Elite (1984) Coriolis Space Station Money Box

It is 1984 and you have just been given a copy of the newly released Elite video game for your BBC micro. One of your challenges was to pilot your Cobra Mark III spacecraft to dock with the Coriolis Space station by trying to match your rotation with the rotation of the entrance – very tricky indeed. It is difficult to appreciate now, in the age of photo-realistic 3d animation, what a significant advance this game was, with its massive worlds to explore and its wire frame 3d graphics.

This model is a homage to the Coriolis space station, a cuboctahedron with a rectangular "letter box" slot through which spaceships could fly in and out. I designed this in fusion 360 as a functional money box. I have added the Elite badge to the front of the box for a splash of colour. If you don’t like this, I have provided a version without the badge and a badge if you would prefer to print this separately and attach it yourself. I suggest you uses Cyanoacrylate (superglue) if this is what you would like to do. The thread for the stopper was my custom design and should be secure and not bind. The entrance to the space station is large enough (30mm wide and 3mm deep) for UK’s largest coins, the £2 piece.

This was a fairly simple print in PLA on my Bambu X1C with AMS. In my first print I found a little bit of stringing which produces a little mixing between the black, white and yellow. A thorough dry of the PLA completely removed this issue.

Bambu Lab’s Matt PLA was used throughout, and printing was on a textured plate with glue stick applied. No supports are needed.

The full coloured print using my preferred print profile takes around 29 hours to complete, because of all the colour changes. I think this is worth it for the excellent print quality. A monochrome version will take around 3.5 hours.

Don’t forget, I thoroughly recommend the filament is dried before printing, even if you are printing PLA.

Hope you enjoy printing and using this money box.