Hey! Listen!

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. More like:

Yes, I did spend around an hour in paint making this

That's right! I'm 3d printing an Ocarina. Why: because it's cool, and why not?

But first off: What is an Ocarina?

An ocarina is an old type of handheld vessle flute with four to twelve finger holes with a mouth piece that extends away from the main vessel. They are typically made of ceramic or clay, but can be made out of virtually any material. This old instrument gain new popularity when it featured in the aforementioned nintendo video game.

I was (staying up way too late) and watched KFaceTV's "Zelda Jiggle" video. One of the things that caught my eye was the mock of of the ocarina of time that they used as a prop.
It was pretty cool and I have wanted to get an ocarina ever since first seeing the game, but replica's avaliable online cost form $20-$40, and right now I don't have that money to spare (it's reserved for yarn and books). But what I do have is a place at a school that has a shiny, shiny Makerspace. And that Makerspace has shiny, shiny 3d printers.
I headed over to Thingiverse and found a model for a printable Ocarina. It had plenty of "makes" meaning that a lot of people had printed it, and generally positive reviews. My tip to anyone getting anything from Thingiverse or anywhere like it: check the makes and comments, they will tell you whether or not you will waste your time. After downloading it, I plugged it into our Ultimaker and started the print.

The controls took a bit of getting used to, it's the little dial a the bottom.

As far as I know (I had class and it took 9 hours, longer than the total school day) the top of it printed without a hitch. I came in the next morning and freaked out some middle school kids when I cackled maniacally upon seeing the finished print. All I had to do was yank out the supports and I had the top half of my Ocarina. The bottom was not so easy. After starting it in the morning I cam back around lunch and found two bases (the initial layer of plastic) on the table, meaning that something had screwed up and the teacher had restarted the print. I checked the one in the printer and AI YAH! As far as I could tell, the extruder had somehow caught on the supports in the center and dragged it out, meaning that it was now just extruding into open space when it made the supports. This had also resulted in a bunch of little bubbles and strands popping out of the main print. I stopped the printer and reset it, but the extruder was jammed so I had to run the print till plastic started coming out then stop it, quickly clear the print bed, and restart it. When I left school it seemed to be alright, but we'll see on monday. Still, it's pretty cool.

If you want to check out more 3d printing issues both cool and crazy take a look at "The Art of 3D Print Failure" on flicker.
https://www.flickr.com/groups/3d-print-failures/