Mystic Gear Box Wall Art

Typical $17.99 picture frames that say "Family the Heart of the Home" or some upside down red flower are so yesterday - don't you crave some spice, some color(maybe some rainbow 😉), or some flair in your decor in your home? Well look no further this instructable/project is all about spending a bunch of months and a lot more than $17.99 to make something way more epic than that lame picture frame. 🤩

This instructable will be more specific towards this project that I created but also to explain my brainstorming and thinking process so you can go off and do your own thing or build off this one!

• A 3D modeling software (I used Fusion360)
• 3D printer!
• LED Strip (I got one from Amazon)
• Superglue (or better alternatives to glue parts together)
• Acrylic paint (I used metallic colors)
• Wood Filler (optional, for touch ups)

First part is thinking about what your ultimate goal is, and what style you want the decor to be. The internet is your best friend and there are so many cool projects out there you can draw inspiration from. I decided I wanted to make a gear box after I saw this Etsy listing.

It's a laser cut project but I really like gears so I thought ok cool, a gear box would an interesting way to display some gears.

I also saw this Etsy listing that is also laser cut but incorporates an LED strip in the wall art piece to give it a soothing background effect.

Using these two projects as my main sources of inspiration, I had a good goal in mind of what I wanted to do.

I bought an LED strip from Amazon and based everything around the size of the battery box.

Now it's time to REALIZE those dreams. Get those ideas and sketches into models!

If you rather use the designs I created, here is a model of all the gears combined together in the arrangement that I liked.

I uploaded the individual gears I made too without the arrangement and cuts.

Also very important is to think about the COLOR of the project. In the first photo I used Fusions360's feature where you can apply materials onto models and customize the color of the material. This gave me a good sense of what would colors I wanted to do. I also did some test paints of the metallic paints I had bought on some failed prints to see how it would turn out. I realize the metallic paint on black PLA was a much better combo than metallic paint on white PLA. So always good to experiment on smaller examples before moving onto the real deal™

These are also uploaded onto Thingiverse (main Mystic Gear Project)

Other:

• Ouroboros Magic Circle Gear: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6707355
• Celtic Steampunk Gear: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6385803
• Tesseract Hex Magic Circle Gear: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6707358
• Sun and Moon Magic Circle Gear: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6707359
• Triangle Gear: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6707357
• Other Gears: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6707356

Now onto to a more tedious task. How are things actually gonna fit together? Hopefully you also were thinking about it as you designed it, but if you are like me, ingenious engineering is also a great solution : )

Fortunately we have great software at our hands that have Ctrl + Z. I basically played around by dragging the gears inside the box until I found an an arrangement I really liked. Then made a lot of construction planes to cut parts out.

This is how I imagined the LED would wrap around inside. I only wanted to use one LED strip. So it wraps around going outside the box and back inside.

For the inside gears what I did was basically make rectangular cuts that would fit on my printer bed (8in by 8in approx) and my plans was to take out the supported later and sand edges. Picture of what I mean by that above. I printed everything inside in black or silver PLA. Then I would paint over the gears with their respective colors. Then I would glue the pieces together like a puzzle piece and smooth out connections with wood filler.

For the box frame, I had to cut it in to 9 sections. Because my printer isn't great the corners were further split into two. And then all parts that had the actual frame part (the outside 8 sections) were also split into two. That's 21 pieces! So YMMV in how you cut the parts but this is how I did it. Also splitting the top frame part from the base box actually helped to assemble the gears inside later. Some pictures that help explain this. Sorry don't have great photos so I am just taking screencaps from the Youtube video I made.

Now you got all your models and plan ready to go! Its time to print! and Assemble! And Paint! This is a video that explains my process of making this project and covers this part the best. I used superglue on this part but I think next time I can use something better.

Time to hang the box! Now you have an epic decoration in your place! Now when all your friends visit they will be so amazed by how cool you are 😎 (ohohoho) and you can tell them all about your project!!