I 3D Printed The Ultimate Paw Patrol Lookout Tower With My Son
May 26, 2026 · 11 min · 326 views
Martin Kozak's Paw Patrol Lookout Tower from MakerWorld, printed on my Bambu Lab H2C in six colors of PLA and assembled with my five-year-old. Well. Partly with my five-year-old.
It's a really impressive design. There's real hardware inside (a bearing, springs, M2 bolts), play features, and even some images you print on a regular boring printer to dress it up. The current state of his old tower explained why he wanted this one.
The plan
This started before I even had the printer. I was browsing MakerWorld, my son asked me to look for Paw Patrol stuff, and this tower was the top result. So the plan became: get the printer, print the tower, and spend a weekend building it together, father-and-son style, bonding over engineering and creativity. Priceless.
I also didn't want to be the dad who just makes things for his kid. I wanted him to see that things can be made, not only bought. That's why I love LEGO. As kids grow up it can turn into electronics, woodworking, painting, weird nerd projects, whatever tickles their creativity.
Weekend one
The first time I told him we were going to "print the tower", he looked at our inkjet printer, perplexed. Fair.
Printing took about a week and went very smoothly. Or so I thought. On the first Saturday he was thrilled for a few minutes, bored after 20, and then gone inside to play. Twenty minutes later I got frustrated too. Some parts had been oriented on MakerWorld in a way that made the supports impossible to remove from the slider and balcony pieces. I reprinted those with my own orientations, which cost a few more days.
Weekend two
This one went better. He hammered, he superglued, and he practiced his surgeon skills grabbing microscopic M2 bolts with tweezers. We also went on an epic quest dismantling pens to find the right springs, because the box I bought somehow didn't have them. We lasted about 30 minutes this time, ten more than the week before.
Then I did what every father does when their kid gets a big gift: I spent the rest of the day building it alone. I'd planned on one hour. It took four.
Plastic welding and kitbashing
3D printing, properly, on a real multi-part project with hardware in it. Reorienting parts myself instead of trusting the upload. Plastic welding, which makes nasty fumes but very strong joints. I preferred it over the recommended screws wherever they were hard to reach.
The doors confused me. I couldn't tell if they open on the original model, so I made them open with a bit of kitbashing and scratch building. That's my favorite kind of problem.
And the reaction at the end, screaming included, was worth all four hours. If you watched the video with your kids, I'm sorry: you probably have to buy a 3D printer now.
Six colors, one week
- 6 colors of PLA, about $80
- Around 3 kg of PLA used
- About 1 week of printing
- 30 minutes of actual father-and-son building on the best day
- 4 hours of assembly, planned as 1
Watch it
Watch the full build on YouTube.