Basically done

I needed to decorate some bases, and after the relative success of the BattleTech printed bases, I thought I might just go ahead and print them, rather than cut out plastic and glue it down (plus I was out of superglue).

So I downloaded some flat 60mm bases that looked pretty good from Thingiverse, and added them to the top of some truncated cones to make an approximation of a GW styled beveled base.  I also hollowed out under vents and things like that, and added a hole for a flight stem, since in this case I am printing these to use as bases for Eldar artillery, which floats. 

Here is an example:

Couple of printer hours later, and some sand and other stuff glued on and we end up here:

Painted

After this was finished, I realized that I needed to make a matching base for the crewperson who was not standing on the gun. Following the same procedure, I made a 30mm base, and printed it out as well. 

Now, obviously it would have been easier to paint the bases at the same time, but that would have been logical... so instead the 30mm base sat on my desk for a few months year while I worked on other things (or did not, the heat, sickness, and summer activities getting in the way)

And here [Finally] is the finished item. 

Metal Alaitoc Eldar support platform with 3d printed base and vibro-cannon

The crew person standing with the gun is converted in that I cut his head off and replaced it with a plastic helmet.  No conversions to the guy checking his PIP-boy. 

Since I managed to get all three metal guns for this platform, I magnetized them for easy swapping. Works nicely for the Vibro-cannon and the Distort Cannon, but I glued the magnet in backwards for the webcaster... whoops.  I will have to drill that out sometime. 

Since I wrote this post, I have printed nearly all my bases.  It is a relatively fast way to get some good texture on the base, and they can be whatever size and shape you need. 

3d Printed surface tests

So one of the issues with have a 3d printer is layer lines.  The printer makes models by building layers of plastic, the size of which depends on printer type and printing settings.  For a printer like the Ender 3, layer lines can get under a mm in height, which is small enough that you can not see them from any sort of distance, but you can see them when blown up on the screen, and can feel them a bit with your finger (human fingertips can apparently feel as small as 13nm differences in height). 

So reducing layer lines is something that is worth looking in to a bit, and to that end I produce a small sample, which I treated in various ways to see how it was altered.  I made a test piece with five surfaces, and then sprayed that with a layer of cream spray paint to see how it would look.  I went another step and washed with a coat of Games Workshop's Nuln Oil to see how the finish was for a wash, since I use washes a lot with my figures. 

Initial 3d surface print test with filing and filling

Surfaces are:

1. Raw out of the printer

2. Filed

3. Filed and covered with black gesso

4. Filed and covered with Future

5. Filed and covered with PVA

Sprayed  3d print surface test cream white

Painted with Nuln Oil wash

Honestly, I think the biggest take away is that the surface is easily scratched by filing, and that I need to be more careful there.  This can be seen most clearly on 5, where the filing was very good next to the number, but less good under it.  Number three is similar, but also shows more damage due to scratching since it was harder to reach the middle of the sample.  Since I have two copies of the M5a1 tank, I think I will cover one with gesso, and one with PVA, and then see how the finishes turn out in the end.

 Also evident are the changing conditions locally, since you can see that two of the three pictures are slightly orange from smoky air.  It was actually clean enough to breath for that middle stage!  When of course I was wearing a mask anyway...

Lighting strike, slow burn

Our benevolent overlord (Amazon) got me to bite on a "Lightning deal" recently on a 3d printer.  As regular readers of this blog will know, I have been designing 3d models for a while, and have even sold some of them through my storefront on Shapeways.  My kid had been bugging us for a long time about getting a 3d printer (not at all helped by me talking them up for years) and he eventually got my wife to agree that it would be a good learning tool.

So I got an Creality Ender 3, and less than a week later it showed up at the house.  I opened it immediately, and after about three hours I had what looked to be a working device.  I think I could put together a second one much more quickly, and trying to add a metal extruder without any instructions took up a lot of that time.

Calibration was sort of a pain, and I am not sure I am 100% satisfied, but I am getting close enough to start printing out usable test items. 

I had more than one copy of this "print"

Since I am working on the American paratroopers at the moment, I naturally thought about printing something for that "army", and after downloading a few suitable files from Thingiverse, I selected a M5A1 light tank as a starting place, and after manipulating it a bit, I printed it out.  This print took around 6.5 hours, although I did not have to be involved, so the time is sort of immaterial.

M5a1 tank printing out in four pieces 

 The tank was printed without a raft, and the front portion had a bit of an adhesion issue, so when I assembled the tank it had a bit of a gap.

Annoying gap from bed adhesion error

This is probably something that I would be able to fix, but it was not very satisfying to see this.

After some fiddling about with slicer settings, I tried again, and this time got a much better result.

Second print, with raft and slower

Result of second print of the M5a1, with some plastic bits and a bit of putty.

The second print was substantially better.  Unfortunately satin black plastic does not photograph well, but it is very smooth and aside from the suspension very well detailed.  (even the .30 caliber machine gun that I replaced with the M2 was very detailed, just not as good as the plastic one I had) This cost me about $0.80 in materials to print by the way, so certainly cost effective against a traditional metal/resin or even plastic miniature!

I am going to run a few surface finish tests before this particular tank gets painted, so more to come on that.

I have some more testing to do, but I think I am in a place where I can produce usable objects now, and anything bigger than say 5mm cubed will come out pretty nicely.

Sculpter for Hire

As I mentioned in my previous post I have been doing things, just not posting about them.

Here is one of those things:

In January, what we may refer to as "the before time", I was contact on Shapeways by a fan (!) who wanted to know if I could sculpt a ship for them.  In this case, they wanted a board-game scale model of the ISS Charon from the show Star Trek Discovery. 

If you have seen the show, the ship in question is VERY large, and fairly complicated.  The original designers suggested that they wanted to make the ship look like it was made from whale bones, so aside from its complicated shape, it is also covered in various ribbing.

Here is my simplified design of it:



 The client approved of the design, and ordered it from Shapeways.  Very graciously, they sent me a picture of the final ship "in action" on their game board.

After a bit of reflection, the client decided that the ship was a bit smaller than they wanted, and that it would be ideally printed in red so that the ball of energy in the middle would be easier to paint (by essentially not painting it)

I doubled the size of the ship, but transferring it to another material presented a lot of challenges with the details, and also with the pointy tip portions of the ship (dual prow?  Rams?  Warp field stabilizers?).  Despite being twice as thick in all dimensions, the material standards were so different that it took a lot of re-engineering to get something that was at all printable, and even then Shapeways kicked it back during final review for another re-engineering step.

Annotated figure from Shapeways detailing where the problems were

 In the end though, the client was happy, and that is what is important.

In game shot of the larger red version

In the end this was an interesting process, and it was certainly a challenge to make this ship.