3D Print Foray

Every so often someone on the forums here does a little dabbling in the realms of 3D printing and war-gaming.  Up until now, it's largely been in the vein of things like Zone Mortalis boards and the like.  Having recently helped my friend repair his 3D printer, I thought I'd take a stab at something perhaps a bit more useful, a transport!



While the print lines are still clearly visible, I'll be trying some approaches to eliminate them.  The treads actually came out rather nice.  There are a few minor instances of warpage, but Green Stuff will help with that.  One of my big take aways is that this is lighter than the equivalent model, and once I fix some imperfections, more likely to stay afloat.  I'll have to fudge the back door by doing a one sided instant mold cast.

you really shouldn't be posting full-on 3d reprints of GW stuff man. you're gonna get the site hit with a C&D for that. even if its for your own collection and not for reselling, they have no guarantee you wont sell it offline to people by word of mouth. you didn't even make any attempt at making it not look like a photocopy of an actual chimera; our page hits fairly high on google searches for 40k pages man; we're not that obscure that no one would see this.

He's not selling anything though.. I can't see a problem popping up?

The photo has been removed. If we keep the discussion as non-specific of general printing and progress on the project (transport in pace of any specific name, et cetera), would we be alright in keeping the discussion open, or is the already abort mode for the thread?

Bell of lost souls, other sites.. they've had articles on self 3d printing. I don't see an issue.

Just stay clear of images, got it.

Currently I've been smoothing out layer lines by sanding/filing/scraping, and while the results seem adequate, they are somewhat time consuming and labour intensive. I'm going to have another of one of the moving parts printed off soon and test out the use of acetone in smoothing things out. I know that there is both the brush-on method and the vapour bath, so multiple tests may be required.

SAFETY DISCLAIMER:

Acetone is a hazardous and volatile chemical, and is dangerous in general. Make sure you are in a well ventilated area whenever using it, and use all applicable safety equipment when doing such (glasses, gloves, and breathing mask all immediately come to mind). I have a machinist doing the chemical stuff for me, who is familiar with the usage of the chemical.

In the process of cleaning up the flat surfaces in prepartion for assembly and painting two small holes have appeared. Both holes are where there was some residual goop resided from printing end points. Holes are minor and likely easily fixable with minimal Green Stuff, which was already slated for the transport due to some minor separation in layers near two of the edges in the middle.

Upon assembly, it seems the file needs a minor tweak: just needs to be around 5% longer.

Comparing assembly styles between sprue and print bricks. The bricks are certainly a lot easier to put together, since it is just gluing two flat surfaces to each other. The downside is that you don't have all the self-referencial notches, catches, and ridges that you would have with a sprue build. That said, because of this very same fact you gain greater flexibility with how you build. I can see this method potentially being quite nice for people looking to convert or scratch build.

Incidentally, devices for recycling plastic at home are getting progressively more affordable.

http://anonhq.com/ubc-students-invent-fast-affordable-desktop-recycling-3d-printer/

ProtoCyler plugs directly into household current, is about the same size as the average 3D printer and will sell for about $700 to start. As a bonus, it can take care of your empty pop and water bottles and even recycle plastics as dense as Lego blocks!

As dense as Lego blocks, you say? We could start using left over sprue and bits we could never conceivably think would see use to make more models instead.

If anyone has any questions on the subject, feel free to ask! I don't bite!

As some of the "grain cracks" on the first print were deeper than was practical to sand away, as the print happens to be hollow, I opted to instead trying to fill them up. I mixed up a little bit of milliput and watered it down, and then proceeded to scrub it into the cracks. Seems to have worked alright so far, just need it to dry first, and then I can sand off the excess.

I wonder if it would be solved by printing multiple parts? There is a definate "grain" in several parts, just pondering how it would affect the build.

I have to look at the software, but the notches you describes *should* be easy to add.

Right now I'm just focusing on getting as much as I can out of a pre-existing print file.

By the weekend I should have some data concerning the vapor bath method, weather permitting. I have some hopes for the milliput fill in the mean time.

Good news, everyone! I have finally located a supply of microbeads at a reasonable price! Things can have rivets now!

While the file has been successfully modified to better approximate the desired transport, some unfortunate warpage occurred during the print. Not bad enough to call it a botched print, but enough that we might observe that this particular transport might be hauling people over water more often than land.

We tried out the acetone vapor bath technique, and I'd call it a general success. After three hours or so everything smoothed out rather nicely, and even came with a polished sheen, while leaving details largely intact. The only downside was that a crack had formed in one side from the aforementioned warping, and the vapor bath also "cleaned up" that as well. And by "cleaned up" I mean expanded. That being said, I have milliput at my work station for a reason.

The big take away here is that me and my friend need to look at putting an enclosure around the print bed so that heat doesn't dissipate away from the outside of the print faster than the inside, causing parts of the print to cool at different rates. While things like turrets and treads are affected at a negligible level, once you hit something the size of the core body issues start cropping up. An enclosure would be a must before attempting anything larger than this particular transport.

Printing off weapons for the transport has been on the meh end of the spectrum so far. Fortunately, the Den sells these wonderful $20 vehicle upgrade sprues, the bits from them helping to fill out all manner of missing details. It also looks like hull-mounted heavy flamers are going to be a theme.

When prepping to move to assembly on print number two, I had the joy of discovering that the warping on the right side tread brick (which I had thought minor at first glance) is rather problematic, basically causing it to be nice in flush near the rear, but rather separate from the main body closer to the front. This likely is a result of the lack of enclosure for the print bed. Lucky for me I've only done preliminary cleaning on that piece and hadn't added any bits or plasticard to it yet. Looks like I have some basing for one of my WIP Daemon Engines!

It is very much worth noting that while using domestic quality 3D printers you get more affordable costs, you also get a distinct lack of infallibility. If I had access to an industrial printer I'd likely not be dealing with any kind of warping, and plausibly a much higher resolution, but I'd likely also be dealing with prices to match.

I'm hardly discouraged, though. Every part of the space buffalo, even botched prints are a resource.

Good news everyone! The microbeads have finally shown up! Rivets for everyone!