Inception Top

Inspiration

Although, Christopher Nolan’s Inception first premiered slightly over 11 years ago, the movie’s premise and atmosphere are still so incredibly refreshing to watch. Anyone who has seen this film knows that its mood is a perpetually toilsome attempt to organize what is reality and what is not. Central to this idea is the “totem”, a failsafe method to prove if one is in a dream or not. The main character, Cobb, uses his totem the most throughout the movie: a spinning metal top. If it bizarrely continues to spin indefinitely, then it means that one is in a dream but if it wobbles and falls, it means that one is in reality.

Conception

After searching the internet far and wide, I was unable to find much on any specific dimensions for the top publicly available without actually buying it and measuring it myself. As a result, I had to rely on various images from the film and actual replicas to gauge the dimensions by eye and the dimensions from online retailers.

With the complied images above, I decided to sketch the profile of the top by hand and to set the principal dimensions.

After sketching the top, I constructed it using the CAD software SolidWorks according to the proposed dimensions and then sent the file to be 3D printed out of clear resin so I could see if the dimensions were sufficient enough before being made out of metal.