My wife and I just finished watching the first season of Westworld. What a great show. I don't want to give away any spoilers for those that have not seen it yet, but there's a cool maze prop in the show.

As soon as I saw it, I thought to myself, "I am so 3D-printing one of those!"



I was about to jump into SketchUp to start work on the model but I needed to search the web for some reference images. To my surprise, someone had already beaten me to it! Actually, I take that back. I'm not surprised. I know I'm a little late to the party on this show, so of course there's a million people out there who have already thought of this.

Needless to say, I found a really well-made 3D model on Thingiverse. I couldn't have done a better job myself.



The plan was to stain it a dark brown, so I attempted to print it using wood filament. Unfortunately, that print failed an hour or two in. The maze walls started to peel away from the bottom layer. It was a mess. I canceled the print and decided to use regular PLA. I'll just paint it.

I didn't have enough black or brown PLA to print the model, so I used a roll of glow-in-the-dark PLA. I don't have much use for glow-in-the-dark PLA, but a friend at work gave it to me. I took it because it was free and I figured it would come in handy for prototyping. Honestly, how much stuff do you really need to glow in the dark? Since this is a weekend project, I didn't want to have to order another roll of black and wait for it to arrive. I figured I'd just use the glow-in-the-dark stuff and just spray paint it black.

With a 5.5" diameter, it took 5 hours to print. It came out really nice.



Damn, does this stuff glow in the dark! It's really bright, but it fades very quickly.



In order to give it that rusty, corroded look, I needed to give the plastic a texture.

I dissolved some Elmer's glue in some hot water and then submerged the model until the whole thing was covered in the sticky slurry.



I then sprinkled some fine hobby sand all over the model.



I then let it dry overnight.



I then get it a few taps to knock off the loose sand and then gave it a few coats of black spray paint. It came out really cool. It definitely has that old, rusted iron look and feel.



I then gave it a coat of brown.




I picked up some acrylic paints to add a little weathering.



Not bad. It looks a lot darker in the photos. It's actually a lot browner than it looks.





I then designed a small stand for it in SketchUp.



I didn't want to waste my good wood PLA so I printed it in black first to make sure that it fit OK.



It fits perfectly.





I then printed the final one using the wood PLA.



I then gave it a light sanding and a coat of stain.



I think it's safe to say I nailed it. It looks pretty darn good to me.