The Beacon

myminifactory

This is my entry to the 3D Printing Awards 2018 Trophy Contest. There are two parts: Top and Bottom both printed with clear material to be as transparent as possible.  About the name and idea: my design will actually be a 'projector' or beacon (hence the name) for the actual winner and category. The trophy should be VERY smooth on the outside while the inside contains the name of the winner and other 3d features. Basically the challenge will be for Protolabs to showcase their printing abilities inside rather than the outside which will be smooth and shiny. There could be more other 3d features added but I thought it would further complicate the design and wanted to keep it simple and nice looking. I added however an external coil-hollow channel which I thought complements the rounded shape in my opinion. The design can sit on a LED candle (very cheap on amazon) which will illuminate the entire structure but maybe a more powerful lantern can be used. The bottom part will need to have an internal coat of metal paint to allow the reflection of the light and also channeling light for the top part where the name of the winner/category/award name is printed. The name of the winner - category is printed inside on the internal part of the top part which is clear. Being that the letters are thicker than the wall section, they should reflect the light slightly different due to geometry and light refraction. Since i can't print that clear with my FDM printer to check, I initially envisioned that the lamp will actually project the name on the ceiling (name will be printed mirror reversed to read the projection correctly on the ceiling). But I thought this may be weird during the day when the light is not used so I left the text inside from left to right which will be visible on the trophy when looking from the top down. I included 4 internal channels which I envisioned to be also painted internally with paint of different colors representing different winners or categories. As an example, one trophy could be metal goldish painted to represent the 1st prize winner, another cup will have a silver coating to represent the 2nd winner and so on and so forth with the rest. The print will not have any paint on the outside so the painted channels will be nicely visible as an accent to the trophy and winner. Once the paint is dried for the top and bottom part they will need to be glued with clear epoxy to create one nice trophy. The trophy can also be printed as one piece but I am not familiar if Protolabs printing process can be paused to add the paint internally...alternatively the trophy can be left without painting it and it should still look nice (some renders show that in the attachements).  The renderings show the channels painted with a gold color for the winner. The design files I created contain the text template which will easily customize the internal winner/category changes to print a different cup right away. Thanks for watching and also reading. Sorry if this was too long.