Introduction: Build a 3D Printed Dalek!

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One of the most fearsome enemy of The Doctor is the Dalek. Those creatures, whose sole purpose is to EXTERMINATE! can now be part of your collection.

Here's how you can 3D print your own, very accurate Dalek.

Design of the Dalek provided by Audrey 2 with some of my own modifications.

Step 1: Decide on Your Material/color/scale

First, you will need to decide on which colors you will want to print this in. There are many parts to the Dalek design and each can be printed in its own color. You could also print it first in any color (or for some parts) then paint it. If you want to paint the parts, HIPS is a very good material for post-print painting.

I think it might also be a good idea to print the main body using BronzeFill as that will give a unique and more realistic feel to it (after polishing) and it will add some weight to your Dalek.

There are mostly 5 main colors to look for here:

  • The base would be grey, or dark silver
  • The main body which would be gold or bronze color, or printed with BronzeFill
  • The base of the hemispheres, the neck mesh and the joints for the eye and weapons in black
  • The weapons and eye in silver
  • The lights on top, in clear filament with the raised parts painted in silver.

You can of course chose a different color scheme and have a completely different looking Dalek!

The second thing to decide on is the scale of your Dalek. A 100% scale will give roughly a 16 cm high Dalek, but at that scale a lot of details might not be visible, especially for the accessories (eye, gun, plunger), so maybe you'll want to print it at 150% or 200% scale.

For reference, the image above shows a Dalek printed at 200% scale.

Step 2: The Base

First, we'll print the base of the Dalek.

The files base01.stl and base02.stl will print the grey base on which the dalek sits while the skirt01.stl and skirt02.stl will print the main body of the Dalek.

The front parts are base01 and skirt01 while the base02 and skirt02 are the rear of the Dalek.

Once printed, all the parts should fit together.

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Step 3: The Hemispheres

You will then need to print the hemisphere that are on the dalek's body. There are a total of 56 holes on the skirt, so you will need to print 56 hemispheres (hemisphere.stl) along with 56 hemi bases (hemi.stl). It is prefered to use a black or grey filament for the hemi base and a bronze/gold filament for the hemispheres.

Once you've printed all of this, you can then assemble the base of the Dalek. First apply some glue to the hemi bases and glue the hemispheres to them. then apply more glue to the other side of the hemi base and glue them all around the skirt.

Finally, asssemble the base by gluing the skirts and bases together and gluing the skirt to the base. You can use some ABS juice/glue (ABS mixed with acetone) to glue those parts together if you've printed them in ABS.

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Step 4: The Shoulder

The shoulder is pretty straightforward. Print the shoulder.stl file along with two sets of the boxdecal.stl model and one set of the slats.stl then glue everything together. The box decals will go around the holes for the arm and weapon and the slats will go all around the shoulder.

You will need to glue all of those pieces together then glue the shoulder to the base.

If you are having difficulty printing the slats due to their height and small surface of contact with the print bed, you can try laying them flat on the print bed and print them with supports. The issue with the slats being flat is that the holes has small hemispheres which will need to have support printed for them. I've taken care of making all the slats flat on the print bed, so you can print the slats-flat.stl file instead of the slats.stl file. You don't need to print both files!

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Step 5: The Neck

The neck of the Dalek consists of 3 main parts. First, you have the mesh which you can print in black, then you have the 3 horizontal rings and finally the vertical struts.

Print 4 copies of the neckmesh.stl file along with 8 copies of the neckstrut.stl and the 3 rings : ringbot.stl, ringmid.stl and ringtop.stl.

Note the position of each of the rings on your print bed as you load each STL (or print them separately), as the ringbot.stl is meant to go on the bottom of your assembly, the ringmid.stl goes in the middle while the ringtop.stl goes to the top of the assembly. If you do not remember which is which, then simply compare them one to the other, as the bottom one is the largest of the three, while the top one is the smallest.

First start by gluing the 4 neck meshes together into a circle, then insert the 8 struts into the rings and glue them together. Finally, insert the mesh into the rings+strut assembly.

Glue everything together and glue it to the shoulder assembly.

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Step 6: The Head

For the head, print the dome.stl file along with the cowl.stl which goes over the slit for the eye of the dalek. Finally, print two light.stl, preferably in a transparent filament to which you will then paint in silver the raised parts.

You can then fit the cowl on top of the done, glue them together, do the same to the two lights, and get ready to start on accessorizing your Dalek.

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Step 7: The Accessories

The Dalek has a few accessories. First, there's the eye, then the arm (the plunger) and finally, its deadly weapon : the egg beater! I mean, the laser beam....

Unfortunately, the original design was missing some components as it was expecting some of the items to be non-3d printed, such as the rods and the egg beater, so I've made new ones to be 3d printed.

For the eye, first print the eye-flat.stl file which contains two models that fit together. I've rotated 180 degrees one of the pieces so it can be printed without support material. You can put a small LED or something inside of there if you want to. Then print the eyehinge.stl which will serve as the joint on which the eye will swing. You will then need a 3.2 mm diameter rod to fit between the eye and the hinge. You can print the eyerod.stl instead and connect everything.

For the plunger, you will need to print the balljoint.stl as well as the plunger.stl and plungerring.stl and if you don't have the appropriate rod (3.5 mm diameter on one side, and 3.9 mm diameter on the other side), then print the arm.stl to connect the plunger to the body. The ball joint goes into the hole in the body.

Finally, the laser, for which you can use an egg beater and accessorize it with the guntop.stl and use the gunbottom.stl as the ball joint on the shoulder. If you don't have an appropriate egg beater, you can print the gunrod.stl and 6 or 8 copies of the gunfins.stl file and assemble it.

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Step 8: The Result

After you're done assembling everything, you'll get an awesome Dalek that you can be proud of!

The above pictured Dalek was printed by NoLiver92 at 100% scale.

Design by Audrey2 on thingiverse, released under CC-NC-ND license. Printed Dalek images by NoLiver92 on thingiverse, with authorization to use them for this Instructable. The rods for the accessories, gun and flat version of the STL files were my creation.