Meet Aria the Dragon. Designed by Louise Driggers, this iconic mythical creature has quickly become one of the coolest models we’ve seen yet. Folks on the Goggle+ 3D Printing Community are printing her and sharing their slice settings. Aria was actually designed and optimized for FDM 3D printing. She makes for a great demo print and showcases what a well calibrated printer can produce.
… I built Aria in Blender. I also decided to rig her so I could experiment with poses and re-use the model if I wanted to…. The temptation is to put your model into an elaborate pose but you will quickly find that the original idea is unprintable and you really have to work the angles to keep the look. I wanted to keep her crouching like a lizard would, rather than the Adalinda model which is sitting flat on the ground. However, to keep her support free, I wanted to keep her looking up – which I think gives her a gentle appearance.
She’s definitely a beautiful model – we think you should check her out! Shout out to Louise on her amazing work, bravo!
Read Louise’s full description on Thingiverse
Download Aria STLs
Follow Louise Driggers on Google+
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!