Freddie Mercury 3D Model Will Live On Forever… As Plastic

Freddie Mercury was the Lead Singer of Queen. The 2018 Bohemian Rhapsody movie highlighted the history of the Queen while focusing on the personal life of Freddie. I have listened to and enjoyed the music of Queen my entire life. Yet I’m about ten years too young to have experienced the music scene of their time. Watching the movie and hearing all of the music, brought back fond memories of listening to classic rock in my father’s car. So when I had the opportunity to print this Freddie Mercury model from Zsculptors, I jumped at the chance.

After a quick web search, I learned that this Freddie Mercury statue is based on famous pictures from Queen’s 1986 tour and the bronze statue in Montreux. The iconic yellow leather jacket and Adidas sneakers are captured in this 3D sculpture. I may have never seen Queen performing live, but Queen: Live at Wembley Stadium, and a few other concerts are available to buy for casual and super fans alike.

So if you are a fan of Freddie Mercury, and perhaps have a small collection of musician statues like me, give this model from Zsculptors a chance. Once printed, Freddie can “Live Forever” as plastic in your display area.

Freddie Mercury Statue

This statue replica was released at 1:6 or 12″ scale for 3D printing. The model package consists of cut and keyed parts for easier printing, painting and assembling. This Freddie Mercury set includes a small four parts, yet contains a ton of details and is easy to print. Here’s a list of the pieces.

• Base – Basic yet supports the statue’s weight properly
• Microphone Rod – A simple cylinder – Down scaling makes this challenging to print
• Lower body – Includes peg holes in feet for mounting to the base
• Upper body – Include a small hole to insert microphone rod into the left hand

Printing Goals

After re-watching 2018 Bohemian Rhapsody and realizing this model only has four parts, I decided to print it up real quick. I still haven’t started painting my printed figures (beyond primer), so this was a perfect project for some shiny Silk Green Bronze filament I bought a few months ago. Regardless of my deadlines or the reason for printing a particular model, I always have personal goals for the project. Here are this model’s goals:

• Complete prints – Success!
• Print model at 8-inch scale – Success!
• Create parts that need minimal post-printing processing  – Good results
• Paint the base to hide top layer defects and test some textured spray paints – Success!
• Share my insights and printer settings – Hopefully, someone enjoys my experiment results

Since I do not have a resin printer, I’m continually striving to improve my FDM prints. In the end, I printed two copies of Freddie so I could compare the quality difference in layer heights. Keep reading to get some more info below.

Hardware and Software

This project was printed on my modified Ender 5, which still has the STOCK hotend, cooling and extruder setup. Just like my last few figure prints, I used Cura 4.4.1, and it’s tree supports. In my opinion, some prints are more natural to print with the tree supports vs traditional ones. Future projects may use standard supports, as I continue to learn and tweak my printer profiles. If you are new to 3D printing and your printer came with an older version of Cura, I strongly suggest you update to the latest version.

AutoCAD’s MeshMixer was used to re-join the two body halves together. The Pivot, Align and Transform tools used together can reassemble most models. Minor alignment tweaking may be required, typically when the cut surfaces are not perfectly flat.

Filaments

For this project of the Freddie Mercury Statue, I used just two different rolls.

• Silk Green Bronze: CC3D PLA @ 215° C – Freddie Figure and Microphone Rod
• Galaxy Black: StrongHero3D PLA @ 205° C – Base

I have used CC3D PLA and PLA Max for other projects and had an unopened box of Silk Green Bronze. Like most of the online reviews, I was delighted with the sheen of the printed parts. The silky shine may not photography very well on my phone, but it in person it lives up to its reviews.

StrongHero3D’s Galaxy black was purchase for another figure, but I wanted to give it a try before starting that print. Although my printed pieces look like the online samples, the overall effect was a bit underwhelming, IMHO. The plastic is a very dark grey with tiny light-coloured specks. It does look good, but side by side with a plain black part the speckled effect is minimal. Perhaps I will find the perfect print for this particular roll in the future.

Slicing, Printing and Scaling

Now for the good stuff you were looking for, my experiences and tips for printing the Freddie Mercury Statue from Zsculptors. As I mentioned above, I used version 4.4.1 of Cura. I have re-sliced all the parts so I can show you the previews. I continue to tweak my printer profiles and spend way to much time orientating the prints and studying the gcode previews. Hopefully, my time and experiments will help you print this and other figures neatly.

Freddie Statue and Base

Overall, the figure printed quite well. Freddie’s feet are not perfectly flat, so I lowered the statue -0.30Z below the print surface and used a raft. The microphone’s rod is quite thin at this scale and did not print very well. The layers separated from each other as well as from the raft.  Support scars are mostly on the lower edges of Freddie’s coat and his chin. Fortunately, the dull surfaces from the finish sanding are minimal and hard to spot from an average distance. A custom support blocker was used for Freddie’s raised fist because Cura only wanted to support ONE very tiny spot.

My initial print of Freddie used 0.08 layers at 60 mm/s overall speed. The second and better-looking print was done using 0.10 layers and 30 mm/s overall speed. The actual print times were nearly 24 hours. However, as a one-piece print, I was willing to wait that long.

Freddie’s Statue base is basic yet functional and supports his weight properly. Printing it was easy. The base was printed with 0.28 high layers

Here are some quick slicing settings used in Cura for Freddie Statue on my Ender 5:

• 0.10 Layer Height – 0.32 Outer/Top/Bottom Line Widths – 0.4 Other Line Widths
• 4 Walls; 12 Top Layers; 8 Bottom Layers
• 5% ZigZag Infill
• 30.0 mm/s overall speed; Outer walls and supports at 15 mm/s; First layer and Brim at 20 mm/s
• Raft with 7.5 Margin
• Supports everywhere; 65° Overhang; 0.20 Z Distance & 0.8 XY Distance; Tree Supports with 60° Branch Angle and 2 Walls; Custom support blocker for a raised hand

3D Printed Eye Candy

Here are my printed parts of Freddie Mercury Statue with the supports removed and zero or minimal sanding done. The base was painted with a small stone texture paint, then top coated with Rubbed Bronze paint. Enjoy.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

Thanks for coming. Check back and look for more model reviews with printing tips and techniques.

Why not check out Anycubic Mega Zero – Is It An Ender 3 Killer? or how about Carl Knights Tianse Red Copper Silk PLA Filament Review

Disclaimer this item is not authorised or approved by the Freddie Mercury Estate or Queen Productions Limited.