“I currently have a two year old son, a little boy who loves to get dirty, play with toy cars and jump into puddles. He also loves his building blocks, but unfortunately for me he still remains too young to play with Legos. When I learned that my wife was pregnant with our little guy, the first thing I said to her was, “I can’t wait to play baseball with him and show him the ins and outs of constructing Lego creations.
Did you know that Legos have been around since the late 1940s? However, it wasn’t until the late 70s that the company released their modern day minifigures. Over the years, they have evolved, and since their initial release, there have been over 3650 different official minifigs sold. While this seems like a lot, and you would imagine that this would cover just about every possibility out there, for on Minnesota-born tinkerer, named Joe Estrem, this simply was not enough.
Having received his first 3D printer, an XYZ Davinci a little over a month ago, he began looking for designs that he could begin test printing. He came across one design by a man named Michael Curry, on Thingiverse for a Blank 3D Printable Minifig.
“[I] couldn’t resist printing one,” Estrem tells 3DPrint.com. “Since I was looking for additional Lego figures without much luck, I decided it was a good place to start learning to create my own designs, using Blender.”
Using Curry’s design, Estrem was able to create new figures without having to “reinvent the wheel”.
“This way I could also create something in smaller chunks so I didn’t feel overwhelmed with spending countless hours trying to learn Blender to create something that was ‘hopefully’ printable,” Estrem tells us.
So far Estrem has created three different superhero-themed minifigs; Lego Thor, Lego Iron Man, and Lego Captain America. All of the designs are entirely 3D printed with very minimal sanding required prior to being painted with acrylic paints and then seal coated.
Estrem tells us that he next plans to create an Incredible Hulk version, prior to moving on to creating movie prop replicas.
I certainly know that the first minfigs that I introduce my son too, when he is old enough, will be ones that I 3D print on my own! What do you think about these uniquely designed Lego Minifigs? Have you 3D printed any of them yet yourself? Discuss in the Lego Superhero MiniFigs forum thread on 3DPB.com.”
Source: 3DPrint.com
