Making Captain America Shield with 3D Printing

Are you a big Marvel fan? Well, join me today as we take a look at the shield that made the first Avenger. So, see you guys inside. Hey guys, welcome to today's video. Today, as I said in the intro, we're working on Captain America's shield. Now, this was a rather big project that I actually had to span across multiple printers to do this. So, the model maker of this one did a really awesome job. Most of the model can be printed on a C, on an Ender-3 size printer, a 235 by 235 by 250 centimeter, or yeah, centimeter? Yeah, printer. But the outer ring, he only fit for the CR-10. So, of course, luckily I have a CR-10, so I was able to move forward with that one. But if you do have an Ender-3 and you're wanting to move forward with the model that I'm going to show you today, you can use a tool like Mesh Mixer to separate the pieces and get it downsized for your Ender-3 or smaller printer. But as I said, yeah, we're going big today. So, this is all the parts put together, except I haven't installed the star yet. It just slips right on in. Good fit, good clean model. This is about 85% of actual original size. Now, Steve Rogers, big, big guy after all of his stuff. So, me, I'm not as big as that. But this one fits size-wise just right for my size. So, you can go bigger. Probably going to need a bigger printer. You're definitely going to have to cut the pieces up. Yes, multiple different colors, spools of PLA were used because I have a specific way I want to finish this one. And multiple things have already been involved. There is some glue, but most of this has actually been in here together with my 3D printing pen because the model did have a shortcoming where there was a gap in it. And I used the 3D printing pen to fill that gap as well, because what I want to do next is I'm going to do some sanding and try to get this as smooth as I can. But then I'm going to come back with some Bondo and actually do a filler layer to get this as smooth looking as I can, sand that down, and then start painting. You guys want to see that process, you need to let me know down in the comments below. That way, you guys can see me taking this all the way. And also, I need to build something in the back to actually make this wearable if I so choose to wear it. All honesty, probably going to take my shelving right here. But that's for another story. So, before we move over to Kira, if you guys are liking the content you're seeing on this channel and the different takes that we're taking here, let me know down in the comments below. Definitely, if you're new here or if you want to keep seeing cool comment like this, hit that subscribe button. Make sure you get all the notifications by hitting that bell, and also leave a comment down below. Let me know what you're printing, or if you're thinking about getting in this 3D printing, let me know what you're thinking about. If you're thinking resin, filament, you know, just let me know what you're thinking about. But let's hop over to Kira. Let's get this guy sliced for the multiple parts to go on the multiple different printers. Then we'll show you the time lapse, and again, we'll talk about this final product, and also how I did the adherence with PLA to make this into one piece. So, let's hop over to that computer. All right guys, here we are on Thingiverse. This is the model that I used to fabricate this one. All credit to this one goes to Milhouse5. It's an excellent model. It was a lot of fun to print, and it's just a really cool centerpiece. So, CaptainAmericaShield, what's up on Thingiverse? Link to this model is down in the description below, as long as links is the materials and other things that I use in regard to the channel. So, I am an Amazon affiliate, so I appreciate you guys helping me out there. And as you can see, everything's in pieces, which is great. This is a very popular model, well printed. So, I'm going to pull this over, and here are the files that we see. So, that's all the parts. We've got basically our three rings, and our center, and our star. So, let's get over to Cura! Yay! Okay, so let's talk about the outer ring. So, this is the red outer ring piece. So, this is a smaller piece that you can use. That's a half-size piece. So, here's the red outer ring full-size piece. Now see, like I said, to do the full size, you need a CR-10. But to do the half-size pieces, you can get away with an Ender-3. But you're gonna have to print a lot of those half-size pieces, because it's half, if it will let me do this. All right, there we go. It's half of this. So, it's two of these. So, that's the red outer ring. So, the red outer ring is this one, the outermost ring. So, you got your inner red ring, you got your silver ring, then you got the outer ring. So, there's a lot of parts to print here. So, I'm going to clear the build plate, and we're going to just start, try to start from the center here, with the centerpiece, just straight center. As you can see, that's that. Let's kick down to an Ender-3 size. There we go, Ender-3. Woohoo! Looking good! So, easily fit on there. Scroll through my standard settings here. I use Inland PLA Plus when I do this printing. So, if you guys are curious about any of the settings here, as I scroll through, you can stop. My average print temperature is about 210. Initial layer, I do a little bit hotter. My plate, I usually keep around 50, sometimes 60. Depends on if it's winter or summer, if I alternate the plate. You know, if my heat is on, or if my air conditioning is on. So, because that does affect everything. Definitely have your ZSOP and your traction enabled. You want a good clean print, and you don't need a lot of support because, well, this is pretty much one solid centerpiece. So, let's clear that off, and let's cut over to, of course, the piece that goes in the middle. Straight forward print again, star. Depending on how heavy you want this to be, that'll, you'll want to adjust your infill, of course. I have it at 100% on here for some reason. Whatever I was printing last needed, oh, because I was using a different printer. So, honestly on this, 10% is going to be more than enough to print this piece. So, there's the centerpiece of the whole project. I'm going to delete the second. And actually, you know, looking at the file now, this has changed since I printed it, because the red outer ring did not have a half size file when I looked at this last. Now it does. Huh. So, the inner red ring, there's it. It's part. You'll need four of those at least. So, pretty straightforward and simple. I printed them upright just like this. Didn't need a lot of support. I think I actually set support at 70, and I did have a raft to kind of help it along its way. So, that one was pretty straightforward and simple. This is, like I said, this was a really easy model to print. There's just a lot of printing. Then you got the silver ring half size. I did love this, that they put two pieces in here. So, you got to print this four times to make the second ring. So, four times. Again, I did a raft. I did a little bit of support and it went just fine. Now, there is a just silver ring part. Well, let's let that load in here real quick. I don't know Oh, hello. Bye Kira. So, that happens every once in a while. I am running Kira 4.91. I don't know why it crashes. It just does sometimes. I think I kind of just make it mad because, well, I abuse Kira. I use the dar out of it, but it should bring us back right where we're settings were. So, let's just pull the larger silver ring piece. As you guys can see, very tight fit on the Ender 3. It is basically the entire build plate. It barely fits if you print it laying down like that. And you're going to have a bunch of infilling support, which will just kind of be not that much fun. I actually printed the other, the large piece on the CR-10 laying down like this. Getting off its support made me kind of cringe a little bit, but so now you can actually print all your rings on an Ender 3, which is pretty cool. If you ask me, if you do the half parts, so red outer ring half, you can do that on an Ender 3, no problem. My RAF setting is what's throwing this off, but you'll need eight of those as well. And you know, it's an Ender 3. So, if I fix this to where it can actually lay down, where's the raft? Dual extrusion, build plate adhesion. Turn that down to two. So, we don't need a lot. As you can see, it easily fits and you can print two of these. So, to retracting my earlier statement, you can print this entire thing on an Ender 3, which is pretty darn awesome. And it's just being kind of a butt right now, but you can also turn it on the end and have them printing upright at the angle too easily with no problem. So, in all honesty, you can print this with an Ender 3, which is pretty cool. I may go back and actually try to do this with just an Ender 3. A second one's not a bad thing, right? So, that's how I did it in Cura. Super anti-spyware has got to make its appearance here, of course, but it's just kind of one of those things. Check your settings, work with, use what's best for your printer. I love Inland filament. That's just, Micro Center sells it on their website. I use a spooless. It's $16.99 a spool, which is pretty darn good price. It's good materials. My models always come out great. I've been experimenting with some other filament though as well. You guys will actually see me doing a video on this from, it's called Geo PLA Plus. And actually, I'm pretty impressed with it too. I didn't have to change any settings and I'll be doing a comparison video against my Inland standard prints with this Geo. And it actually is really good filament as well. So, I was actually kind of surprised by it. But let's hop over to that time-lapse, get a look at this final product. Again, if you like what you see, hit that subscribe button and we'll see you on the other side of the time-lapse. Hey guys, this is one of the unglamorous parts of 3D printing. You guys see me do the models and you see a lot of the final products, but you don't actually see me assembling them. And that's what I'm doing right now, is this is Captain America's shield coming up here on July 2nd. You'll see this project done, but I kind of put it all together. And what I'm doing right now is I'm using a 3D printing pen to put it together with its own material. So basically I'm welding it using additional PLA to make it one solid piece. And you can see there's a lot of it in here and there's going to be a lot of sanding. All right guys, that's how I made it. So you now have the ability to go into Cura, slice your own files, get them going on your printer to make this really cool project. Probably one of the bigger projects I've ever made next to the helmets. And maybe the jet pack I think is about the same size. So this is one of the bigger projects I've taken on. Now, how did I fuse a lot of it together? Keyword is fuse. I used its own material. I used a 3D printing pen. And there's actually a short out there of me actually going through and putting it together in the back. So filling in the gaps, adhering it, melting it basically with its own PLA material to make this one solid piece. It gives it some strength. It does a lot better than glue because it is actually now one piece, which is pretty darn cool. And the 3D printing pen, honestly, they're not that expensive. They run anywhere between $60 and upward to, they can run to $200. Milo guy here is one of the 60. It's a tech boss. I don't even think mine's made anymore. I have been looking to get some that have more settings and more control because I am really getting more and more interested in working with the 3D printing pen. But if you're a 3D printer and like doing your 3D printing and want to make your prints even better, I do recommend a 3D printing pen. So, because there's a lot of reasons to use this, check out my shorts that are coming up every Tuesday of why this thing is awesome to use and how it can help your shop utilize all the materials you buy and all that stuff. So, keep tuned for that. So, again, good view of the final product was just shown. I hope you guys enjoyed the video. Make sure you hit that subscribe button. Join the crew as we continue to grow this channel and print new things. And let's go marble. Thank you guys. See you in the next video.