Inspired by this Instagram Reel, I started creating my own Disco Clippy.
Requirements
Materials:
- 2m PVC Pipe
- 3D printed end caps
- small disco mirrors
- plastic mirror
- silver spray paint
- sand (from the nearest playground)
- filler
- sanding paper
- scrap plywood
Machines:
- hot air gun
- hot glue gun
- knipex clippers
1. Preperation
Get all the materials and print a photo of Clippy in your desired scale. If needed, scale it across multiple sheets of paper and print it out afterwards. I used Adobe Acrobat for this task.
Afterwards I glued the scaled up Clippy to a piece of cardboard and placed it underneath the pipe.
2. Bending Pipes
Once you got all the materials you need and you’re happy with the scale of your print, you can start by bending the pipes using a hot air gun. To keep the circle shape of the pipe, fill it with sand in advance.
3. Smoothing out Pipes
While using the hot air gun, my pipe shrunk into some funny shapes. To solve that, I used moltofil (some type of filler used for cracks in walls) to get a circle shape again. The Moltofil needed time to dry, afterwards I sanded it down using sand paper.
4. Printing the end cap
The pipe has a outer diameter of 20mm and a inner diameter of 18mm. I designed some end caps for the pipe with https://www.tinkercad.com/. The end caps later got covered with small mirror tiles.
Download the file on printables.com
5. Creating eyes and eyebrows
To get the eyes and eyebrows we need to cut the iris part of the eye and the eyebrows from a solid plastic mirror. I used a jigsaw for that and glued the plastic mirror inbetween two scrap plywood sheets with some doublesided tape, to reduce the vibrations. Without the support of the plywood the vibration would crack the plastic mirror really easily so this extra layer was needed.
I had to cut the mirrors at the curves with the Knipex clippers so that they were round.
6. Assembly
I sprayed the pipe silver to give it a nice appearance. This makes gaps between the small disco mirrors less noticeable. After creating the Eyes and Eyebrows I started sticking all disco mirrors on to the pipe. I had to cut some mirrors to size with the Knipex clippers.
Once the entire tube was covered with the mirrors and the end caps were fitted, I attached the eyes and eyebrows with a hot glue gun.
7. Final Result
Once everything was glued in place, I attached Clippy to the ceiling with a fishing line and a hook.
