Mintfin, a mint-green axolotl-dragon toy with a cream face, coral feather gills and charcoal spikes, printed in PLA and lit on a dark violet surface.

The spine comes off the plate already moving

Mintfin is a mint axolotl-dragon with 8 body segments strung on 7 ball joints. Every joint was printed closed — one segment’s collar sitting inside the next one’s groove — so there was never a clip to press or a pin to push home. It arrives in one piece. The only thing you can take off it is its face.

66printed parts
6.7 innose to tail fan
3.9 ozon the scale
4filament colours

It leaves the printer like this

Mintfin and its spare face lie side by side on one bed, 184 × 169 mm of it. The chain in the middle is not waiting to be assembled. It came out of the machine joined.

A wave, shoulder to tail

8 segments, 7 joints, each one giving 12° in any direction it is pushed. Move one and the next one answers.

Inside one seam

A spherical collar on one segment, a groove on the next, printed around it in place. No pin, no clip, and no seam that opens: the collar reaches the end of its groove long before it reaches the mouth.

84 degrees of bend

7 joints at 12° stack into 84° — about a quarter turn of tail, up and down or side to side. Past that the collar is against the end of its groove and the chain stops.

The face lifts out

The plate leaves through a channel above the brow, the only direction it can go: its side tabs run under a continuous lip, so pulling straight on the face does nothing at all.

And the spare drops in

Same head, second mood. The sleepy plate is the same solid as the happy one — same outline, same tabs, same seat — so it goes in the way the first one came out.

Two faces,
one head

The happy plate arrives installed. The sleepy one prints flat beside the toy in the same job, so the second expression is in the box either way.

Mintfin head-on with the happy face plate fitted: two domed charcoal eyes with white glints, an open mouth and a coral tongue.
Happy: domed eyes, white glints set into cut pockets, coral tongue.
The same head wearing the sleepy face plate: two closed charcoal lids and a flat mouth line, with nothing else on the animal changed.
Sleepy: two closed lids and a flat line, cut into the same cream plate.

Both plates are the same solid with a different expression cut into it — one outline, one pair of tabs, one seat, matching to within the width of a layer line. The swap is a lift and a drop.

66 parts,
4 filaments

Sorted by the spool they came off. None of this is paint: every coloured region is its own solid, seated in a recess cut for it in the part underneath, with 2 white glints on top of that.

Mintfin seen from above and in front with the spare sleepy face plate lying beside it: mint head shell and body, charcoal horns spikes and claws, coral gills and tail fan, cream face.
  • Mint13 parts The head shell, the 8 body segments and 4 legs — everything that carries the animal or moves.
  • Charcoal33 parts 3 horns, 8 dorsal spikes, 12 claws, and every dark feature on both faces.
  • Cream10 parts The 2 face plates, and one belly panel seated into the underside of each segment.
  • Coral8 parts 6 feather gills with the barbs cut in, a 5-lobed tail fan, and one tongue.
  • White2 parts 2 eye glints, each one dropped into a pocket cut in its eye dome rather than sat on top of it.

What arrives

Printed to order in PLA and shipped assembled, because the part of it that matters could not be shipped any other way.

Printed parts
66, spare face included
Mintfin
6.7 × 5.0 × 3.7 in
On the plate
7.3 × 6.7 × 3.7 in
Weight
3.9 oz
Joints
7, ±12° each
Material
PLA, 4 colours
Nozzle and layer
0.4 / 0.2 mm
Walls
3 perimeters, 15–20% infill
Supports
None
Print time
10.7 hours
Build plate
Fits 220 mm
Face plates
2, interchangeable

Sizes and joint travel were measured on the assembly that gets printed; weight and print time come from the slicer that ran it.