3D Printing is so much fun 
These are great! I’m guessing you can’t get them printed in grey/silver, huh? That would look awesome.
I will eventual paint them, but no there were no other color options at the lab.
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Cube thing? CUBE THING?!?
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Do you have it available on shapeways?
It won’t let me see the last two images.
Other people do sell it on shapeways but I think they are over priced. I don’t sell it on shape ways cause I didn’t actually make these files. I just print them out at my local university and give them out as prizes.
[quote=“darkbrick999, post:26, topic:4718, full:true”]
It won’t let me see the last two images.
[/quote] Really! that’s odd.
Can you see them now…Good.
Thanks! The images just wouldn’t load.
Apologies for necro’ing the thread, but I was moving around the Internet gathering what things I did in life, and came across this. Really happy someone printed these out. Apologies for the symbols not fitting into the cube - I had tried to make the protrusions in the symbols smaller and the indentations in the cube larger so that they may fit without a lot of post-print filing, but with a consumer-end 3D printer, there’s going to be a lot of variation that might not be entirely avoidable. Far worse would be the symbols fitting too loosely and then falling apart. I don’t have any good advice for removing the cube suppots at all - they’ll always be a problem whichever side you choose as the base. Not saying this couldn’t have been better designed, either - I was working in a materials lab years ago, and I had the chance to mess around on my own for a little bit, and the first thing I thought of was reliving my childhood again.
BIONICLE 2.0 seems to have come and gone in a flash, and it never really had an impact on me as the original did. But then again, we all have to move on sometime.
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Wow, It’s nice to meet you.
As you can see (unless the image has been corrupted) I was only able to shirk down Tahu’s Symbol to fit. Personally I prefer the symbols to be too loose than too tight, I was always worried that the symbol would break when I pulled it off the cube.
Ya… It was always hard to decide which side to print on when using the extruder printer. There are more clear cut ways to print, but they are also more expensive.
I’m glad you put the nuva cube on the internet. I’ve had a lot of fun with it.
Recently I’ve been working on a 3D model of Kini Nui in Sketch Up, but Sketch Up isn’t very making good Obj’s files so I’m currently at a loss as to what program I should use. What 3D program did you use to make the Nuva Cube?
Bionicle Gen 2 really did speed by. Personally I felt it was a bit disappointing.
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Im kinda a noob when it comes to 3D modeling, so take my words with a grain of salt, but I think you can export Blender projects as .OBJs.
This might not have helped at all 
I think the symbols are strong enough to stay on, but it could depend on the type of plastic you are using - I used ABS to create one complete set. I couldn’t perfect it more without trying to print it out, and this was all on top of a research attachment I was doing (with some real researchers three times my age) for about two months. So for me, the symbols aren’t a problem, the cube is a problem with a lot of supports however you print it, but I think the biggest problem was creating a smooth rounded shell on the bottom of the symbols- I noticed all who printed my models (and took pictures of them) suffered this problem, but I don’t have a good answer as to why it gets distorted like that.
There’s also some guy called The Kraahkan Project on ShapeWays who is offering to sell the cubes and symbols, as well as BIONICLE-compatible versions of masks based on the movies. I thought it was a mere coincidence someone had the same idea at nearly the same time, until I realised two of the symbols were flawed, in exactly the same way as mine when I uploaded my first iterations of the models on Thingiverse. Specifically, Lewa’s and Pohatu’s symbols had a protrusion that wasn’t cut to 45 degrees in order to meet the other incline when fitted with the other symbols. That was when I realised he actually stole my stuff, but I really wonder who would pay $20-30 for something that small. I’ve since fixed those errors, though, and I’m glad people have at least seen it.
As for modelling, I used 123D for my projects at the time. I’ve never used SketchUp, and I haven’t done any modelling for almost two years now, but I’m getting back into it for a short project, and this time I’m using Blender, which is waaay more powerful, but also very unfriendly to a new user. I’m still watching tutorials on how to do basic things in Blender.
And finally, BIONICLE’s reboot. Honestly, a rather big part of me (the part that never grew up) wished the whole thing never happened. I hated CCBS with a passion because of their modularity, and also the very basic design of the pieces, as compared to BIONICLE’s traditional approach with more specialised pieces with greater details on them, such as pistons and the like. While I do recognise that CCBS is powerful in its own right, at the scale of most official sets, it just doesn’t shine. But I will say that the set designs themselves are better, since every character actually looks different, and has significantly different build structures, unlike the original BIONICLE’s first years where sets of the same wave had pretty much all the same parts and builds, with differences in colour and weapon pieces only. Another big draw of BIONICLE was it’s mythology. Its story was unlike any other at the time. Unfortunately, things got rather convoluted and ended off abruptly, but I wouldn’t say the new reboot did very well either - I lost interest by the end of the first wave. I didn’t like how LEGO seemed to shoehorn comical characteristics into the original Toa (Kopaka with a terrible sense of direction, sleepy Onua, etc.) as if to cater to children. LEGO didn’t trivialise all their characters in my childhood, and I liked it better that way, and still do. Unfortunately, the new BIONICLE had an even worse ending than its predecessor, and I honestly think it’s a ■■■■ shame. At least the Ignika and Vahi actually existed, and the Mask of Ultimate Power didn’t even have an actual name, nor a consistent official representation of how it looked like, let alone an actual release.
Gah, I wrote a lot. Sorry for the wall of text and rant - BIONICLE is still very close to my heart, and I still watch the movies. Despite the glaring plot holes, the first three are all enjoyable, and the soundtrack is fantastic. The last movie was terrible, and before I go into another rant, I’ll expend what little restraint I have left, and end things here.
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Funny enough, I made one of these a few years ago in tech class for a 3D printing CAD project. It was cool, just like this one.
I didn’t make the symbol though. Just the cube.