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Creating a Golden Gnome: 3D Printers and a Little Ingenuity
August 30, 2023 | Patrick Crawford, IPCEstimated reading time: 1 minute
A-Teams play such a crucial role in helping standards committees accomplish their goals that IPC established the Golden Gnome Awards Ceremony in 2021 to recognize their contributions. As part of the event, IPC wanted to provide a tangible and meaningful keepsake for award winners to take home.
IPC invested in 3D printers and leveraged their capabilities to create unique and personalized gnome trophies. When a winning A-Team member walks away from the Golden Gnome Awards Ceremony carrying their statue, they’re holding a “project” that’s equal parts science and design, a symbol of modern technology combined with old-school creativity.
This year’s statue design process began shortly after SummerCom 2022 when IPC technical staff met to determine the theme of the 2023 event. Partially inspired by the release of “Top Gun: Maverick,” the tech staff chose to fashion this year’s celebration after the original Tom Cruise classic. My “top secret clearance” design requirements: the eponymous gnome must have aviator sunglasses, a fighter jet, and a volleyball.
I started with a few preliminary sketches, ruling out the too-silly, too-complex, and too-time-consuming. Then I used Fusion 360 to build a few CAD models for the tech team’s review. To maintain a thread of tradition, I incorporated the same gnome body as the two previous years’ designs, but with a different headgear and pedestal. The tech team reviewed my designs and made their final decision. Knowing I would need help—where would Maverick be without Goose?—I enlisted technical team intern Nick Thelen to repair and refine the model mesh using Blendr, a 3D modeling tool.
IPC employs three Elegoo Mars 2 Pro UV-LCD printers—Kraken, Nostromo, and Black Pearl—to fabricate the various trophies, badges, challenge coins, key fobs, and other keepsakes gifted and earned throughout IPC departments and programs. Kraken and Nostromo is housed in Crestwood, Illinois, while Black Pearl is housed in Sant Pol de Mar, Barcelona, Spain, under the care of Fran Fourcade.
All the details about how Patrick created these statues are in the summer 2023 issue of IPC Community.
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