Apr 16, 2017 | By David
We’ve reported before on the work of 3D printing enthusiast Britt Michelsen, a chemical engineer and avid comics fan who used 3D printing to make a neat Deadpool-themed knife block for his kitchen. He posted a useful how-to guide on his Instructables account, which also contains instructions for other fun projects, such as a Harley Quinn baseball bat pepper shaker, and a Thor’s hammer toilet brush. He has drawn inspiration again from Deadpool for his latest project, this time modifying a bubble toy to make it look like the Marvel hero.
The Deadpool Bubble Breezer is based primarily on the BUB-L Breezer toy that Michelsen had found on Amazon. Seeing that it was receiving mostly bad user reviews, he decided to make a few aesthetic and functional adjustments to it. The main thing that needed to be changed, to make the generic novelty figure look like Deadpool, was the head. He cut off the original head, and found a model for a Deadpool head on 3D design sharing platform Thingiverse. 3 different sizes were printed to see which one fitted the best, a simple enough procedure thanks to the easy scalability of 3D printing technology and the cheap materials involved in the print job. Adhesive epoxy putty Quiksteel was used to attatch the new head to the headless body.
Michelsen then went on to redesign a number of other features of the body, mostly with modelling clay. The skin damage that is an iconic part of the Deapool character was replicated in clay, and a couple of different paint types were used to finish the look, as well as copying the red and black superhero suit. Once the look was complete, the hobbyist went on to tweak several features of the bubble toy’s mechanism, mostly making use of 3D printing technology to replace or improve components.A new slider and connector for the arm mechanism were 3D printed to make the toy run more smoothly, and he also designed and printed an airflow adapter, to make better, more consistent bubbles. STL files for all these parts are available for free download on the Instructables page.
Michelsen made use of one of the more popular hobbyist 3D printers, an Ultimaker 2+, to produce all the necessary parts. The 3D printer was extended with a 0.4 mm nozzle and a 0.1 mm layer height, and PLA filament was initially used for the extrusion. After finding this material to be too brittle, Michelsen gave Carbonfil a try, but ended up having a similar problem. Finally he settled on FormFutura’s highly durable PETG filament. Combining the strength and resistance of ABS with the easy printability of PLA makes the FormFutura material ideal for projects such as these, where moving parts need to be printed effectively without a high-end professional 3D printer.
The Deadpool Bubble Breezer is already proving to be one of Michelsen’s most successful and popular 3D printing projects on his Instructables page, where he recommends AutoDesk’s Fusion 360 software for any interested followers who are looking to get into 3D design and printing for the first time. This might not be the most groundbreaking 3D printing project we’ve seen, and Michelsen himself has described it as ''a pretty stupid idea''. However, it’s always great to see someone turn an idea into reality and share his knowledge and passion with a wider audience, and we’re excited to see what weird and wonderful things he might come up with next.
Posted in 3D Printing Application
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Hi David, thanks a lot for the nice article! Just one quick hint, I am a woman. Greeting from Germany Britt
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