Lego F1 3D Printed Frame
Disclaimer: Skip to below if you don’t want the bullsh*t here’s my life story and all you wanted was the recipe.
Weeks ago, I found myself captivated by a strategically placed Lego vending machine. In an airport. My youthful spirit sparked. A Lego F1 McLaren for $30. In a vending machine! For Lego and an Airport, that’s a pretty good deal. But I didn’t buy it.
Fast forward to now. I recently moved into a new apartment in Lincoln Park. I’m in the process of decorating the walls and finding an aesthetic that I like. I went to Target, and like clockwork, deviated from the plan for home decor and wandered to the Lego aisle. And there it was again, the F1 Lego sets!
There’s a satiating feeling being an adult with purchasing power. You don’t have to persuade anyone, you can just execute. All in favor say “Aye”. So I built the set, and I have to say it’s a pretty cool shelf trinket. A blocky figure depicting the pinnacle of an entire nation’s engineering resources stacked into a vehicle.
But a shelf doesn’t do it enough justice. Getting my interor decor focus /back on track/, I decided to hang it up. But outgrowing my hanging a cheap poster and jersey on the wall for decor phase, I needa spruce it up. What they don’t tell you is to escape this phase, all you gotta do is put your posters into a moderately cheap, semi-professional looking photo frame.
But I ain’t buying no cheap frame. I have a 3D printer! A frame for this thing will actually fit on my print bed. Time to get to work – for the printer, that is.
If you haven’t checked it out before, Bambulab’s MakerWorld is awesome. It’s the closest we have ever been to materializing REAL, PHYSICAL, and FUNCTIONAL products with TWO clicks and just a bit of patience. It’s the early stages of my first “BaCk iN mY dAy”. But seriously, it otherwordly from a kid who grew up:
- using a CR-10
- manually tuned Cura slicer settings for each material and print
- handled failed prints left and right
- hawked the first layer everytime for peace of mind
- loaded gcode onto SD card and popped it into the machine
- estatic that octoprint replaced the sd card
So yeah. Check it out. It’s getting pretty damn good.
I found a high quality, realistic texture frame on Bambulab’s MakerWorld. This frame is traditionally used for a 3D geographic map, but it’ll do for this project. My first thought was to lazily mount the car to the wall, stick a frame around it, and call it a day. But that required committing heavily to the mounting location. I like to switch things up. Instead, I was going to make it all in one.
Initially I thought of suspending the car with low vis transparent nylon strings (like fishing wire), but getting it right would be a pain, the Lego pieces could fall apart, yada yada. This drove me to a plaque like style. I used some materials to visualize a few backings for aesthetic. Different colors, textures, felt, cardstock paper, 3D printed, glass, acrylic. I ended up settling on a Matte, opaque-ish styrene (plastic) backing that would let the texture of the brick shine.
Also on MakerWorld, I found a file for mounting Lego F1 series cars to the wall. The plan was pretty clear, time to execute.
Preparation
BoM
- x1 Sheet Y”xZ” 1/16” Styrene
- x1 3D printed Frame (200mm x 160mm)
- x1 Lego F1 Car Mount
- x1 Lego F1 Car
- x1 Screw (Coarse 3mm Countersunk)
- x1 Nail or 3M Mounting Tape
Tools
- Drill
- Drill Bit Through-Hole
- Screwdriver - Pan Head Phillip’s
- Sharp edge box cutter, blade, or scoring tool
- Clamps
- Straight edge
Build
I downloaded this Lego F1 car mount and wooden textured frame from Bambulab’s Makerworld. This frame is traditionally used for a 3D geographic map art, but it’ll do for this. I considered a fully printed backer, but I wanted the exposed the brick wall I was hanging on. So I used a sheet of matte, syterene I picked up from Blick. Let that do some of the visual work.
I printed the frames in Overture Black PLA, scored the styrene (poorly, if you take proper precautions and learn from my mistakes, you can do much better than I), and cleaned up the edges with gaffer’s tape. It blends with the black PLA and keeps the matte aesthetic. The screw hole geometry is ~45° countersunk, so I used a wood screw I had on hand that matched head profile and length. A small bolt+nut would also work.
If you are cutting the sheet, you want to measure out your size, mark the line, and then clamp down a straight edge onto of your material and onto a table. You ideally want two clamp points so the guide and material don’t shift around on the table (for straight edge, prefer metal so you don’t slice into the straight edge on accident if it were say plastic). You want to score over the line many times, on both sides. Make sure to score back and forth. As my friend Charles’s says, once you think you’re done scoring, do it a few more times. Then you’re good.
Align the score line with the edge of a table and your metal straight edge. Gently apply pressure downwards on the piece you want to crack off. Eventually it should crack. Depeneding on the material, it is a good idea to wear gloves and glass in case an shards come flying off!!!
I messed up, and covered my crappy, chipped, scratched edges with some thin gafter’s tape to blend in with the black frame and align with the matte aestheic. From afar, you can’t really tell. Works for me. Put the sheet into the photo frame.
Center the F1 car onto the sheet with the mount underneath the wheels. I used the transparency and my cutting matt for centering. Once you like the positioning, take off the Lego carefully, so the mount stays in the spot you want. You can probably add a dab of super glue to hold in place.
I then used a sharpie to mark the hole and drilled a hold just the same diameter as the inner diamter of the wood screw. This way, the screw taps itself into the styrene with the outer threads carving itself into the plastic, creating a snug hold. DO NOT over tighten the screw, as you can and probably will ruin the snug fit by eating away at plastic.
Now you just mount it to the wall!
📂 Downloads
License note: the original photo frame file isn’t remix-licensed, so I’m linking to the MakerWorld original rather than re-posting.
— TK