Tamworth firefighter Jason Lee started his 3D printing hobby with just $200 and a few rolls of plastic. Now he's building life-size statues of his favourite cartoon characters in his backyard. His advice? Pick up a 3D printer and get started. Video by Gareth Gardner and Jonathan Hawes
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00:00So talking about the 3D printing, how did you get into it in the first place?
00:09So I saw a friend of mine that I went to school with had one and he was making cool little
00:13gadgets and things like that and I just started looking online at what was possible to do
00:19with them and I thought oh that would be pretty cool but I thought it was going to be really
00:22expensive so I just put it on the back burner and one day I decided to pull the trigger
00:27and just bought a small little Ender 3 V2 for a couple hundred dollars online and immediately
00:34fell in love with 3D printing.
00:48Most of the money that comes from 3D printing goes straight back into 3D printing.
00:53The ant here is a good example because you can see all these joints, he's at very early
00:58stages, so you can see the back end here is four pieces just for his back end and then
01:04another two here, the legs are all separate pieces.
01:07You fill it, sand it and then sand all the surfaces so they're smoother and then I get
01:14a resin product, paste it on, it takes a couple of days to cure and then undercoat it with
01:21paint and then get into the painting.
01:27And as soon as Jase, when he started his printing business and he came to me and said, Paddy
01:34what about a life size Goku?
01:36I was just throwing the notes at him, just take my money, take the money, I was so cool.
01:42It's a dream come true.
01:46I've loved Dragon Ball Z since I've been a little kid, probably six or seven.
01:50I've been obsessed with Goku ever since then.