Loong Wand (Retractable) v3 Series

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Hey guys, this is another design for Makerworld dragon year contest (4/5). Loong wand, Loong also known as oriental dragon, or Chinese dragon. I think it would be a great gift/toy for kids for New year.

Best wishes to you all! 新年快乐.

This Loong wand design takes 47g of filament and 2h40m printing time.

I try to keep all my wands design consistent, similar printing hours, material cost, etc.

This is a complete redesign from the last dragon wand. It took me more than 20h of continues work to get the initial design done. And 10+ hours of revisions. Yep, this wasn’t included in my test print hours. Be sure you like this model 😊 Want more wand? Let me know in the comments.

Revisions:

Update 1/26/2024: 3.x.1 Horn fit and finish issue. (tested)

 New update improved the fit for horn on profile: v3.5 Large, v3.3 Basic, v3.4 Flame. 

Suggest not to use some of the weak silk filaments. It is small parts, will easy to break with snap fit tolerance. 

Printing options:

I made a few different styles for this design. “Plain” is Loong without horn. “Basic” is Loong with removeable horn. “Flame” is added flame on Basic model. “Large” is only available for P, X, &A1. Since the height of the model is too large for a1mini.

I personally like the Large size the most. The larger size really brings a different feeling to this design. You will feel more of imposing of a Loong.

If you like other wand design:

Dragon wand:

https://makerworld.com/en/models/135043#profileId-146518

Harry Potter wand:

https://makerworld.com/en/models/68778#profileId-72937

Printing Suggestions:

If you are printing on a1mini/a1 with cold room temperature (consider it is winter now) increase your bed temperature to 80C. To reduce possible fail rate.

If you are printing with P & X Series, you could close the door to keep a consistent ambient temperature.

Printing profile I uploaded have sightly thicker first layer, it is due to the small parameter on first layer, it will ensure your first layer stick good on build plate.

This design has bigger parameters than my other wand design, print without brim is still not recommended but highly doable. Try at your own risk.

Don't use some of the silk and weak filaments: 

Post work:

clear brim:

install horn:

Design:

The design isn’t perfect, I decided to sacrifice some “style” for better “printability”.

I originally wanted to design a dragon holding a ball. So, the retractable parts will be dragon body and tail. That said, the orientation of the model will be completely different from my last dragon design.

But I have changed my mind during the design. I want to make retractable parts come out from dragon mouth.

So, I started with the overall style, since I want it to be more of Oriental dragon style. A lot more details have been added to the model.

I didn’t think my new dragon scale design was over complicated, it keeps my software crashing. I think it is also because the entire model’s mesh has over 1 million triangles. Since my intension was getting something very refined done, this was probably a bit overdone.

The initial v2 had a few design revisions. I realized the dragon beard and horn are a bit tricky to print. The beard is a bit too small and causes printing issues, and I didn’t really like to have support on this model.

So, model improvements took place again. I have also decided to make horn removable, that way you can print without support and print it with the color you like.

The retractable mechanism is also refined. Bottom layer otter edge is clear for earlier post work. (remove brim)

Old Revisions: