6mm Wind Turbine - Hexed and Hexless by RainingFire

Last crawled date: 2 years, 11 months ago

Fitting that I happened to upload this on Earth Day 2021, this is a snap-together wind turbine that can be 3D printed for dioramas, model railroad sets, a desktop gift for a friend, or tabletop gaming. For tabletop gaming, the top of NacelleB is flat and can support a unit placed on top for playability. It is 9 levels tall, and the highest the blades can reach is about 14 levels tall if you're playing a specific mecha tabletop game. Note that it cannot actually catch wind - it is designed as a decorative piece that prints flat on your print bed.
It is fantastic as a decorative piece of tabletop terrain, especially as a realistic addition to rolling hills or open plains maps. The turbine pairs perfectly with the generator building and radome I have designed, which can be used as an electrical transformer and a weather radar that you often find in the middle of open fields.
-Generator: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4768430
-Radome: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4768463
Instructions:
-See below for more print settings.
-Print a tower, a nacelle, the blades, and two pins. For a smooth, more accurate design, print NacelleA. NacelleB has small structures on top to support tabletop game pieces.
-Inserting the pins is tight the first time due to the layer lines. Hold the tower and spin the blades for a minute to get it spinning nice and smooth. Afterwards, it should spin silently and easily with a light touch. The same goes for the nacelle.
-To smooth out the blades, sand them and/or use a filler primer before you paint them. This should be easy since there is no need to worry about keeping corners sharp.
As always, tipping is appreciated at: paypal.me/rainingfire416
Notable features:
-Freely spinning blades and a rotating nacelle so the turbine could catch wind from any direction in real life.
-Stairs and access door at the bottom to help convey the scale of the turbine.
-Easy snap-together design that pops apart for storage or transport.
-Scaled in mech-scale for a specific mecha tabletop game. In this scale (1:265-1:285) the turbine is approximately correctly scaled.
-Hex base prints with three extra hexes to provide great stability.
The model units are in mm and it is scaled such that the hexes are 33mm from flat-to-flat, which is perfect for modern hex maps using 33mm hexes. You can always resize it if your hexes are slightly smaller/larger.
Please post pictures and leave feedback if you make this yourself! I'd love to see prints and use the feedback to adjust overhangs, detail levels, etc. on this model and future ones as well.