T-800 skull and eagle: when printed plastic pretends to be metal

19 January 2017

A T-800 skull and an eagle 3D printed in black filament, turned into metal with nothing but paint: silver, copper and gold.

January 2017. Home 3D printers are starting to get serious, but parts still come out with very visible lines, one layer on top of another. The challenge is easy to state and hard to pull off: take a piece of layered black plastic and make it look like metal.

The T-800 skull

The reference is the Terminator endoskeleton: a steel skull with red eyes that terrified an entire generation. Printed in black, it looks like a Halloween decoration. Then the silver arrives.

T-800 skull 3D printed in black filament, with visible print lines — Fresh off the printer, in black.

T-800 skull 3D printed with a first coat of silver on the cutting mat — Fresh off the printer, in black.

Believable metal is never a single colour: dark base, silver on the high points, shadows in the recesses, a little oxide around the eyes. And the eyes, of course, red.

Finished T-800 skull, steel-coloured with dark shadows and red eyes — I’ll be back.

Finished T-800 skull in three-quarter view with the mechanical details of the temple — I’ll be back.

The eagle

Same period, same technique, different metal: an eagle with spread wings, first in copper and then in gold. Here the layered print almost helps, because the lines look like the engraved feathers of a casting.

Eagle with spread wings 3D printed and painted copper on a cutting mat — In copper.

Eagle with spread wings 3D printed and painted gold on a silver base — In copper.

Nine years later printers have improved a lot, and the lines are barely visible any more. But the trick is the same: the right paint turns any plastic into something else.

Tag: 3D printing, metallics, painting, Terminator