Maltese Falcon - Full Size

Detective Tom Polhaus: "Heavy. What is it?"
Sam Spade: "The, uh, stuff that dreams are made of."

Update Jan.21, 2012 : Added the full size STEP file (unmodified - one piece) for anyone who want to play around with it.

The Maltese Falcon is a great movie - you should watch it. Seriously - go watch it NOW!

My printer does not have the build volume to be able to print this full size in one piece, so I sliced it into four pieces in CAD, partially hollowed out each piece to reduce filament usage, and added dowel pin holes in all pieces to help align them for re-assembly.

The four pieces (from the head down) are as follows :

            Filament      Cost       Print

Part Used (g) US$ Time
====== ======== ====== =======
Head 115 $2.92 9h39m
Chest 129 $3.28 9h08m
Feet 130 $3.32 13h27m

Base 113 $2.60 7h46m

Totals 487 $12.12 40h0m

In addition to the four falcon sections, I also included a print for dowel pins (or you can use 1/4" (6mm) wood dowels). The "hollows" in each section interconnect in the assembled piece; I plan to fill the inside with cement to give the model some heft.

Attribution : I found this STL by Colin Freeman:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:46631

I used FreeCAD to convert the STL to a solid, then imported it into OnShape and scaled it up to 12" in height.

The OnShape 3D CAD files for this are here :

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/5dc5d43e08a62b25512b4675/w/4b8a46f5290a08139e3ec483/e/3ecdd6c687b8a217dbc24955

Print instructions

Print in PLA using the 3mf files provided; otherwise :

• perimeters = 3
• 10% - 15% rectilinear infill
• detachable supports

Supports required for the sections are as follows :

• head : under the beak
• chest : none required
• feet : under the front claws, and two small areas on the sides
• base : print upside down, no supports

For the dowel halves, I increased elephant's foot compensation to 0.4mm. I have also included a test block for testing the dowel fit - the dowels should fit firmly but not so tight that it is difficult to insert or remove them. It is not necessary to glue the dowel halves together - simply hold the two halves together while inserting.

Six dowels are needed to align the pieces for assembly. I printed the dowels in halves - this enables better bed adhesion and allows the dowels to be printed linearly for greater strength. The provided gcode will print all 12 required halves individually in one session.