Introduction: Dawn's Ballad - 3D Printed Cosplay Sword

This is a cosplay sword from the novel/comic The Beginning After the End written by TurtleMe and illustrated by Fuyuki23. I am a student at Irvington High school and I made this project for my Principles of Engineering class with Ms. Berbawy. I created the sword because I love the series and wanted to try to make it real. The sword is a translucent blue and it is written in the novel that it seems like a crystal. Inscribed on the blade is inscribed with the text "Dawn's Ballad W. K. IV"

Supplies

You will need

Tools

  • Lulzbot Taz 6 (any large printer will work)
  • Fusion 360 for cad
  • Lulzbot Cura Slicer

Attachments

Step 1: Design

The first thing to do was figure out what type of sword Dawn's Ballad is. After doing a bit of research and checking the length relative to the characters height in the novel, the blade appears to be as long as a one handed longsword while the hilt appears to be a two-handed hilt.

The character once mentions using the sheathed blade as a walking stick, so using this online calculator, I figured out what length to make the blade relative to my height, and this one for how long to make it sheathed to use as a walking stick.

Next, the blade and hilt design appear to be different based on different drawings in the comic, thankfully the author once clarified what the blade should look like. Using that I finalized two hilt designs, pictured above that I used to decide which one was more comfortable. Once I finalized the design, I printed the white one which I used to determine whether the hilt size was correct.

Next, I knew the blade needed to be thin, so I designed the blade to be as thin as I could confidently make around the internal stability dowels. I specifically rounded the edges of the blade to make it harmless.

Finally, the most frustrating part of the designing process was getting the text on the blade. I wanted to recreate the carved aesthetic of the novel, so I spent hours getting the text to look just right, playing with the individual curves, sizing, and spacing.

Finally, now I just needed to test the dimensions, or so I thought.

Attachments

Step 2: Test Sizes

This step was not all that hard, it just took a while, the parts just did not want to play nice. Above are some of the trial pieces I printed to get the dimensions dialed in. Some of them I wanted kind of loose, but others I needed to make as tight as possible.

The final sizes for the sheath and hilt dimensions are above, the one with the 4 squares is the sheath dimensions I used for the structural dowels. For specific about how I broke the sheath into pieces and arranged them, you can look at the attached STL files.

For the hilt, I made the dowels and blade recede into the hilt in order to make a better aesthetic connection between the two. That is why in the two similar pictures, the one with the smaller numbers is for the hilt, I wanted that connection as tight as possible. This came back to bite me later.

Step 3: Final Print

Attached above are the final STL files. There were some major changes I made in later steps, so looking at the sheath files may confuse you right now. I printed everything on a Lulzbot Taz 6 3D printer. Make sure to add some increased build plate adhesion like glue or a raft, otherwise the pieces will fall and ruin everything, it happened to me, multiple times. When printing the blades, make sure to bleed the previous filament so that you don't end up with weird tinted pieces (the short piece above is an example). For the sheath, the tolerances are as big as I can make them without threatening the stability of the print. In fact, every print I have done for this project has had to be done multiple times, 3-D printers just hate me. Make sure to print all of the pieces vertically, it causes the text quality on the blade to come out better.

I'll show pictures of the sheath and explain that on step 6, right now I am focusing on the blade.

Step 4: Glue Sword

Take all the sword pieces and put them on the dowels. I originally tried to use e6000 glue, but it didn't really stick. I switched to Gorilla epoxy. The e6000 also seems to discolor the black filament (discussed further in step 6), so definitely use epoxy for that. I'll explain why I don't have any pictures of the glued sheath in step 6.

Do not glue the blade into the hilt. Just push it in after you paint, I tried to push it in the entire 5 inches I planned, but the tolerances are very tight, and I didn't want to break anything so I only pushed it in halfway. As long as you don't need to use it in battle, the blade will be fine.

Step 5: Paint

I originally planned to use primer on the blades, but it adds to the thickness of the sword and it may stop the pieces from entering the sheath. The ghost tint I linked above is supposed to be used in an airbrush, but I could only get it to work once on a test piece, so I hand painted the rest with a brush. Make sure to lightly sand and wipe the blade first, it helps the paint. Above is the piece that didn't fit after the primer, and a half-painted piece. I don't have an image of the fully painted version before I put it in the hilt.

Step 6: Stuff Goes Wrong and Then Gets Worse

When printing the sheath, I printed it together with the hilt. What happened, was that I assumed that t-glase comes in 1kg rolls like every other filament I had. However it was only a pound, so it ran out during the print. So as you can see in the closeup, all the pieces were incomplete. I did not have enough filament to redo every part, so I did some math and calculated how short the sheath was and shortened the dowels by that amount. Thankfully, I had enough filament to redo the hilt.

But wait, I said it got worse didn't I. Above is an image of what E6000 does to black t-glase, even when not in direct contact with that part.

But wait, it gets worse. Once I finished gluing, I test fit the parts, but some E-6000 spilled out of the cracks of the blade, so once I put the blade into the sheath, it broke inside. Only half the blade came out. In an effort to recover the blade I ripped apart the sheath. I was able to recover the blade, but it became very very clear that that sheath was not going to work.

This is why I don't have any pictures for the glue step. When the panic set in, I forgot to take pictures.

Step 7: Panic and Improvise

Here I came up with multiple solutions, but there were problems with a lot of them. The simplest solution I could find was to create a start to the sheath and an end. Then connect the two with dowels and wrap the middle with electrical tape. This would allow the blade to enter and exit while not rubbing or getting stuck in the middle.

So I adapted a new version using the designs of my old sheath and printed them.

Step 8: Wrap Dowel

I recovered my pieces from the printer, then glued them to the dowels. Once you have the exposed dowels glued in, it is time to wrap it with the fake electrical tape. One of the pictures above is the start and end piece connected with short dowels, make sure to use the length you want. If you wrap it too tightly, it will stop the blade from going in and out, in addition, the tape will stick to the blade. Keep a knife with you, I needed to cut off the wrapping many times because I wrapped too tightly.

Eventually I realized I needed to wrap the dowels with newspaper. Do not wrap it tightly, just tape one edge to one of the dowels, then wrap loosely once and tape it back to itself. Then wrap the newspaper with electrical tape. Make sure to put the blade in the sheath when you wrap, it will make it easier.

The sheath should be matte black, so I planned to warp it with tennis racket over grip tape. However in my attempts it ended up too tight, so I ended up ditching the idea. The wrapped area is narrower than the printed pieces, I planned to wrap it more to fill it out, but once again I wrapped it too tightly so many times that I had to forgo that step.

Step 9: Stare

Now that everything is glued, painted, and wrapped; the sword is done. Congrats and please don't spend too much time staring at it.

The pictures above have been color corrected in Lightroom, because the blade does not appear correctly in pictures, or the more likely answer being I don't know how to take pictures. The text is harder to see on camera, but really easy to see in person.

The mp4 includes the sounds of sheathing and unsheathing, I highly recommend you listen.

Attachments