Mostrom Maker Coin

Lesson Plan & Constraints:

The task was to create a 3D-printed coin that would act as a physical logo.

• All coins must be made from an initial revolve resulting in a coin that is 6cm in diameter and 1.25cm in thickness
• Must not require ANY supports
• Should be gear-esque 
• NO moving parts, (no gyroscopes, fidget spinners, etc.)
• Must slope downwards towards the center in some fashion

Summary & General Advice:

My maker coin consists of a semi-circle-shaped with four swords coming from the center circle, and four shields evenly placed in the middle of each sword. I wanted to produce a coin with an interesting and unique design, something I could look back on in the future and be proud with what I created.

For anyone making their own Maker Coin, I would advise using patterning tools such as the circular pattern tool for the shields and swords. It makes things much easier than doing it one at a time. In addition, I also created additional planes, used the cut revolve feature to eliminate excess material, and I used boss extrudes and extruded cuts, both through all and off surface as well.

Overview & Design Choices:

Before I created my maker coin, I brainstormed long and hard on ideas. For inspiration, I browsed the printables pages for previously made coins. Out of the blue, I had this idea to draw a sword from the center outward and circular pattern it.  After experimenting with the dimensions, I found out I could only make four swords when the original intention was to make eight. The space in between gave me the other idea to make inwards facing shields, offset them, and do some kind of design inside them. 

Once I was set on what to create, I drew two sketches as seen down below: the side view, and the top view (I have no idea why I named it side profile please forgive me). The side sketch has a curvy bottom figure to make it more round, but then I added a top figure to the initial sketch as well. I will explain later in the steps what the purpose of the top figure is, but it is used in the cut revolving process. The top view shows what the gear-esque perimeter should look like, along with the center circle, the shields, and the swords, which will have plenty of fillets to enhance fancification. 

To be effective for further use, the top piece was smart-dimensioned to be 0.2 cm away from the bottom piece after experimenting for a while on distances. The side view sketch should have had the bottom section to be wider. Then, the bottom piece was revolved using the circular pattern tool.

Next, a second plane was added on top of the original plane, almost midway through the circular object. On this second plane was where the sketch was going to be drawn out.

Both the swords and the shields down below were made using the circular pattern tool. This was found to be more useful rather than single-handedly creating all of them.

After the sketch was all set, I used the boss extrude command to extrude the center circle, the shields, and the swords as well. 

As you can see, the shields and swords are very high up, and they take way too much space and poke a little bit outside of the circle. This is where the top piece in the original sketch comes in handy.

By cut revolving the bottom and top piece around, the command was able to eliminate the problems of extra poking in the bottom half of the circular object as well as lower the height of the extruded objects and keep them aligned with the curvature of the surface.

The next idea was to fillet everything to make the object itself more intriguing, so I filleted all parts of the swords and the shields.

The center circle was nice in the center, but I knew extrude cutting a circle within the center circle itself through all would be better.

The circle needed to have more of that gear-esque function, and it was very round and smooth at this point. So, to solve this problem, I was able to use the offset tool to offset the swords by a wide amount and connect them around the perimeter. Then, the smooth outside was selected and I could finally cut some parts to make the shape a little more rough.

After making the rough edges, I realized the corners of each edge could also be filleted as well. 

At this point, I knew the maker coin looked good, but it was still missing something cool: a design on the shields. This was difficult though because the shields were angular. So I started off with creating a third plane above the second plan and the object.

Then, I sketched the desired design onto the plane right above the shield and used the cut extrude tool, but off the surface. This was able to make the shape follow the curvy path and cut properly without there being any problems.

And voila, this is the final product! Although I am happy with how it came out, I wish I would've stuck to a color like grey or black and not pick such a luminescent color. Nevertheless, I think it looks really cool. Enjoy!