Thursday 18 February 2021

3D Printing


 Hi I’m Chris, a Westerhope Wargame Group gamer in exile (only in North Yorkshire). Paul has asked me to pop a post on the blog about my new toy a 3D printer!

When my friend said he was selling his old 3D printer I jumped at the chance.

The technology is amazing and fascinating. The first thing I printed was a pirate penguin. I chose this as it was a free file on a Kickstarter and it was small.

The print quality wasn’t top notch but it had been a good experiment. I adjusted the settings and discovered that there’s a whole world of 3D files on the internet. Most of them free!

I tried a few small pieces. Boxes and the like. Then progressed to a 17 hour print...

An Imperial Dalek shuttle!

I wargame a variety of ‘periods’. Doctor Who is one of my prized collections. It might not look much, but by BBC prop department standards it’s a thing of beauty lol!

This is the finished model on the print bed. I did pay for the file for this model. £7!

You need slicing software to ready whatever 3D file you have to something the printer will understand. I use Cura slicing software. This is free to download. As you might understand from ‘slicing’ the printer needs to know what the model looks like horizontal slice by slice. 

Manipulating a 3D file in Cura soon becomes easy. 

I then found a model I liked that was too big for my printer. The print bed is about 200mm x 200mm. 

Hmmm...

So I had to learn some more software! This one is called Meshlab and allows you to do a lot more with the 3D files than the slicer software. It was also free to download. I simply cut up the file into 4 separate models. I’m still working on this model. At the moment I have the main parts of the armoured train printed. Together the 4 vehicles are over 2’ long! I’ve made them undersized rather than true 28mm 1/56th scale which would have looked far too big on the tabletop 

Each of these parts took about 6 hours to print. 

The Orlik being prepared in Meshlab free of the other three parts of the train. 

I’ve printed a few other odds and sods. It’s quite addictive and continues to fascinate. As I’m writing this I can just hear the printer upstairs creating some more dragons teeth anti-tank defences. I feel a bit less of a dinosaur!







 



10 comments:

  1. Fantastic. Well done Chris and I'll be asking questions John and Brian so pay attention !

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  2. Amazing, great to see what can be done.

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    Replies
    1. Watching the printer do its thing is like witchcraft! As there’s a vast amount of files on the internet I’m only limited by my own imagination. After train track I’ve dried up as to what to print...

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  3. John are you reading this? I will be asking in depth questions about slicing etc. I would imagine you'll be ordering one very soon? There is free stuff available.

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    1. Robbie,I know how to slice bread,and that's it!-Did you say free??-I'll go and get one from my local 3D shop!!!
      johnc

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  4. Chris,you might as well have printed the text in Mandarin-bring back paper clips and ink-wells!!
    Absolutely marvelous-I wish I was young enough to understand!
    johnc
    johnc

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    Replies
    1. This is like cheating at crafting John. You don’t need to cheat :)

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    2. Give me sticky back paper and glue any day!
      johnc

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  5. Wow, talented or what! I wish I had the dosh and wherewithall to get into 3d printing!!!

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    1. Hi Herkybird. I was fortunate enough to pick this machine up secondhand and reasonably priced. As it was from a friend at the club it came with its own IT support! I’m fine operating it until something needs repairing. Fingers crossed that won’t be happening any time soon
      Cheers
      Chris

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