. The first one came out pretty bad but I can fix it easily so that one will be mine XD. The last few are near perfect with only a few bubbles along the rim. The art store I got the resin from only had smooth-cast 300 which is a really quick set time. Though I appreciate being able to do 4 or 5 pulls after work, the bubbles are a bit annoying. I'll probably get a slower curing resin once I go through this batch. Gonna sand these puppies down and start doing a bit of the battle damage which I am way too excited about.

Woah been a while since my last update. Finally got the center ring cast! Started working on the paint job; primer, gloss undercoat for the red part, and the final color paintover. I'm not suuuuper thrilled about the red paint I bought, might run up to the auto shop tomorrow and see if they have any better red metallic paint but this one works for now. The "white" was perfect though! I wanted a slightly more cream colored white as I feel like it will go well with the dirt and grunge I'll be adding alter. Currently using crystal clear to seal the paint but it's still pretty tacky and not great to hold, would love to hear some suggestions for a good matte spray finish (maybe some kind of resin sealant?). More to come very soon!

Nice work! What was the paint (brand and number if you have it), as I love the read, it is perfect. Also, have you tried dusting your molds with baby powder to help with the bubbles? Just toss some in the mold, close it up, shake like all-get-out, then dump the excess and blow away the large piles so that the inside all has a fine coating. The powder breaks surface tension, leading to less bubbles. Since your are sanding and priming anyway, the powder won't change any of finish texture as long as you do not leave a large clump in there.

Keep up the awsome work.

Thanks novacat! The paints I am using are rust-oleum auto primer/filler for the primer, the red uses 1 layer of black rust-oleum ultracover semi-gloss(which also has a primer in it but I used both just in case) which I got at home depot and 2 layers of testors 1629 gloss custom red metal flake. I found it at hobby lobby in the model paint section. I might experiment with some automotive red paint to see what kind of finish it gives me but yeah this red came out great, especially after doing some weathering. The white is the rust-oleum satin heirloom white. I'm also using a layer of model master gloss lacquer (196109) as the finish.


will definitely have to try that out as I have an excess of the stuff anyway, thanks for the tip! Will post the results when I do my next batch of molds . Got some weathering done this morning, I wanted to do a really rugged/dirty version along with the clean version but I miiiight have overdone it a smidge XD.

That is pretty amazing. Great job!

amazing work !!!!!!! i love it !

Thanks progolfercd and flambisounours! Appreciate the encouragement

Got the rings mounted and the first painting pass added. The project is finally hitting that stage where it's all coming together

I did **** up the magnets that keeps the two hemispheres together and now there's a big gap in the back :\ . I have a fix though! basically I'm gonna print out a few parallelogram panels that will sort of interlock like teeth (I'll post pictures to explain it once they're printed).

All that's left is wiring up the button when my LED's come in and design a housing for the batteries (really looking forward to that). Also I still need to figure out what I'm going to do about the diffused ring around the button. Thinking about finding a place that will cut acrylic rings out but if anyone has better suggestions I would love to hear them!

looks great! my son would love to own such a pokeball

Haha thanks Stefan Jones! Will be posting the CAD files in the near future and I'll be selling some of the kits I've made so you're welcome to get him one XD.

Finally got around to installing the hardware. I managed to screw up one of the magnets which meant recasting/painting one of the mounting rings which set me back :\ . Instead of ordering smoked plexi rings or a sheet to laser cut I decided to just print the rings using some "clear" plastic. Clear always comes out super foggy and with a bit of sanding it made a decent diffuser. The LED's that I bought are making some hot spots but there's not a ton I can really do about it beyond drilling in more holes and buying diffused LED's but honestly it's not a big deal to me, I kinda like it the way it is . Gonna do some final polishing passes on the button/ring and get some proper pictures taken but this is pretty much it!



Been a year in the making but it's so nice to finally finish a project XD. Final pics comin soon along with some links for anyone who wants to make one for themselves!

this really looks great - the paint job is fantastic!
meantime I got an own 3d printer, so when you really share the cad files I might be able to print my own

Well Done !