Ruiz Brothers At It Again With Their 3D Printed Wooden Legend of Zelda Sword

Link, a character in the popular Legend of Zelda series, wields an iconic wooden sword he swings to ward off enemies, and the Ruiz Brothers have now created a tutorial to show you how to 3D print that sword using bambooFill from ColorFabb.

The filament uses recycled bamboo fibers and PHA/PLA to result in a material that, according to the brothers, “prints just like PLA so it works pretty good on most FDM 3D printers.”

Their tutorial is a step-by-step walk through of how you can 3D print, assemble, and finish Link’s sword for yourself.

Noe and Pedro Ruiz put together outlandish 3D printing and electronics projects at Adafruit and they build interesting projects under their collective nom de plume, The Ruiz Brothers. The pair are the creative team behind a design studio, Pixil 3D, and their Florida studio is the hub for the work. The pair say they shifted their focus to 3D printing, designing products, and offering 3D printing services a couple of years ago, and when not taking part in local 3D printing meet ups, they take present demos and share their work.

The pair say the Link’s Sword project is geared towards makers with at least basic 3D printing skills and, of course, access to a 3D printer. They designed the 3D parts for machines with at least a medium build platform, but they say you can edit their files for use on smaller printers.

If all goes to plan, the brothers say printing all the parts can take up to 18 hours and uses nearly an entire spool of bambooFill.

To take on the project, you need bambooFill filament, some NinjaFlex filament, a 3D printer, blue tape, a flush diagonal cutter, a palette knife or similar tool, and a bunch of 5 3/4′ x 1/4” skinny craft sticks.

The parts were printed with a 15% infill at a 0.2 layer height at 60mm/s print speed and 120mm/s travel speed. The 600mm sword was broken up into four separate files to build the pieces, and the brothers used a Printrbot Plus to print the project for its max Z-height of 250mm.

The brothers used E6000 adhesive to permanently bond the parts together, and they let the glue fully cure for about a full day.

One interesting facet of the project is that the brothers say bambooFill, as it’s made of real wood, can take up wood stains like MinWax as part of the post-processing finish.

You can check out the entire project and review all the details of the process here on Adafruit. Also be sure to check out their video, below, describing the project.