3D Printing

[Stormy]

Has anyone had any experience with 3D Printing?? How did it turn out? How much did it cost??What did you get printed? Size etc...

I'm quite tempted to give it a go to print some terrain / scenery / bases for some table top gaming miniatures. They would need to be pretty decent quality and it would be interesting to know how the detail holds up through the process.

 

[Unfocused]

Krynn did some 3D printing that looks rather nice

 

[Krynn72]

I'm quite tempted to give it a go to print some terrain / scenery / bases for some table top gaming miniatures.

You son of a bitch, STAY OUT OF MY MARKET!

I've done some more stuff since that thread, because that building was actually way too small for use in actual games. I also was contacted by someone when I posted it on another forum, and am now working with the guy making resin copies that he's going to sell en-masse. Here's a more recent one.

Initially I had thicker walls, and included floors and a base. It looked like this. Note that at each banister type thing going around the house, it detaches. So there's three different floors you can put models on.

Here it is with a Flames of War infantry stand reference. The stands are 2 inches wide.

Turns out that it was using enough material to make it really expensive. It was $275. So I removed the floors (leaving a little ledge for the other guy to make the floors on using some kind of balsa wood) when creating the mold for reproduction. This new one turned out to be $140.

And here it is printed out.

And here is some pics of the resin copy the guy emailed me. He's sending me one soon.

Its kind of hard visualizing the size of something when making it on the computer. This one turned out a little big, the door was a bit tall as you can probably tell, but its doable. It gets much, much more expensive the bigger it gets. The one in the old thread was $35, this one is like twice the size, but four times the price. The walls are still a little too thin, so the next ones I'll make will be smaller buildings, but with thicker walls.

 

[Eejit]

Hey, the camo those soldiers are wearing isn't going to help at all standing in front of a pristine white building. You trying to get them killed or something?

 

[Krynn72]

Pfft, they're HMGs, pretty much useless in the game so yeah why not.

 

[<RJMC>]

holy shit so you can order to get something 3d printed?

 

[Unfocused]

holy shit so you can order to get something 3d printed?

No! We're just pulling your leg HA-HAAAA!

 

[Vegeta897]

holy shit so you can order to get something 3d printed?

http://www.shapeways.com/

 

[Raziaar]

That's cool stuff Krynn. I never saw your original thread.

It's been my dream forever that the technology gets more accurate and cheap enough for home use so that we can make our own toys for kids or our own private use instead of having to buy designs premade from toy and hobby companies.

I've been fascinated with the idea of making my own toys ever since my dad got some of those plastic pellets that you can melt and use for molding figures.

 

[Vegeta897]

That's cool stuff Krynn. I never saw your original thread.

It's been my dream forever that the technology gets more accurate and cheap enough for home use so that we can make our own toys for kids or our own private use instead of having to buy designs premade from toy and hobby companies.

I've been fascinated with the idea of making my own toys ever since my dad got some of those plastic pellets that you can melt and use for molding figures.

Kids don't want home made toys, they want the shit that's all over TV and the shit that Jimmy from across the street has.

 

[Krynn72]

Kids don't want toys. They want video games. If they're still young enough to want toys then they wont give a shit where they come from, because they wont know how to be jealous.

 

[Unfocused]

Kids don't want home made toys, they want the shit that's all over TV and the shit that Jimmy from across the street has.

Hehe, reminds me of:

Same principle.

 

[Naph]

Apparently, the printer can print another printer.

 

[Raziaar]

Kids don't want home made toys, they want the shit that's all over TV and the shit that Jimmy from across the street has.

Have you SEEN some of the shit people make in Zbrush? That shit blows away any toy line I've ever seen. And not just for toys either, for figures to have on your desk.

 

[Vegeta897]

Have you SEEN some of the shit people make in Zbrush?

I'm sure little kids care.

 

[Raziaar]

I'm sure little kids care.

... it's not so much the ****ing kids that care, it's the fact that the kids have cool and unique toys. I loved all sorts of toys when I was a kid, especially the dark and "scary" ones. There were many times when I wanted a change to one of them or an idea based off them... and if I had a family member/friend or parent who could design and print something like that, it would have been badass.

I used to love Battle Beasts as a kid... http://www.virtualtoychest.com/battlebeasts/battlebeasts.html

But there were so many that didn't exist that I thought would be cool if they did. If somebody could make those and me not to have to rely on the company making those figures, it'd be amazing.

If you were satisfied with the toys given to you and never longed for anything else, anything unique that your friends didn't have and couldn't get... that's fine, but don't ****ing think all kids were like that. Like I said, I wasn't like that... I wanted to design my own toys at a young age, and that's probably not all that uncommon.

 

[Stormy]

Great stuff Krynn, are you planning to sell your models then or are they just for personal use?

I think its a great idea and a relativity fast work process too and the more I think about how things would be put together the more it seems like my everyday games job. Creating assets in a modular fashion to get a lot out of it. IE build 1 wall and 1 piller and use them repeatedly to make a fortress.

I would quite like to give this a go but very much going to start with something a lot smaller to keep the prices down and maybe look into selling bits on ebay.

The main issue I see is the quality of the print. Even the higher quality prints often have the seams from the printer layering the materials. Is it easy to get rid of?

 

[Krynn72]

Great stuff Krynn, are you planning to sell your models then or are they just for personal use?

The way I'm doing it, the printed versions are simply "masters" for use in creating a mold, which is then used to make resin copies that will be sold. The initial cost is high, but we can sell multiples of it easily at a more reasonable price.

I think its a great idea and a relativity fast work process too and the more I think about how things would be put together the more it seems like my everyday games job. Creating assets in a modular fashion to get a lot out of it. IE build 1 wall and 1 piller and use them repeatedly to make a fortress.

Thats basically how it is, and what attracted me to it in the first place. I pretty much already do it anyways.

I would quite like to give this a go but very much going to start with something a lot smaller to keep the prices down and maybe look into selling bits on ebay.

Keep in mind the size restrictions. The material I used has a minimum thickness of .7mm. That may seem really small at first, but its really not. You may run into issues trying to make little props at 28mm or smaller scale. Its a bit hard to get the hang of at first, since you can get away with some stuff being thinner, but anything that they consider "load bearing" must be .7mm thick or more. Load bearing meaning anything that might receive a measure of force during the manual cleaning process it goes through.

The main issue I see is the quality of the print. Even the higher quality prints often have the seams from the printer layering the materials. Is it easy to get rid of?

You could get rid of it I'm sure. You'd probably have to use a really fine grit sandpaper or file. You can also have Shapeways polish it for you, if you decide to use them. There's also higher quality materials that don't really suffer from it. The one I used was their second cheapest type, which is some kind of nylon polymer I guess. They have a "fine" and "ultra fine" material which doesn't really suffer from it too much to begin with, and also allows for even finer detail and thinner walls.

Heres an example of the unpolished and then polished nylon polymer.


And the detail material