If you have an incredible design in your mind, you can get it manifested with the help of 3D printing technology. All you need is get a 3D model (outsource it if you need) and then see it live right in front of you. Internet has been filled with news on designs by budding artists and designers and stories about how easily they were able to get what they wanted, using 3D printing technology.

Even gamers around the world have been trying to make miniatures of their favourite characters using various methods involved in 3D printing, like the paper-based ones and also, for a finer finish, they’ve used the sintering method.

23 year old gamer, Yvo de Haas, a huge fan of the Fallout gaming series tried his hands on 3D printing when he decided to create a Pip-Boy 3000. Made by Pip-Boy developers, this device is capable of reading the stats of the wearer, area maps, inventory and item properties.“Fallout 4 was announced June 4th, and I was immediately hooked,” Haas explains. “I absolutely love Fallout and have been looking forward to Fallout 4 for years. One of the first things that was obvious is that the old pip-boy, the Pip-boy 3000, has been replaced with a different model, the Pip-Boy 3000 Mark IV. The new Pip-Boy has the buttons on the right instead of the left, and there are more buttons. It has a tape player on the top, and the opening mechanism is now defined. Now I rarely move aside running projects for something else, but Fallout is an exception. Time to make the Pip-Boy 3000 Mark IV 3D printable.”

However Haas intended to design with the intention of making it useful for other’s too. But since there was a scarce in the number of reference images of this device, Haas had some difficulty to build it, at first. “The Pip-Boy is already extremely difficult to design with proper reference, but now there is only a teaser trailer and the E3 video,” says Haas. “This does not give the kind of reference I usually have.” “I tried to make the design as easy to print as possible,” he explains. “Parts are optimized for supportless printing and where support is still necessary, the support is at 90 degrees. Usually I do not use ABS to print anything, but the Pip-Boy is an exception. The parts are relatively small, and ABS gives a smoother and easier to work with surface.”

“First a light layer primer was applied to all parts,” explains Haas.

“The base coat for this design is a brownish green. All parts that had at least some of the base color on them were painted with a spray can. The smaller parts are either a dark metallic color or black. These colors were applied with a paintbrush. The tapes are faded yellow and white. Officially I would need to paint them cream and orange, but because I did not have those colors, I went with white and yellow. The tube on the back of the Pip-Boy already had the right color from printing, so no paint was applied to that.”

Haas has informed that there wasn’t any complicated electronics involved in the design, “simply 2 orange leds, one under each light cover”, followed by switch connected to a small CR2025 battery, connected to the both leds.

3D Printing has proved of enormous help as technologists are able to design complicated objects in much lesser time. If you have the design ready with you all you need is to print it. No need to wait for the availability of these in the market.

If you want more information you can read his blog.