This 3D Printed Bad Juju Exotic Pulse Rifle from Destiny is Amazing

Destiny is a first person shooter developed by the same video game studio as the smash Halo franchise and at launch in 2014 became the largest video game launch in history–and, as we’ve seen, popular too among makers and cosplayers. In addition to the FPS aspect of the game, Destiny has many similarities to role playing games by incentivising replay to level up and earn new and rare weapons, upgrades, ships and equipment. These items have different levels of rarity, with “exotic” being the most powerful and difficult to acquire. The Bad Juju Exotic Pulse Rifle has been sought after because it offers the player instant reloads when an enemy is killed, as well as the options to attach several power-increasing upgrades.

The rifle also looks pretty great in game, with its attached skull that glows green and emits a small, continuous stream of smoke from its eyes. A gun that looks this cool is a perfect project for new, talented cosplay prop makers who use 3D printers for their projects. The Bad Juju rifle started as a downloadable 3D printable model designed by MyMiniFactory user Lael Lee, and it is an incredibly complex model that we saw briefly last month. But Bad Juju wasn’t truly finished until cosplayer and amateur prop maker Nimi Becza got a hold of it and gave it a spectacular paint job and some amazing handmade leather details.

“The rifle was painted with a mixture of lacquer spray paints on the main body, acrylic dry brushing on the bone parts and airbrushing on the blue shrouds. The leather parts are antiqued upholstery leather and the screws on the shrouds are epoxy sculpted. My friend helped me with wiring the Skull with a green LED but as of yet I have not found any smoke packs small enough to fit the rifle so if anyone has suggestions PLEASE message me,” explained Nimi on his Facebook profile

Lee designed his Bad Juju model at 1:1 scale, so it would match the in-game measurements pretty exactly. The completed and assembled rifle is about 33 inches long, and includes several moving parts including a functional charge handle, working trigger mechanism, and removable ammo magazine that slides and clicks into place. He also includes some pretty detailed assembly instructions on MyMiniFactory, so anyone who wants to try their hand at creating their own won’t have to figure out the complicated assembly process on their own.

Because of the high level of detail of the 3D model Lee said that it needed to be printed in over thirty individual pieces, and as any prop maker will tell you it is a huge pain assembling that many parts. But Lee took that into account and designed all of the parts to be assembled into individual component sections first, and then those individual sections can be assembled to finish the complete rifle. Lee also reduced the need for supports as much as possible to lessen the need for post processing, although there are a few parts that will require significant sanding before the rifle can be assembled.

Lee suggests that if you download your own Bad Juju Rifle that you 3D print the parts with a 0.2mm layer height using 10% infill. These settings will require about 1.8 kilograms of 3D printing filament and take approximately 112 hours of total 3D printing time. That is, of course, in addition to the hours needed to process and paint the final model. Nimi said that in total his version of the Bad Juju rifle took him about a month of his free time just to sand all the pieces with 600 grit sandpaper until they were smooth enough to be painted. He also coated several of the parts with XTC-3D to make them smoother and completely eliminate any stubborn striation marks.

I’ve said it before, but I think a 3D printer is clearly a cosplayer’s best friend. Not only does it allow them to create props and costume parts with a greater level of detail than most amateur sculptors are capable of obtaining, but it gives them the freedom to customise their props more than ever before. Let us know what you think of this cosplay prop over on our 3D Printed Bad Juju Exotic Pulse Rifle forum thread at 3DPB.com.