Preparing for a larger project

During the following weeks I managed to print a couple more keychains, a comb, and a few other every day objects that I wanted to use. I also almost printed a phone case, but since my phone was larger than an iPhone at the time, the temperature settings on the printer had to be hotter in order for the print to stick. This is something that I struggled with.

Our professor began informing us about our final projects and what he would like to see in our portfolios. He stressed the point that while he did want to see some successful prints, one of the main factors was that he wanted to see that we tried different things and began to explore different areas of the 3D printing world.

It was during this point in that class that me and another student decided that we were going to team up to try and print a playable game boy color. We found the file online and thought it would be pretty cool if we could pull it off (image to the right). We both agreed that it would be better to try for something big and fail

as opposed to playing the safe route and printing something we wouldn't use or something that didn't offer a challenge. While we would need to purchase some things, like a small LCD screen, the majority of the parts (such as the case, shell and buttons) could be 3D printed or were relatively inexpensive.

We talked to the teacher about printing the same object and he was cool with it, being that it was a more timely print and would take more work. He even suggested that we use each other as a resource if one person found something out that would make a print more successful (such as thickness of the layers, temperature etc.)

Ultimately I decided that I was going to attempt to print the buttons first (since they were the smallest and took the least amount of time) and then move on to the back of the shell, followed by the front in the following weeks.