The Pumpkin Spider

The creepy crawly classic

The spider started out as a sketch in the margins of a workbook, and after tinkering with the concept I set out to make the pumpkin spider into a proper toy.

The spider was my biggest project yet, and its development taught me most of what I know about 3D printing. One of the first things it taught me was efficiency. The V1 was printed on a UP Mini 2, with a raft and supports needed around every part. The print would take 8 hours, and after breaking off the supports, I’d need to acetone smooth rough parts, apply superglue around stems as reinforcement, paint each part, and assemble. The whole process ended up taking a long time for the printers and I- maximum output was 1-2 spiders per day.

Progress was slow but steady as I figured the details out- I switched to using pre-coloured ABS for the different parts, which resulted in improved tolerances & playability over paint, and gradually improved the design to remove supports, improve quality, and reduce assembly time.

After buying a Flashforge, a budget yet solid dual-colour printer, I was able to print the eyes on top of the head, rather than making them separately. The stalk/”hat” received a similar improvement, and I also began altering the design to print with less support material. And soon enough, post-processing time was reduced from hours to just minutes.

After starting business in-person at markets, I was able to really put my products to the test. By offering free replacement parts I was able to receive solid knowledge about how my parts behaved in the real world, and build a good customer base- each time there was a breakage report, I’d always make sure to blame the part in question for the breakage, and then find a way to improve it.

Currently the spider prints with no supports, and is optimised for part strength and waste reduction. My business card, a small keychain ruler, prints underneath the spider’s legs- acting as a raft without increasing waste. The inner legs themselves are printed as a stack, with a small gap between them, so that they can act as a raft for each other & permit high fan speeds for ideal overhang quality (Essential for ball joints).

Part of the spider’s development involved research into print automation & ejection. The first attempts involved a bulldozer attachment on the side of the printhead, but once I had access to Bambu printers I was able to develop a new in-house automation system with a bulletproof part release cycle. In its current state, the biggest issue is the finished parts tray overflowing if I don’t empty it often enough!

The spider’s design is now over 98% material efficient, and the quality is at a point where I’m frequently asked whether the parts were sanded, or printed in resin.

The seasonal theme helped a lot- After releasing it at the start of October, it ended up on the front page of Thingiverse for a month, and every year the downloads and online sales bump around Halloween :)