Light Up Ralph

3D printed with plastic and conductive silver on the Voxel8 Development Kit

Designed with Blender

For a while now, Harry has been trying to get me to 3D print a light up Ralph, the mascot of Thoughtbot. While folks have 3D printed Ralph before, they didn’t have access to printers that can print conductive traces. Luckily, I work for Voxel8, a company the makes 3D printers that specializes in printing electronic devices.

I used the Voxel8 Development Kit to print Ralph.

For modeling, I turned an SVG of Ralph into a 3D model via Blender. Then I used Curves to create the traces. That’s it! It’s really awesome that Voxel8’s slicer, Euclid, is smart enough at path planning that I didn’t have to manually create tracks for the silver to sit in.

Design and printing took about an hour each. Once Ralph came off the printer, all I needed was an LED and a battery, and viola!

This Ralph was printed in a single try. If I spent a little more time, I could’ve improved the design and print quality, but I’m kinda lazy.

Anyhoo, there you have it, a light up Ralph!