Near the end of 2019, I was asked if I would be able to make a physical copy of a ‘magic paintbrush’ for a friend’s child for Christmas. This was a design from thingiverse.com of “Ben’s Masterpiece Wand” from the Netflix kids animation “Motown Magic” where a group of large-headed small children have adventures accompanied by classic tunes from the Motown record label.
The original model was here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3347697
Accompanying TinkerCad files for that original design are here: https://www.tinkercad.com/things/3wmY9rf4CiZ
My remix with amended parts is here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4181612
It did initially look pretty easy, so I agreed to the challenge of producing a special Santa present for a five-year-old… 🙂
The first thing I actually did, was to choose a filament for the ends – these according to the pictures I could find, were glowing blue. I found on Amazon both transparent blue PLA and transparent blue TPU as they seemed the most appropriate as they’d allow whatever internal light source to shine through, just like in the show. Given that it was likely to be reasonably durable, I settled on the TPU for the end pieces as less likely to result in an injury… 😉
The body of the wand/paintbrush is yellow/brown in the show, but making it look totally authentic would have meant:
a) splitting the build into a larger number of smaller parts, or
b) having a dual-filament printer
However, in consultation with the parents, we decided on the Bronze filament I already had, as it was shiny and a reasonable compromise given the approximate three weeks available until Christmas!
So, next to make the thing!
However, the original Thingiverse download doesn’t include the lower part of the body to which the buttons are attached, so a quick export from the TinkerCAD file was required so that I’d have all of the pieces to print – I’ve added this to my ‘remix’
The other part that looked like it would require some thinking was the top brush-head. There was enough of a lip to attach it to the upper body, but this would then also leave the holes in that upper-body open to either damage of just not covering whatever internal light source. I got around this by adding a thin cylinder to the brush head as a support. Printing that in one piece also gave the whole a consistent look, which I was very happy with. 🙂
The only difficulty with that brush head was remembering how to combine meshes in Fusion360, which could probably be made more obvious.
To make that happen – select inserted mesh ‘a’, right-click and copy. Double-click mesh ‘b’ to edit, then right-click & paste mesh ‘a’ to get both in the same editing space.
Lastly, select these two meshes (because it will now let you!), then from the Modify menu, select ‘combine bodies’. Now you can export this single part as an STL file, ready for printing.
Mind you, now that I’ve written that out, I’ll hopefully not forget again!
Now for the internal light source.
That turned out to be relatively simple, as I sacrificed a free mini torch I got at an IT Expo the previous year. It might not have lit up both ends of the brush, but it slid into the main body and held firmly enough to not fall out easily.
So then, with a bit of 2-part epoxy to hole the main parts together, that was about it! 🙂
Having been notified about the design link on the 10th Dec, delivery on the 23rd Dec was under a couple of weeks. I’d been to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker at the Odeon Leicester Square (where my father took me to see the original back when) with a friend, then we all happened to be in the same part of London at about the same time, which made delivery somewhat easier. 🙂
In all, it was a relatively quick, but fun commission.
By all accounts, the small boy who was the recipient of the magic paintbrush was very happy, so I’d have to say mission successful!.
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