Website – layer.works

WeTheBuilders…

I decided to participate in WeTheBuilders‘ most recent project to make a large, distributed, crowd-sourced 3-D printed statue.

This latest project was a statue of Charon, the psychopomp Styx ferryman of Greek mythology, sculpted by Ryan Kittleson. This collaboratively-printed sculpture was displayed at Loveburn 2025, in Miami in February 2025 and is now back in Baltimore awaiting display in a more permanent home.

A full gallery of the assembly process and final display at the festival.

Participating in the crowd-sourced project was a great experience. I ended up printing 4 pieces for the Charon statue. They provide the .STLs (via a check-out mechanism), you provide the plastic, the printing, and shipping to them.

Some quick facts about the project:

The final statue was about 5 feet tall, 2.5 feet wide, and 4 feet front-to-back.
Approximately 40 individuals printed parts for this project.
The sculpture was subdivided into 260 parts using Luban.
Participants were encouraged to include a coin in the parts they printed, in the style of the ancient Greek tradition of burying the dead with a coin in their mouth to pay the ferryman’s toll across the river Styx.

Full credit where due: the WeTheBuilders team ran logistics, conceptualized the project and sculpture, received and assembled the parts, and transported the finished project from Baltimore to Miami and back.

I look forward to participating in future WeTheBuilders projects and would encourage you to look into participating as well. At the very least, consider a bookmark and visit the site occasionally for updates.

WeTheBuilders.com

How to Post a Model on Printables.com

Post a Model

Login to Printables with your username and password.
In the upper-right hand side of the screen, click the “+ Create” button (highlighted in yellow, below).

Select “Model” (in yellow, below) to upload a design that you have made or modified.

The minimum information that you will need to provide:

A 3-D model file of your design (.stl, .3mf, .step, sl1s, .stp, .amf, .obj)
A picture of your model (.jpg, .gif, .png). This should preferably be a photo of the model printed out if possible, but a screenshot of a preview or render also seems to be acceptable.
A name for your model
A short summary of your model
A category your model should be listed in (selected from a provided list
Which license you wish to publish your model under

Enter and upload the required information and you are ready to publish your model for all to see.

If you aren’t ready to publish yet, leave the slider on ‘Draft’ and press the “SAVE DRAFT” button to save your draft for later use. When you are ready to publish your design publicly, click the Draft/Publish slider over to ‘Publish’ and then press the “PUBLISH NOW”.

Keep in mind that publishing is not a final, permanent decision. You can continue to edit your model and all fields about your model. If you decide there was a mistake or you want to retract your publish, simply slide the slider back to ‘Draft’ and press the “SAVE DRAFT” button to make it private again.

Additional fields

Above we addressed the minimal, required fields to publish your design to printables.com. There are a number of other optional fields you should consider completing to help the site and other users find your model more easily, categorize your model, or use your model more effectively. These include:

Additional Tags
linking Remix files (reference the original files)
a detailed Description
any other supporting files (.txt, .pdf (instructions))
Print files (.gcode, .sl1)

You can also re-arrange your photographs that you uploaded and choose which one will be used as a cover photo (‘set as cover’) for your object in the 3-D Models index on printables.com.