Prop Replica Making: Building the Sidewinder pistol from Mass Effect: Andromeda

Mass Effect: Andromeda Sidewinder

     After upgrading my Mini Kossel to a Mega Kossel, I was browsing Thingiverse for something interesting to test it with, I was searching the names of some of my favorite games, and Rawrbomb's Mass Effect: Andromeda Sidewinder design looked like one of the best modeled props from the game available.

Sidewinder V1 parts waiting for painting

     Printing was fairly straightforward, most of the digital prep work was mostly just orienting the parts for printing with my Mega Kossel, the default orientations are optimized for a prusa i3 style machine, so I ended up sticking most of the parts on end with a large stack of support material. Final step before printing was choosing which parts to do in black or white, so most of the gun's frame is in white PLA with some of the details in black PLA. Total print time was 52 hours 41 minutes and used 369 grams of filament including the support material.

Sidewinder right side initial paintwork

     For the painting, I started with the raw parts after removing the support material and gave some sections like the barrel and grip cages a coat of acrylic paint on all surfaces. Others sections got partially masked and painted in stages for the full effect, while others were left mostly untouched since the print was already the correct colour. For some of the detailing, I used coloured sharpies to prime the area, then 'weathered' the area, then recoloured with the sharpie again. 

Sidewinder left side initial paintwork

     This worked reasonably well, but after rewatching this YouTube video, I thought I could do better, especially as some of the weathering was only highlighting the layer lines in a few spots. So, after a quick trip to the local paint store to get some more colours and brushes, I repainted it to more closely follow the in-game texturing, with a little bit of rusting around the edges and seams. I've still got a bit of weathering to do at some point, but I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

Sidewinder left side final paintwork

Supersizing a Kossel Mini

Mini Kossel

     This time I'm upgrading the printer I started out with, a basic Mini Kossel kit, to a larger and taller frame. After replacing the original wheels with steel wheels last year, the aluminum towers finally wore down to the point that one of the carriages basically fell off the tower.

2020 Aluminum extrusion after running steel wheels for 14 months

     The obvious choice for replacing the damaged towers was OpenBuilds V-slot, same outer dimensions as the original extrusions allowing reuse of the printed frame parts. I also ended up swapping the steel wheels with the Delrin versions, don't want a repeat of what happened to the old towers.

Enlarged upper triangle

Enlarged lower triangle

     Since I was upping the size of the frame anyway, I cut the old towers down into new sides for the bottom triangle, the idea was to allow for mounting the power supply under the bed with the rest of the electronics, as well as allowing for upgrading the build plate in the future. Dimension wise, the side rails are now 30 cm long, allowing for anything up to a 25cm build plate. Reassembly was mostly the same as the original build process, just scaled up by a large margin.

Upgraded frame

     I did learn some new tricks to make assembly more precise, probably the most useful was using a spare section of extrusion to set the end-stop height to exactly below the upper triangle. All that's needed for this trick is a 3-inch C clamp, a spare or unused piece of the extrusion and the end-stop assembly.

The simple way to set endstop height

     Once the frame was rebuilt, the other parts that needed replacement were the rod-arms, the originals were both too short for the new size and one was cracked after a rather spectacular malfunction last fall. For the new rod-arms, the parts list is quite simple, 12 Traxxas 5347 joints (Amazon.ca), 6 12" lengths of 8-32 threaded rod, an 8-32 tap and AndrewBCN's assembly tool (Thingiverse, thing:701248). The 8-32 tap is optional, it just makes assembly easier by pre-cutting the first couple turns of the thread in the Traxxas joints.

Parts for new rod-arms with completed arm

     With the new rod-arms done, the next step was reinstalling the electronics and print bed. Since I'm not replacing the current print bed, some new mounts were needed, along with a new mounting bracket for the Re-ARM/Ramps boards. After creating a Fusion 360 mock-up of the bottom triangle, it was fairly easy to design new mounting brackets for the print bed, the Re-ARM was even simpler since the manufacture provides a cad file of the boards physical layout. The resulting STLs are here for download.

Re-ARM and electronics installed

Power supply mounting bracket

Mounting bracket installed on power supply

     As you can see, the power supply ended up under the bottom triangle, just wasn't space for the control boards otherwise. The brackets I've designed for mounting the power supply are in with the other STLs above, you'll need to mirror file with your slicer program to get both the left and right versions. Only other parts needed for mounting are some M4x20mm screws and the power supply, I'm using this one, but the brackets should work for any similar module.

Print bed installed with dust covers

     One of the recent improvements for deltas that's been trending on the net lately is adding protective covers to the corners over the lower pulleys and electronics bay. I've been meaning to add them for a while and came up with a simple way to make them out of some spare foam core.

Kossel on foam core for tracing

Kossel and Print bed outlines on foam core

     Yep, that's it, just stick the printer on the foam core and trace around the base with a marker. I also used an earlier version of the print bed supports to center it under the printer frame and then traced it out as well. After that it was just putting the printed parts in their approximate spots, trace the outlines and then cut out the section that's left. I did use a drill to put 3 holes in each for ventilation over the motors but that was basically it. last step was wrap the edges with electrical tape for safety and colour the top black for aesthetics.

Corner covers finished and installed

      Now, obviously the power supply is currently serving as the structural base for the entire frame, not the best idea for long term stability or noise. I found these tennis ball feet (thing:2158108) on Thingiverse, they're printable adaptors that let 3 standard tennis balls serve as vibration damping feet, so I used the Micro Kossel to print a set and installed them.

Tennis ball feet 2/3 installed

   And that was pretty much it, only things left to do were recalibration running a few test prints which turned out nicely.

Completed Mega Kossel