Everyone needs a 10' T-Rex replica

DalekNim

Active Member
On the theory that everyone needs a complete T-Rex skeleton I've spend the last few years conducting a yearly dinosaur fossil hunting trip in Montana & South Dakota as part of a team from a local Zoo where I was on teh volunteer staff as an animal handler & kayak guide. Although I've amassed a fairly decent collection of dinosaur bones as can be seen in the attached pic, including a large piece of Triceratops frill, a raptor tooth and even some amber, I've never been able to find and verified pieces of a T-Rex, let alone a complete skeleton ... lol. therefore I decided another solution was in order where I could make use of my PRUSA XL.
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Although I'm currently working on a full Halo Master Chief cosplay outfit my printer is idle while I work out the mechanics of casting the individual armor pieces in a flexible resin and so I decided to put it to good use.

First up was to acquire an appropriate 3D model. After a few weeks of research I found a beautifully detailed, highly accurate model. The only issue was that it was only about 15" when fully assembled which was just a tad small for what I was going for. Not to be deterred I loaded each of the 42 individual pieces into my PRUSA slicer and started scaling them to see how big I could go without having to slice any of teh individual model pieces.

Long story short it turns out that a scaling of 495% allows me to print teh complete skull in one piece and only a couple of the vertebrae needed small sections sliced to fit.

First up I decided to print the lower jaw ... here's it finished, primed & sanded and ready for attachment to teh skull & painting
lower jaw.jpg

Next up were the tail sections which were 4 individual pieces that needed to be eventually glued together. Here's the fully assembled tail and a closeup showing its overall length of ~ 58"
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Next up we'll start working on the vertebrae and rib cage
 
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It was actually a free model from Thingaverse. The original model had been posted a long time ago but it had a lot of issues and was basically not 3D printable. Someone or group decided to take the model and fix it, complete with assembly instructions and repost it.
 
It was actually a free model from Thingaverse. The original model had been posted a long time ago but it had a lot of issues and was basically not 3D printable. Someone or group decided to take the model and fix it, complete with assembly instructions and repost it.
You wouldn't happen to have a link would you?
 
Cool project. I did something similar years back by scaling up one of those small wood laser cut kits. Made from 3/4” ply and cnc’d this bad boy ended up 12’ from tip of nose to tail. This was for a Halloween btw
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I bought a similar one in Montana during one of my fossil hunting trips, it is made from cabinet grade birch plywood and it was sitting over my real dinosaur fossil collection

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Got a bunch more of the ribs printed and a few other parts printed an primed as well so some assembly could be started ...
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once teh rib cage is completed I'll get started on the legs, hips, scapula and skull ...
 
because he's so large, the original 3D printed plastic main support wont cut it so I got a 1" wooden dowel and cut it to fit properly with the left foot mounted in the base
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also finished priming the scapula
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and also managed to fish the entire rib cage and attach his upper limbs
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next up is completing his feet ...
 
What a great project!!! So ten feet? What is that, half scale? I guess I could look it up... Excellent work so far!
 
Wow! It's quarter scale. I should have known better, I actually saw 'Sue' when she came to Houston on tour.
 
1/4 scale sounds about right ... had a minor hiccup yesterday ... was rechecking the legs and realized I had installed the left mid thigh bone for the left leg at the wrong angle to be able to mount the foot to the base correctly. Luckily I was able to cut through the pins holding each bone together and then drill them out so I can put new pins in. While doing all that I actually snapped the piece in half but managed to epoxy it back together and then reweld the seam by melting PLA filement into the joint with a soldering iron. Some Bondo, spot putty, primer and a bunch of sanding and it looks as good as new ...
 
Repaired femur with new connector installed ... like it never happened
Also got the base painted
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Yep, PLA. Transporting it? I don't think so ...lol. Once final assembly is done there's no taking it apart so It's going in my cosplay display room to be on permanent display and take its rightful place next to my Callahan Fullbore Autolock, X-40A Cobalt Ion Pulse rifle, Mandalorian Heavy infantry Tri barrel and other "items" too numerous to mention ...
Also got to work on the paint scheme, did some testing and settled on this combination of 4 different paints ... the one thing I've learned after collecting real dinosaur fossils for years is that there is no such thing as a single color of fossil. It's 100% dependent on where you find it and so I have allot of creative license . I'll take another look at these in a few days and see if I still like it ...

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Most impressive!
I'm curious, have you had any issues with PLA creep or drooping over time? I've found if PLA has a sustained load, it will slowly deform over time. With the size of this skeleton, I imagine you have a good support structure in it.
 
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