God Of War’s Blade of Olympus

During the process of testing the RAVEN, we like to find projects that are fun and excite us. It’s really a great way to keep our testing motivation moving forward. We recently finished one of these projects. It is the Blade of Olympus from the God of War 3 video game! The idea of this project actually came from YouTuber Odin Makes, who was impressed with the 3D capabilities of the RAVEN and asked if it could carve something as detailed as the Blade of Olympus. Not only could we do it, but the RAVEN and Designer software are the most perfect system for it.

With the Slicer add-on, we were able to import a 3D model of the sword, cut it into pieces, then lay out the pieces on boards to carve on the RAVEN.

With the RAVEN, we created simple carrier jigs to hold our materials to carve.

We were using EVA foam, which is common for props and weapons, but not suitable for machining with the default bit settings that are configured primarily for wood. With the Designer 5’s bit builder however, we were able to dial in the perfect speed and feed rates for carving and routing the foam. We rester carved the details and then flipped the pisces over for some pocket routing to house the inner structure and lights.

We even had RAVEN cut some cast acrylic for side-lighting the inside of the blade.

Once the pieces were cut, they were glued together one section at a time. The foam material can be sanded and even heated and melted to blend the seams together.

To give it some rigidity, fiberglass rods were run throughout it. Then LED lights were run along the edge of the cast acrylic to light it.

Then it was time for painting. The entire thing was coated in spray Plastidip which fills nicely with a flexible finish. The Pastidip can be lightly sanded, but we found Naptha worked well to smooth out the finish. Last it was detailed with gold and steel paint.