Pokeball Build

Greetings RPF. Long time lurker finally doing a project, yada yada yada. So I recently finished building my first 3d printer (printrbot simple metal) and decided to get into prop making after being inspired by the awesome projects floating around here. I wanted to make something fairly simple that would let me learn some important skills so I chose a pokeball. I'm going to go through my entire process because I think that's the best way for me to learn and maybe someone will point out when I'm doing something dumb XD.

To start, I wipped up some sketches in Illustrator and Photoshop until I had something I liked:


I once saw someone add knurling to the top of the ball which I thought was a brilliant idea. The thing is made to be chucked at wild animals and it just makes sense to add some kind of grip since it's an otherwise slick metallic surface. I also like the idea of adding small factory information about it since it's a massively made consumer product in the pokemon universe. I really like how DSLR cameras show their information so I kinda pulled from their lenses for the "iris". The information in my concepts and mockups are WIP until I decide what I want written on them. When I made the design I assumed it was going to be 100mm in diameter and the iris was going to be half that but thinking about it now, that's probably too big so I'm probably going to bump it down to around 70-80mm. The next step was to make a 3d mock up:


I did this because I'm a 3D artist by trade and it's a lot easier for me to get a feel for proportions when I can turn the thing around and get a good look at it. If anyone is super interested, you can actually get an interactive turnaround here: http://www.artstation.com/embed/1401584 .

For the next step I need to figure out how exactly I'm going to do the led button in the iris. At first I thought about just buying an elevator button but looking at them online they seem like they're a bit too big, though I might be able to strip out the unnecessary bits. I would love some input if anyone else has some ideas. Once I figure that out, I'm gonna make a final CAD model for printing.

Love the render. Do you plan to make it open up? If you can't find the right sized elevator button, maybe designing your own would be the best option. The cool part will be making it look exactly how you want it to, while the tricky part will be designing it to function the way it should.

Just an idea here, but what if you made the blue glowing ring out of acrylic (clear acrylic + blue LED for a light source) with a hole in the center for the silver button. The button is the release mechanism for the top half to spring open (using a spring coil hinge on the backside of the ball). You might also possibly need an on/off button somewhere for the LED, unless you wired it to turn on when you push the button (maybe have it turn on for a certain amount of time before turning off automatically).

I realize that is fairly complicated stuff given this is your first build, but its just something to think about Sticking to the basics of building the ball and then "upgrading" it later with all the fancy bells and whistles is also an option if you wish to keep it simple for now.

Good luck!

that looks awesome!!

Go to eBay. Search the following terms :

12V Blue LED Ring Illuminated ON/Off Push Button

That might at least get you in the right direction. There's some there already with a blue circle.
Other colors available.

@Escher Thanks man! As far as opening goes I want to be able to easily open the ball to replace batteries or any other internal components I might throw in there but it won't look like the insides on the show. Ya I had a similar idea with the acrylic ring since I want the light to be significantly bigger than the buttons I was seeing. A custom button system will definitely be hard but everything else I think I have a good understanding of so adding some challenge sounds fun to me. And ya I like the idea of upgrading the thing as I go as a design challenge and a way to add skills to the old toolbox.
halliwax Thanks
Jintosh that is fantastic man thank you! I just ordered one from adafruit. It was a bit pricier than the ebay ones but those were all overseas shipping and the arrival dates were crazy. Now I play the waiting game XD

Yes, sometimes I also pay more to get it quicker.



----edit-----

Looks like you only paid $5 plus shipping. Great deal.

@Jintosh Ya it ended up being $15 after shipping so not bad at all.

Speaking of, the button came in today! It's a lot smaller than I expected which is actually a good thing as taking it apart is way more trouble than it's worth (they don't want me messing with electrical equipment, go figure).


So I have never really messed with electrical equipment before, however I did like to play with redstone in minecraft and this is basically the same thing XD. After looking around online I found a nice little diagram that showed me the logic I was looking for (right diagram)

I don't feel like explaining it because it's late but essentially the button has a gate for when the button is toggled on and off. After messing around with the button I discovered that it actually remains down to toggle on which I don't think I want. Luckily it has an outbound node (sorry I don't know the jargon yet) for when the button is toggled off which I might use instead. This means that the lights are off when the button is down and on when it is up and flush with the surrounding surface.

Next I need to find a holder so the batteries can be easily inserted and changed out which I should be able to find at a local hobby store. Then I'm going to create the final CAD model and start printing. At some point I also need to remove the nozel on my printer. The PLA is coming out at a slight angle which tells me I have a partial block in it.

Looks cool. Hope it works out for you.

The project is not dead I swear lol. Finally got my 3D printer fixed (had one nasty jam) and learned to use 123D design. Now that it's starting to get slow again at work I decided to get the cad going. I have figured out how I'm going to connect the two hemispheres of the ball (a combination of printed pegs and some nice 8mm magnets) that should allow me to screw open/close the ball to reach the battery in the center. I still need to model the battery holder but I do have it sketched out.



I'm still not sure how I'm going to get the iris which holds the actual button to connect to the body. I know I want it to turn to lock into the center ring though I haven't figured out exactly how yet.

This looks awesome man! I would love to do this once I get my 3D printer. I've got a quick question: are you planning on incorporating the knurled sections on top into your 3D print or adding that later somehow? I'm just curious to see what your plans are, because I have been thinking about how to design that. I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out!

coreykh said:

This looks awesome man! I would love to do this once I get my 3D printer. I've got a quick question: are you planning on incorporating the knurled sections on top into your 3D print or adding that later somehow? I'm just curious to see what your plans are, because I have been thinking about how to design that. I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out!

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Thanks man . I might end up giving out the cads for this down the line though I do wanna see if I can make my money back for materials by selling it as a kit or something. What printer are you getting?

For the knurling I'm gonna try to model it in the cad. I thought about digging out a pit from the shell and filling it with clay. Then, using a wheel with a knurled pattern on it, form the pattern on the surface but I really doubt that would end up looking very good given the extrusions that hold the knurling has a rounded bevel. I'm currently looking at how other people have created knurling patterns and I think I have a qood idea how to do it via lofting which I will definitely post a little tutorial since I'm sure a lot of people around here would love to have that skill in their toolbelts.

Polysteve said:

Thanks man . I might end up giving out the cads for this down the line though I do wanna see if I can make my money back for materials by selling it as a kit or something. What printer are you getting?

For the knurling I'm gonna try to model it in the cad. I thought about digging out a pit from the shell and filling it with clay. Then, using a wheel with a knurled pattern on it, form the pattern on the surface but I really doubt that would end up looking very good given the extrusions that hold the knurling has a rounded bevel. I'm currently looking at how other people have created knurling patterns and I think I have a qood idea how to do it via lofting which I will definitely post a little tutorial since I'm sure a lot of people around here would love to have that skill in their toolbelts.

Click to expand...

I'm thinking about getting the Robo3D R1+. I like it, because it has a great print volume for the price and has a lot of options for printing materials. I'll probably get it in the next month or so.

And those were the two ways that I was thinking you could do it too haha! I definitely think that modeling it in the CAD program would be the easiest way. Just not sure how easy it would be do that. It seems like there are a few tutorials on it. I would definitely be interested in how you figure it out, because that would be useful for a lot of prints. Good luck man!

looking good!

- - - Updated - - -

Polysteve said:

The project is not dead I swear lol. Finally got my 3D printer fixed (had one nasty jam) and learned to use 123D design. Now that it's starting to get slow again at work I decided to get the cad going. I have figured out how I'm going to connect the two hemispheres of the ball (a combination of printed pegs and some nice 8mm magnets) that should allow me to screw open/close the ball to reach the battery in the center. I still need to model the battery holder but I do have it sketched out.

View attachment 593681View attachment 593680

I'm still not sure how I'm going to get the iris which holds the actual button to connect to the body. I know I want it to turn to lock into the center ring though I haven't figured out exactly how yet.

Click to expand...

where did you learn 123d?

Thanks! I learned the controls and ui from this series https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdF-ObI6Qmeu4GXQ8ItpXcvWiJtpqLYtw. I've been a 3d artist for games for about 6 years so most of the principles of modeling I already knew, was a matter of trial and error to get them to work with the CAD XD

thanks for the video, I'm going to watch it now. I'm dying to learn how to do 3d modeling so i can get into 3d printing

Necro post! So long story short, between new job, my printer breaking down, and the knurling being a pain in the butt I put the project on hold. But I had some extra time to finally make some progress and I actually got the knurling to print!

so yeah the one on the right was the first hemisphere I printed back when I first started. My x-axis belt on my printrbot was improperly tightened so I had a bunch of problems with skipping and all kinds of crazy stuff that happens when you print on the first printer you've built. I used super glue to fill in the holes (I work in a basement which doesn't have good ventilation so things like bondo aren't really a good idea for me atm XD) and I've sanded it down to an even ball. Eventually I'll do the clear coating and sanding with finer grit once I have more of the parts. The print on the left is hot off the printer bed just now XD. It's funny to see how much better my prints are now that I've tweaked my printer and I understand the settings a lot better. Still has what I call "exhaust holes" at the top that I'll fill with glue and sand down like before but this will be much quicker to fix up compared to the last one.

The knurling came out better than I thought but still not perfect. I purposefully made their cuts pretty deep though so I figure I can give it a clear coat later on and it will hide a lot of the print lines without destroying the knurling completely. When the project is done I'll probably post the stl files on thingiverse and I would love to see other people print it out (I feel like it would be perfect on a sla printer like everything else).

I'm gonna recreate the technique I used to make the knurling and make a quick little tutorial post after this one on how I achieved the look. Next up is to finish designing the mounting black ring that fits into each hemisphere and holds the button and battery in place. I want to make it so that the center button is like a key that spins and locks the two hemispheres together along with 3 neodymium magnets.

The big thing I'm unsure of is what battery I need to use for this. I have like zero understanding of electricity and I don't want to use something too large or too small for the power source @_@. I've already ordered the button from adafruit and I'm thinking I wanna use 2 small led lights behind a diffused ring to give it a larger glowing circle like the one in my mockup way up above. Maybe I'll just buy a few different kinds, quickly wire them together and see what works best.

Ok so as promised, I've written out a little how-to for my process for modeling the knurling on the pokeball. I went into this not actually knowing how knurling worked and after a bit of research I figured out a decent method. It's not 100% accurate and I don't recommend using this method if you need something to be an exact size. However this is mostly for aesthetics (though it does make a decent grip) and my printer can only print a certain level of detail so it works just fine.


so to start, the pokeball is 100mm so I start with a circle that is the same size. Then I create a 1.5x1.5mm square.

then I turn the square 90 degrees on one axis and 45 on another (as seen above). The size of the square will determine how deep the cuts will be. I'm planning on clear coating this to get rid of print lines so I made mine pretty deep. If you have a nicer printer than my printrbot simple metal you may way to shrink the square a bit.

I apply a sweep modifier to the square using the 100 mm circle giving me a ring. The center of the ring is the perimeter of the pokeball and the points are sticking into it. This is very important. If the center line is above the perimeter then your knurls will have this square shape which is also cool but it might not be what you're looking for.

Then I use the "Circular Pattern" tool to make 75 copies of the ring. This will probably be pretty laggy if you don't have a decent enough computer but buckle up, it's gonna get way worse lol.

then select each of the rings and combine them into one ball. This can take a while to do so be patient before closing the program and yelling at me that it didn't work T_T.

Then duplicate the ball and rotate it 45 degrees as shown above. It might help to cut the ball in half. For whatever reason this made it slightly less laggy for me. Then combine the two spheres for one last reaaaaaaally long load time. You might want to do the next step to both spheres and then combine them last. Please note that the top of the ball looks great but the farther towards the center you go, the more this method falls apart lol.

Then I created a cube the size I wanted for the grip (20x40) and gave the corners a 5.25 filet modifier. Then I booleaned the knurling sphere with this and it gave me the shape above.

Then I took the leftover strip and boolean subtracted (I think) the pokeball top and it left me with the image above! If you have any questions please feel free to send me a message and I'll try my best to help you out

Xmas 3-day vacation means I get to work on props! Woo! I got all the parts printed. I tried a test fit and accidentally broke the nibs on one of the center rings sadly. Luckily the other one was fine and since I'll be casting these anyway I really only need the one. The other actually snaps into the hemispheres still which means all that time I spent making the connections was a little pointless but whatever, it was fun .

I forgot to add the holes for the LED's in the CAD under the diffused rings so I added those and a channel for the light to bounce around the ring. Then I was all about that sanding. I finally got a dremel which was a huge help since I forgot to add space for the LED's to connect to the wiring through the mounting rings. Everything fits pretty well, I've definitely learned a lot about printing parts that connect with each other. I still have a few print lines and things to touch up before I move on to casting. If anyone has a suggestion for a good primer/body filler for sanding I would definitely appreciate it!

Looking pretty cool. I'd recommend a few coats of automotive filler primer, a light sanding and some spot putty for pesky print lines. Worked for me.

Will definitely try out the filler primer thanks! I actually learned a cool thing from punished props where you take baby powder and super glue and it makes a really nice spot filler that doesn't have those fumes. It sands incredibly well, just not sure how long it'll hold