Poseidon's Trident

thingiverse

No lord or lady of the sea should leave home without their triple-tined symbol of sovereignty. Use it to create wells, invent the horse, slay giants, or just as a handy walking stick. If you happen to be a child of the sea, or a mere mortal, well... you could use it for cosplay or as a handy walking stick! (This one is probably not very good for spear-fishing.) Print three of the tines with the tip of the tine on the build surface, and the outside curve pointing up. The hub and cap pieces should be printed with the dowel rod opening facing down; no support structures should be created using default settings, as the roof of the opening is sufficiently angled. Print any number or combination of rings that you like, for whatever arrangement you like. I decided I wanted my tines, hub and cap in Glow-in-the-Dark, and to spray my dowel rod and ring pieces with golden spray paint. These are entirely personal choices. Clean up thoroughly after printing by removing all support structures and sanding down rough spots. Pay special attention to smoothing out the faces on the tine and hub which will be sliding along each other as there is very little wiggle room (for a reason). Cyanoacrylate works well for re-affixing broken parts of the tine during cleanup. Gather all the necessary parts including a 1.25" dowel rod, a hub piece, a cap piece, three tine pieces, some ring pieces (optional), and fasteners such as small wood screws. Assemble the hub and cap by sliding them onto the end of the dowel rod and fastening them in place with small wood screws. Any rings should be slid on in the desired order before fastening the ends. The tine shapes are designed to barely slide into the hub piece after thorough removal of support structure and good sanding, staying firm by friction alone. It's time to cosplay! Lessons learned: experiment more with joints between pieces for greater freedom from printer constraints. Getting these to fit just right is more difficult than expected, but settling for "good enough" due to time constraints can be a viable option. Don't trust material usage estimates in MakerWare too much when near the end of your spool; it might still look cool!