Rainbow Road 3D for the new Mario Kart Live

BCN3D has printed Rainbow Road 3D for the new Mario Kart Live.

Mario Kart is one of the most iconic series developed and published by Nintendo. BCN3D as a technology company that thrives through innovation has always been fascinated by Nintendo as a company that is characterized by its constant ability to grow and evolve. Additive manufacturing specialist Antonio Aranzana came up with the idea to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros with a special 3D printed Rainbow Road track for Mario Kart Live.

One of the toughest circuits has been chosen and most often appears last in all sagas. In the original video game, this circuit seems to float in space with a very small railing that makes it easy for you to fall off the track. In this case, the track has been laid on the floor, which allows the player to return to the track unhindered.

This colorful track consists of exactly 4,434 pieces printed from PLA. The track was printed locally at the BCN3D headquarters in Barcelona, ​​and its size is 5 by 5.4 meters. There are only 3 different types of tiles that make up the circumference - one for the sides, one for the center and one for the edge. The only difference between the tiles is that the central pieces have holes on all four sides for attaching other plates to it, while the side and corner pieces have holes on only two or three sides. They are connected in an easy way similar to the pieces of a puzzle.

The tile model has been designed to use a 0.6mm hotend to reduce printing time. Each element requires 9 minutes of printing and 3 grams of PLA material. Two and a half spools of filament of each color of the rainbow were used to print the entire track.

A BCN3D Sigma R19 3D printer was used to create the track. This printer has a capacity of 210 x 297 x 210 mm, which allows you to print 34 pieces of plates in one hour and 50 minutes using the duplicate mode. This means that during an 8-hour working day, the printing process can be started 5 times, with 1,200 units per day. The BCN3D company used 10 such 3D printers, which meant that they needed 4 days to print the entire track.

If you used the new Sigma D25 3D printer, the track printing process could be shortened to 3 days. The Sigma D25 has a print volume of 420 x 300 x 200 mm, which allows you to print 48 pieces simultaneously within three and a half hours, which is 1,440 pieces per day. This one-day variation may not sound like much, but starting the printing process 93 times instead of 185 makes a big difference in terms of productivity.

At the end of the day, the BCN3D project became a great example to demonstrate the productivity of BCN3D 3D printers. BCN3D would like to inspire and challenge others to imagine and create their own tracks. If you want to take the fun of Mario Kart into the real world, you can find all the STL files on Thingiverse

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