How to Make a Miniature Cardboard Statue With STL File File (compatible With Chromebook)

I've been interested in cardboard statues for a while now, and always wondered how professionals make it, and especially with so much precision in detail. That is, until I found out most people who made it at home use laser cutter and a laptop or desktop (not a Chromebook), and I didn't exactly have a laser printer in my house, at the time, so I decided if I could just figure out how to and make a much more miniature model without such detail that would already be pretty cool little designs to put around the house, especially if I figured out how to make it and made it by myself (I mean, I love bragging rights :) ). These little models made of cardboard are layers of cardboard, cut out from an everyday cardboard box, and stacked up and glued into what makes up what is now, as shown in the picture, but it's not as easy as it sounds to figure out how to do it from scratch. First off I had to find out how to see the layers that I had to cut out, and since I only had a Chromebook, not all apps were open to me. But if it wasn't for a 3d printer that we had, I never would have thought to use a STL file either, so I kind of stumbled upon how to make this amazing invention, when I was trying to find a website that could use on my computer and not have to go ask my dad for his Mac to slice and export files to the 3d printer every single time. While messing around with the website's functions I found a way to see each layer that the 3d printer prints. This reminded me of the goal I had in mind a couple months ago about making a cardboard statue. Now I'd like to introduce to you exactly how to make one, without a laser cutter especially if you have a Chromebook.

1. Computer
2. Printer (colored ones work best)
3. Cardboard
4. Scissors
5. Glue (any type that can hold layers of cardboard together, I used a hot glue gun)

There are many websites and choices, these files are mainly used for 3d printing. Here are a few websites I use,

1. Thangs
2. Thingverse
3. Cults
4. Printables
5. MyMiniFactory

These are just a few you can pick from

Now, what your looking for if your a beginner, is a low poly file, which you can just search up, or one with out much detail and doesn't need many supports, I made a Pikachu, as I'm a large Pokemon fan :).

1. Since I currently have a Chromebook, I was having trouble finding a website where I could see a file layer by layer, of the file I wanted. Now I finally found one called Cloud 3d Print. In it, all you have to do is make an account, then go to projects and click on +Add Models on the upper right corner.
2. Click the green analysis, some times there's a glitch so if it just always says analyzing forever, then just upload another random file after and it should say Slice
3. Click on Slice
4. Now you're in, you might want to increase the infill, but it really doesn't matter, you might have to adjust it's position as well, but at the end you should have a perfect view of the top of the file.
5. Now click slice on the bottom right corner
6. Now you should be able to see a slide on the right, which symbolizes the layers. Slide it down to where you want the bottom of your cardboard statue to look like (its feet or base), if you don't want the base then you can always start a bit higher; above the base like I did.
7. Now you just adjust the height and take a screen shot every time, make sure that you don't adjust the size or zoom out or in, in-between or during screenshots.

(Depending on how many layers there are, the thickness of the cardboard your using, and how much detail you want, the amount of height that you change it by will vary.)

Written Example for step 7:

Layer height 5, screen shot, layer height 35, screen shot, layer height 65, screen shot, layer height 95, screenshot, and so on (in this example it was increasing by 30)

(Now that you have your screen shots, you have to make sure their all the same size if you want to resize the.)

1. Print out just the bottom on first to make sure you have the size that you want right
2. Once the size is correct, print out the rest. (Here's a little trick I found to print multiple at the same time and not to waste so much paper, *Save the trees!*: Just place the screen shots onto a Google slide as shown in the picture, BUT STILL MAKE SURE THEIR THE SAME SIZE, you won't want 3 layers that line up perfectly then another two just hanging out, out of place, because you resized the screenshot to big)
3. After printing them, cut out the top layer of each (mostly the blue part as shown in the picture)
4. Now tape them onto the cardboard by making double sided tape by rolling the tape into a cylinder shape.
5. ********NUMBERING THE CARDBOARD AND THE PAPER HELPS A LOT **********
6. Once you have all the cardboard layers, peel the paper and tape off if you haven't done already
7. Now glue them together layer by layer, and make sure they're all in the correct direction
8. DONE! You've made a miniature cardboard statue!