Fate: Mordred's Clarent Blood Arthur

Motivation

I’m gonna be honest here; I don’t know anything about Mordred. I’m a huge fan of the Fate series, but I’ve only seen Fate: Zero, Fate: Stay/Night, and the Fate: Heaven’s Feel trilogy. I haven’t played the mobile game or seen any of the other anime so Mordred isn’t a very familiar character to me.

My brother asked me to design and print Mordred’s signature weapon since he’s doing a cross-play of it for Fanime 2020 and AnimeExpo 2020. As of right now we don’t know if it’s going to be cancelled because of COVID19, but most likely it is. Either way, we’re still finishing what we started.

https://i.ya-webdesign.com/images/excalibur-drawing-fate-4.png

Coming up with the design

Since I have no idea who this character is, I had to do A LOT of guessing to get the features and proportions right for this sword. I based it heavily off of the Guardian Sword++ build. I liked the thickness of the blade so I used that as a baseline to build out the rest of the weapon.

I used a basic fan-made picture as a blueprint for the sword. Finding a nice flat-layout picture is key to getting an accurate model. Without a good baseline, you’re stuck with doing a lot of guesswork, and that usually doesn’t end up well.

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/typemoon/images/f/f5/Clarent.png/revision/latest?cb=20150826140130

Modeling

I started with modeling the blade since it’s the simplest part of the sword. I started with tracing the outline of the blade, and then sweeping two triangles along the lines of the blade to get a deep bevel. I decided to keep the bevel very steep in order to get a decent LED effect. You already know we’re gonna put LEDs in here ;)

The blade guard portion of the sword was incredibly difficult to model. There’s so many layers and slopey parts that makes modeling in Fusion360 difficult. Fusion360 is a parametric 3D modeling program, so it’s much easier to design things with angles and basic geometry. I don’t have too much experience with Blender, but I hope to learn that in the future.

The handle was the easiest part of the modeling. I did it similar to how I modeled the Raphtalia sword handle. I created a cross section sketch of the handle and made a sweep around a circle.

Fitting the electronics

Fitting the electronics wasn’t too bad in this model since the blade guard portion has tons of room for hollowing out channels for the battery, controllers, and LED strips.

Electronics parts list:

Adafruit Trinket M0
TP4056 USB-C Lithium Battery Charger
3.7V 2800mAh battery
Alitove Ws2812b LED Strip 90 LED’s per meter
Heavy duty 8mm slide switch

There is one thing I’m slightly worried about: the battery charger. This battery charger is rated for 5V 1 amp charging. The Lipo battery I’m using has a maximum current draw of 1.2 amps. Since the charging amperage is so close to the maximum current capacity of the Lipo, I’m scared that the Lipo might die prematurely. Surely the 1 amp charging is rated within spec, but it’s pushing it. I’d much rather have a 500mAh charging rate, but we’ll see how this pans out.

Here are the electronics all wired up and loosely placed into the respective spots.

Printing

Man, this took a loooong time to print. There are so many pieces because this sword is massive. It’s even longer than the Fire Force Excalibur weapon that I made for Jason.

I printed it all in transparent PETG so that it can withstand some beatings better than PLA. Since PETG is more ductile than PLA, it can adapt to impacts a little more. PLA is incredibly strong, but also very brittle.

I modeled an 8mm hole running through the entire sword so that a rod can be glued in the middle for structure.

I also modeled in holes for M3 threaded inserts to attach the guard together. This way I can take apart the sword for maintenance without worrying about the screws destroying the plastic.

Here is the sword in the middle. For the most part, it printed really well. I have the Guardian Sword++ and Jason’s Fire Force Excalibur LED’s for reference. I also put in the LED’s just as a test placement. I think it looks pretty good!

Sanding, Priming, Painting

Like most of my projects, I’m leaving the dirty work for someone else haha. My brother is going to be sanding and painting the entire sword. After that he’ll pass it back to me for full assembly.

To be continued!!