World’s First Life Sized 3D Printed Humanoid Skeleton, Created with 3Doodler

The 3Doodler is probably one of the more successful gadgets to emerge from Kickstarter in the last 18 months. The hand held 3D printing pen, which to those who have no artistic ability, may be viewed more as a glorified hot glue gun, happens to be an awesome artistic tool, for those who learn how to use it. Last week we did a story on the man who used his 3Doodler to print out an actual remote control airplane. It was incredibly well done, and almost unbelieveable.

Here we are only a week later, and one man may have already ’3Doodled’ an even more impressive piece. A Somerville, Massachusetts man named Justin Mattarocchia, has 3D printed an entire plastic man with his hand held 3Doodler. Mattarocchia has named the piece, ‘Voight’ and it is the world’s first life-sized, hand 3D printed, humanoid skeleton ever created.

The project took Mattarocchia several months to complete, and he has learned a great deal about the hand held device along the way. To achieve a state where the plastic man was at least close to being anatomically correct, he used Google Images to search for different skeletal parts. He also drew out parts, such as the jaw bone, and traced those drawings with the 3D printing pen.

“I love the freedom the 3Doodler offers me in creative design,” Mattarocchia told 3Doodler. “It’s an excellent tool, and when used in conjunction with other media, and even electronics, you can make your work really come to life.”

For the spine of the man, Mattarocchia used a cardboard tube as a structural base. He then was able to print onto that cardboard with the ABS plastic from the 3Doodler. Once the plastic dried, he could slide the tube out, leaving a pretty accurate model of an actual spine behind. For the face, he wanted to take a more free hand approach, as he explained to 3Doodler:

“I started by drawing out on some foam core project board a rough face shape, laying out where the eyes, nose, and mouth would be. Then I traced over it with the 3Doodler and built off of that original outline. Getting curved features can be tricky mid air, especially if you don’t have a form to work on, so I decided to think in polygons. I would form triangular shapes off the initial trace, and continued to build off them until a face feature was formed. Once the initial polygonal structure was in place, I could then either build off that, or fill it in, by running back and forth between the lines of the polygon.”

This was not the first interesting piece that Mattarocchia has created with his 3Doodler. In fact he also makes robotic talking skulls, as you can see in the video below.