Hooray Time Wasters! Design Your Own Custom 3D Robot

If you liked that Pony generator I linked to a while back, and then the fun Steampunk Dress-Up Game, then you're going to LOVE what Keren Y. found: My Robot Nation lets you design, decorate, and color your own custom robot in a 3D generator, and then - THEN! -  you can have your robot 3D printed!

Here are some examples I grabbed off their site. The virtual designs are on the right, and the final printed 'bots are on the left:

Cool, right? To be honest, before this I didn't know it was even possible to do 3D printing in multiple colors, much less intricate patterns!

Get ready to lose at least an hour or two on this, because the options for robot-building are almost endless. It's actually kind of dizzying. The virtual designer is free to play with, so there's no obligation to buy anything; you could just grab a screen shot as a souvenir. If you DO want to order your finished robot, though, prices start at around $18 for the two-inch size, which isn't too bad for such a highly customized figure. (It gets pretty expensive after the 3-inch size, though.) In fact, I could see this being a fantastic gift for kids.

[My Robot Nation stresses that these are NOT toys, though, so if you do order one treat it like a collectible - and try not to drop it. Heh.]

Of course, there's no way I could recommend such a service without testing it myself, right? Right. So, as a supreme act of sacrifice, [smirk] I decided to design and order a 'bot of my own.

I should probably mention here that I am in no way affiliated with My Robot Nation, and they most certainly aren't paying me. More's the pity.

So, a couple of hours later (PRODUCTIVITY!!),  I'd constructed Firey here:

His horned helmet reminds me of the goblin armor from Labyrinth, and I went with orange because, well, c'mon. As you can see, I went a little nuts with the rust and bullet holes, painstakingly covering his entire body with them. (I couldn't find many examples of that texture on the website, so I was curious to see how it would translate in real life.)

[Also notice how I put his horns on crooked. OOPS. How did I miss that?]

I ordered the 2-inch size just over three weeks ago, which was long enough for me to be completely surprised when I opened up the box that arrived today:

The amount of padding was a little ridiculous; I unrolled a soccer-ball's worth of paper to get to him. Ha!

I immediately took him outside to take some detail shots for you guys:

As you can see, Firey is pretty much bang-on to my design. Considering how tiny he is, I'm amazed at the level of detail. You can even see the flames on his shoulders!

He's a tiny bit heavier than I expected, so he has a decent heft for plastic. His surface texture feels a bit gritty, like sandstone. He's a fixed statue, of course, and not pose-able, but in the design phase you can choose any pose you like, with every point of articulation you can think of.

 

Those fingerprint-like whorls are a result of the 3D printing, and are just barely visible to the naked eye.

Having fun with some higher contrast shots:

Again, this is just the two inch version, so I imagine that the larger sizes are even more impressive. (The largest size is a six-inch figure.)

Considering how much fun I had just designing Firey, coupled with the quality of the figure itself, I think the little guy was worth the $23.98 (with shipping). Especially when you consider that one's desk can never have too many robots:

I have more than this on my desk, of course, but these three make for a fun color combo. :)

Have fun building your own, guys, and be sure to share screen-grabs of 'em over on the Epbot Facebook page, so I can see!