The Ultimate (Ultimate) Frisbee

We often find humor in supersizing ordinary objects.  Not only can the exercise make us laugh, but it can also become thought-provoking and serve as the launching point into a more detailed study of something we are familiar with in everyday life or might take for granted.  This particular challenge was more of a chuckle... but it sure was fun: would a ~2.5x scale frisbee work?   

​You're probably familiar with the "Ultrastar" (tm) frisbee, which was our model for this exercise.  CAD was sourced online from Isaac Dunbar via GrabCAD (linked here).  Thank you for the great CAD and head start with this project!

The first step once I found the CAD was straightforward: scale this baby up!  Our F900 FDM machines can do a maximum part size of about 36x24x36", so I scaled to a 2.5x factor to keep things easy, which came out to a ~22" diameter toy.  After making some very minor modifications to the CAD (adding a fillet to the inside corner and scooping out some excess material in the finger hold area), we were ready to print!  I also added some raised text to label the frisbee; by pausing the print after that layer and swapping materials out we can create 2-tone prints.  

We had some remnant materials from an earlier job (bright red and blue colors) that made for the perfect material on this print.  About 1 day later, the piece was done and looked fantastic!  

Hot off the press (support material still in place)

All cleaned up and ready for fun!

After a few quick tosses indoors (being careful not to break stuff), James and I felt that we were ready for prime time.  We took our drone over to the field and got to playing frisbee... or at least trying to!  It was more of a workout than I'd like to admit, but the frisbee did want to fly.  See below for a few action shots!