3D printed Klagenfurt lindworm

Klagenfurt is a city in Carinthia, Austria. Its landmark is a giant stone dragon posing in the city center, called the Klagenfurter Lindworm. As I wanted to get into 3D modelling with Fusion 360, I thought this would be a good opportunity to create a 3D printed figure which is illumated with an LED.

Materials

• 1x 5mm LED white
• 1x 3V CR2032 battery
• Transparent filament
• Hot glue

Model

Klagenfurt’s lindworm icon was a great reference as it already eliminated most of the details. I simply imported the icon into Fusion 360, started to create a rough contour with lines and finally extruded the whole plane into a 3D object.

The finished .stl file can be found on my github in this repository. It is designed to fit a 5mm LED barely into the bottom. Use a lighter to heat the material of the hole to fit the LED better. After the fitting process I removed the LED to create the stand for the figure.

LED mount

The mount is as minimalistic as possible. Just the LED, its wires, a battery and some hot glue to create a sliding mechanism which turns the LED on and off. First of all, bend the two wires of the LED 90° outwards in opposing directions. Then add some hot glue in between the legs so that the battery does not touch any of the wires at the base of the LED - otherwise the battery could be shorted. I omitted the resitor intentionally as I deemed the battery’s internal resistance as sufficient enough.

Place the battery in correct orientation to shape the LED wires. In the whole process make sure that the battery can always slide out sideways; that is our on/off switch.

Bend the LED’s longer leg (anode) so that it can reach around the battery. The shorter leg (cathode) is bent in an “U” shape and stays on top of the battery. The legs should touch only the designated battery poles so that the LED is lit up. I also added some unevenness (bumps) to the anode and cathode to make some space for the hot glue to wrap around the wires.

Add some hot glue to the LED wires to create a platform for the battery and also to isolate the legs from the oposite pole. Especially the anode must be isolated from the cathode. Now just assemble the two components and see there, a fully lit lindwurm dragon.