Very Large T-Rex Head

[Neil Merryweather]

My youngest granddaughter, Clara, will be six years old this week and she is obsessed with dinosaurs. So Grandad (with mum’s approval) is making her a life-sized (well maybe one quarter-sized) T-Rex head for her bedroom wall. How long it survives remains to be seen!

I have downloaded an open-source digital model from the internet and scaled it to be about 68 cm long



I split it into pieces that would fit on my 3D printer and I’ve almost finished printing the bits.



So basically I have created my own Airfix kit and now all I have to do is assemble and paint it ……

I’m actually not sure if it’s going to work, or whether it will be too heavy for itself. The pieces are only 1mm thick to try and keep the weight down, but I know I have used at least 1.5kilos of plastic to build it. The worst aspect will be trying to disguise the straight joints. I’m hoping I can do it by melting some more of the plastic into them with a soldering iron. It helps that the surface is already rather gnarly, it’s just whether I can match the level of gnarliness.

And then there is the matter of the deadline. Her birthday is Thursday, but we’re seeing her on Saturday afternoon, so I’ve got a week!

So if you’re up for some modelmaking drama, this is the place to be!
Thanks for looking
Neil

 

[Jim R]

Hi Neil
She'll love it. Granddad will get a big hug.
Jim

 

[BattleshipBob]

Cracking kit! Might be a shock to someone new walking in to the room

 

[Mark1]

Get it on

 

[Tim Marlow]

Looks interesting Neil. I assume you’re painting it? Might need a subframe to keep it on the wall though…..
Have you taken her to the Natural History Museum to see the Animatronic one they have? It’s fantastic!

 

[adt70hk]

Neil

What a great idea.

Out of interest how long did it take to print?

Well be joining the party.

ATB.

Andrew

 

[Neil Merryweather]

Looks interesting Neil. I assume you’re painting it? Might need a subframe to keep it on the wall though…..
Have you taken her to the Natural History Museum to see the Animatronic one they have? It’s fantastic!

I've seen the natural history museum exhibit and it is brilliant, but I don't know whether Clara has seen it.
Yes I will be painting it, hmmm what colours though? I'd better get googling!

 

[Neil Merryweather]

Neil

What a great idea.

Out of interest how long did it take to print?

Well be joining the party.

ATB.

Andrew

There are about twenty pieces and the largest one took about 15 hours to print, but most of them are about 8 or 9 hours. I keep the parts below that because the printer is in the loft above our bedroom, and it's not quite silent....

 

[Tim Marlow]

I've seen the natural history museum exhibit and it is brilliant, but I don't know whether Clara has seen it.
Yes I will be painting it, hmmm what colours though? I'd better get googling!

Paleocolour, now that’s an interesting field! It’s only been around about fifteen years, so you probably won’t find what you are looking for……makes interesting reading though, and it leaves you a lot of scope for your own interpretations.
If you want to be bold, take your cues from the bird world. After all, birds evolved from Dinos, so why wouldn’t they be coloured the same Another thing is that T Rex was huge, so probably didn’t colour up as an ambush predator…..might look good in tiger stripe though…..I’ll be more than interested to see what you come up with.

 

[Andy T]

Chris Packham's "the real T-Rex" program came up with some mighty interesting postulations about it's possible appearance.

 

[boatman]

THIS is really brilliant Neil very well done so far an i will be lookin in to see how this turns out
chris

 

[JR]

Me to Chris, well done Neil nothing like making things for the grandchildren

 

[Neil Merryweather]

Thanks for the interest chaps.
it's going together better than I could have hoped. I created flanges on all the interconnecting edges but the surfaces were not all perfect so I was unsure how I was going to glue them together reliably.
The plastic is PLA -PolyLactic Acid and responds very well to solvents like TET, so I tried some old Airfix cement in the hope that it would fill in some of the spaces. Then I miraculously discovered some mini bulldog clips to hold the parts together and the whole thing just took off.



There were huge gaps in the top surface as I had expected so I 'welded' them closed with some spare plastic and a soldering iron, which also worked better than I was expecting



that will do for me



it's big....


I've got a bit of a distortion issue but it's nothing I can't cope with and it's only inside the mouth, so nothing critical.
So far, so on target for the deadline!
thanks for looking
Neil

 

[Tim Marlow]

Great work. Interesting to see something in 3D print in here as well…..

 

[Neil Merryweather]

Great work. Interesting to see something in 3D print in here as well…..

Thanks Tim
The printed surface is rather ropey for fine work but we can get away with it for this. I used the coarsest setting for the sake of speed, and the lack of support structure (also for the sake of speed), gave me lots of holes to fill. But it's working well for this. I thought it would be interesting to share the 3D printing here - as I said, it's basically an Airfix kit, just home made.

 

[Neil Merryweather]

It's , well, a monster!

I'm going to need a bigger pot of paint....

 

[boatman]

VERY WELL DONE Neil looks great im sure she will love it an now for the paint ?
chris

 

[Mark1]

Who wouldn't want that on their wall if you love dinosaurs, looks great.

 

[JR]

How many bottles do you reckon Neil , I recon at least 10.

 

[adt70hk]

That's brilliant!!! Why not use DIY tester pots or something equally cheap for the base coat????? Just a thought......