While Andromeda may be the latest game, makers are still going back to the original Mass Effect trilogy for inspiration.

Thingiverse user jessthemullet has brought us this extremely accurate recreation of the M-12 Locust SMG as seen in the second and third games.

We’ve been told that the model was made in SolidWorks over the course of a few years. For reference fan art was used together with files taken from the games.

Printing was done on and off in a month as public printers were used. If you have your own printer you can use continuously, it should take around a week to print out the 20 or so parts that go into this prop.

Those parts were joined together with methlyene chloride, which slightly melts the parts instead of simply gluing them together. The seams this chemical created were smoothed over with Bondo spot putty.

Painting was a combination of black model paint and alcohol-based Vallejo metallic grey. To add in some weathering and make it look a bit older, acrylic earthy colours were used.

The finished prop is around 53 centimetres long making this compact enough for cosplay. It is on the dense side, however, as two kilograms of filament was used to print the parts and supports.

The files to print your own Locust are available for free from Thingiverse. It is listed as a work in progress, so they may change over time.

This isn’t the first Mass Effect gun to be 3D printed, with the M-5 Phalanx and M-3 Predator pistols being featured here in the past. The former even features internal electronics and motors so it can fold up as it does in the game.