Summary
In this special interview from Armageddon 2024 (sorry it’s late) Sam talks to Will from Megawillbot about his 3d printed products, learn how he thinks about designing them and more.
Products include:
Pumpkin spider
Bread cat
Castle dragon
Will recommends the Bambu Lab A1 Mini as a great starter machine and hopes to be sponsored by them in the future.
Links
Photos
Show Transcript
This transcript was generated by an AI and may not be 100% accurate. If you have questions about any of the information found here, please reach out to us.
Sam [00:00:00]:
Hello Chris and Sam Podcast fans Sam here. Hey. I’ve got this piece of audio from Armageddon two thousand and twenty four in October. Now I completely forgot about it, which is not good. I’ve been super busy, and I’ve just got around to editing now. This is the only person I spoke to at, Armageddon two thousand twenty four in Auckland.
Sam [00:00:19]:
His name’s Will, and you’re gonna learn about what Megawillbot is, what he makes, and his story behind how he creates things. I hope you enjoy it. Make sure to check out megawillbot.com. And big apologies to Will for this taking so long to get out. Let’s have a listen.
Sam [00:00:57]:
Hello, everyone. I’m at a, where am I? I’m at Armageddon Expo. Brain is not working properly today. I’m at mega WillBot stand. I’m with
Will [00:01:05]:
Will. Will is in in the name. It’s my old username, actually. I never, was great at, branding, so this is my old username from back in the day. I couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t come across as, you know, techie, like, on a printly, you know, or something pretentious like craftsmanship work workshop, that kind of thing, you know. So I just stuck to the username, and then I can just focus on, you know, the actual concept. So the I’ve got this pumpkin spider design that I’ve been working on since I was 15. It’s actually one of the very first 3d printed toys.
Will [00:01:30]:
I uploaded it to Thingiverse back in, like, oh shit, 2018. That’s all I print it all out of ABS and also, you know, warranty all the parts against, like, you know, dog attacks, that kind of thing. So, yes, you could turn into a pumpkin, which is quite fun.
Sam [00:01:43]:
And of course, that’s why I got drawn to the stand. I’m glad Will is in the name because I wasn’t sure you’ve gotta check on these things, and he’s correct with the naming, of things. Some places here are very, oblique, I guess. Yeah.
Will [00:01:57]:
I’ve never done progress really that much, so I don’t want more much to say about that. I can just pretend I’m selling it normally, I guess. So yeah.
Sam [00:02:02]:
You give us the spiel. You’ve got a bunch of different things here, and just so happens, we’ve got one of your customers here who has one of everything. His name is Oh, Cameron. I do have one of everything. I love it. They’re all very cool. So just to run through it, we’ll get some photos on the website, but we have got run through all the different things.
Speaker B [00:02:19]:
What are
Sam [00:02:19]:
they called?
Will [00:02:20]:
Mainly we got the pumpkin spider. It’s my top seller. I haven’t been able to outsell it mostly because when I designed it, I wasn’t originally, like, designing it to be sold, and I think that comes across like, it’s its own kind of creature. And that’s been an idiosyncrasy I’ve always had. Like, as a kid, I hated toys that were kind of condescending, if you know what I mean. Like, like, they they saw I knew they’d be toys and they’d have like googly eyes and like fart effects and that kind of stuff, so I always make them seem like in their own kind of world, they would they could be like a creature. So I’ve got the pumpkin spider and it just looks like if a spider could be a pumpkin. It’s actually, I checked this morning and there’s a bunch of actual bootlegs now.
Will [00:02:53]:
Someone’s made a bootleg on Thingiverse but it doesn’t not Thingiverse on Colts, of course. They’re selling the files. It doesn’t even transform. It’s just like a spider with a pumpkin on the back.
Sam [00:03:00]:
So It’s a terrible knock off if you want the original. You gotta go to megawheelbot.com. Yeah.
Will [00:03:04]:
But I have the original files still up on thingy verses. Come a long way since. I’ll say it’s, it was one of the first things I designed. Don’t look at the geometry, but it is still there if you’re down for a bit of a project. And I recommend ABS for branding just because ABS is nice. And then the next thing, the next newest thing is my bread cap. So this is, a loaf of bread, you flip it and it turns into a cap, you just flip the head upside down, the front kind of slice becomes the head, and it’s got a little kind of thing where the ears are like, I’m quite happy with this mechanism because there’s a hinge in there, but when you fold the hinge away, it also kind of outlines the ears. Yeah.
Will [00:03:35]:
It looks real nice. It was all by accident. Like, it was originally gonna be more like the spider where you move all the parts individually, but I was like, I could hold on. I could connect that to that, and then I was like, it just kinda snowballed at someone else. I might as well do the whole thing. And this actually prints in place, The files will definitely be going up online. And also to do the texture for the back, a three d scanner loaf of bread.
Speaker B [00:03:52]:
I did the original pumpkin. I actually
Will [00:03:53]:
I found a pumpkin model on the Internet, and I chopped it up, and I, kind of mutilated it to make it work. And I’ve I’ve got, you know, permission to sell it. I talked with the guy quite a lot. He’s, he’s quite happy with it. And then the next thing we’ve got is this castle dragon. So it’s a castle that turns into a dragon. So it’s, a very simple mechanism. It’s actually like the, the chest kinda like a piston in that it kind of retracts inside and then turns.
Will [00:04:15]:
And then it’s actually fully tileable, so you can connect it with each other and you can build a sort of port with them. So super happy with that project. It takes about sixteen hours for each one to print and that’s on like a madly fast machine too. It’s not too fast though, as fast as you can go while maintaining quality.
Sam [00:04:29]:
Of course, of course, I’ve got a bunch of questions. How did you get into 3d printing?
Will [00:04:34]:
So I probably got my first machine back when I was like, oh, 14 or something. I got it to kinda work, but it’s, they’re very manual machines, and I’m glad I then I eventually got my dad got me a UP Mini two. After I was like struggling with it for months, he just kinda got me one. He didn’t ask me because he knew I’d say I’d say no because I’m a bit stubborn like that, but I’m glad he did because then I was able to just just do it, you know, just make a pumpkin spider. That’s, you know, a good machine for its time. Right now I’d recommend the Bambulab A1 mini. I’ve got the P1S, but if they have the a one mini at the time I get it just because the bank per buck is amazing, like $500 so you can print four materials and it’s super fast. They have to sponsor me at some point.
Will [00:05:08]:
This is nice machines. Like I’ve my, P1S I’ve got right now now is up to, like, almost two thousand hours without, like, issue, which is insane for a machine.
Sam [00:05:17]:
Oh, cool.
Will [00:05:17]:
Yeah. And everything I design, absolute bare minimum of waste as well. I designed to avoid, supports wherever possible because it wastes my time and also waste materials. So to do the outer legs, it’s just you print them, like, on this side and it’s so I also designed, like, the grain of the material in mind because it’s like with, like with wood, you can, if you apply a force, it has to be lateral with the, grain, otherwise, you can get breakages. So, yeah. The only the first breakage report this year I got, early so far actually, is, someone’s dog ate some of the spider legs, and I was able to replace the legs because they’re, you know, snapped together. And then to print the, inner legs, so they’re on ball joints, right, and to do a sphere with three d printing, it’s one of the most pain in the ass things. So I actually print these stacked on top of each other with and it skips one layer between them, so they act like a raft for each other.
Sam [00:06:00]:
Oh. And that
Will [00:06:00]:
way you can crank the fans to full and get a nice nice sphere, but, it doesn’t have you don’t have to waste material making a raft for them. So, yeah, super low waste as well. So I’m between 95 to 99% all myself in terms of efficiency. Like even the REDCap is fully printed place and even though I’m switching between four colors, it does all the purging inside it because I do, like, 20 at a time.
Sam [00:06:19]:
Very cool. I’m pretty interested in hearing your story and just the 3D printing. What’s next, for Wilbot?
Will [00:06:26]:
Oh, so so, definitely more stuff in the, castle system. We’ve actually got a I did this on the plane here because I was sitting beside someone who also was going to Armageddon. He was doing these crazy good sketches. I definitely know as good as him, but I was like, I wanted to draw as well just because, you know, I was feeling it. So, this is one thing I wanna do. So it’s like a, kinda like a knight, and that would turn into, like, some other building, like a little kind of castle, like a chamber, some Notre Dame type style thing. Then the, Dragon can combine with it in, you know, building mode, so you could build like a bigger fortress or in robot mode. The, Dragon would be like a jet pack thing for it, so you could see how that kind of goes in his back, like kind of wings.
Will [00:06:58]:
So, yeah, just, but, yeah, I only have, like, one good idea per year, but that’s all you really need because it takes quite a long time to actually make stuff that’s good. You can do it takes a couple days to make a working prototype and then to make something that won’t, go to shit. Because my mentality for it is the same as if you’re designing a Mars rover. You have to assume there’s zero maintenance it’ll have access to. Even though I warranty everything, I know that if something breaks, a lot of people just wouldn’t come back to me for some reason. Like, I I I basically beg people to do it, you know, if like a doggy or something. I I want to, you know, make something as good as Paul. But, yeah, I so I’m super super rough with my prototypes.
Will [00:07:28]:
Like, I’m always, like, when I’m designing stuff, throwing them on the ground just to see what will happen. I need to make sure that nothing, like, actually breaks, you know. They definitely are breakable, but here in this case, I threw it on the ground. That part popped off, went back on. So, yeah, I keep in mind that people will be jamming stuff in backpacks, dropping them, bringing them every like, I’ve actually had people that bought my spiders so long ago, like years ago, and they still play with them every day and they’re like, the the biggest issue is that they’ve got them dirty. So, I’ve and the good thing is, ABS plastic it’s, it maintains its strength up to like 90, a hundred degrees. So you can disassemble it and put it in the dishwasher and it’ll come out fine. Nice.
Sam [00:08:05]:
That’s awesome. That’s very cool, very cool. Is this full time job or
Speaker B [00:08:11]:
Yeah.
Will [00:08:11]:
So I did two years of product design at UC, which was amazing. But my, I’ve been doing the Etsy for much longer in the background. I actually wanna do that before going to uni. My parents assisted then. It was the right move because, you know, I could socialize, become a human. Yeah. But, yeah. I’d always wanna do printing and I’m aware that the window to get into this is closing because it’s getting to be a saturated market and I wanna take advantage of my lead, and that I got in early and actually establish myself before then.
Will [00:08:35]:
So
Sam [00:08:36]:
because yeah.
Will [00:08:36]:
It’s it’s already starting, you know, people saying, oh oh, yeah. I’ve been I break printed stuff all the time. Printed stuff is very breakable. And that is true, like, a lot of printed stuff is very breakable. Like, I see a lot of the stuff. I know that I could break it by flicking almost. So, I’m very, very conscious of making stuff that’s more even though it’s printed, it’s a traditional kind of strength. I try to match the, industrially produced stuff.
Sam [00:08:57]:
That’s awesome. There are a few people here selling different 3D printed items. Some of the stuff doesn’t look as well designed or as strong as this stuff. There is one person here with two printers actually running. Yeah. Is that right?
Will [00:09:08]:
Yeah. I wanted I actually brought my, box for for my printer. I think some people thought I was gonna actually set up a printer, but I just used that to chuck myself. And it’s quite nice because it was, first off the plane because it’s, like, the fragile stickers, so I think I put it on top of everything. So I’m gonna be doing that next time regardless.
Sam [00:09:20]:
Excellent. Thank you so much. Will, mega will bot dot com for all your, pumpkin spider needs. These are very cool looking things.
Will [00:09:28]:
That’s it. Very excellent.
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