306 replies to this topic

[Tennex]

this is way too cool for school

[Scrapjunkie]

Way to cool ill buy a highlander from you when your done

[Justy Starflare]

I'd love to paint those for you in trade for some minis myself. I'm on the road ATM but have been painting g minis for quite some time for both fantasy to battletech to warhammer. If you need a sample of my work get ahold of me I'll take pics of my work.

[Janitor101]

I as well paint Warhammer 40k and other miniatures, I would fall over myself to get a crack at painting some of your MWO style models. If you need another/more painters, please keep me in mind.
Or, if there is a way I could trade for some models, since purchasing them would be an issue.

Edited by Janitor101, 29 June 2013 - 11:51 PM.

[LordDeathStrike]

and here there was all that hub bub about people building guns with 3d printers. leave it to table top people to find a good use!

[Liquid Leopard]

Pfft... I'd be afraid to fire a gun made on a 3D printer. So, that's a waste of a 3D printer.

Give me plastic battlemech figures any day!

[RuggedRoughneck]

WoW You selling them models??, I would love to buy and paint some up myself..

[Odanan]

Sentinel373, on 04 May 2013 - 08:26 AM, said:

These miniatures are ultra sexy. Will I need to buy a 3D printer to get some of those?

[Frisk]

I have over $500 worth of old ral partha miniatures still in their blister packs and I have 0 interest in painting them...

I personally have been waiting for the models from MWO to appear in the TT realm. Once those do, I will be purchasing a whole new lot of minis (and I'm sure I am not the only one waiting).

[Ywan]

Sentinel I have a more technical Question on the printing. Which Type of printer you are using? Company and Model. And whats your opinion about the results it does. Asking it because I`m willing to buy one for myself since a long time.

Greetz Ywan

[Mc JR]

Hey,

Are you selling these? looking at the Cat, K-2 and the Raven. Shoot me a MP if you could.

Edited by Mc JR, 29 July 2013 - 11:17 AM.

[Sentinel373]

Ywan, on 29 July 2013 - 09:36 AM, said:

Sentinel I have a more technical Question on the printing. Which Type of printer you are using? Company and Model. And whats your opinion about the results it does. Asking it because I`m willing to buy one for myself since a long time.

Greetz Ywan

i use a service called shapeways and I use their frosted ultra detail material. I am very pleased with the level of detail it provides. it gives the model a very nice and smooth finish compared to some of the home printers like the makerbot.

[Ywan]

Ah ok a printservice !, Sry i had mentioned you print on yourself. Anyway, the mechs are looking perfect and I´m glad to see more of them in the future.

[Valcrow]

The formlabs one might be able to get close to this quality. A bunch of patents on 3d printers expire in 2014, so maybe we'll get more juicy home printer tech coming soon.

Have you tried any of their other material from shapeways? A stainless one would be awesome.

[Sentinel373]

Valcrow, on 30 July 2013 - 04:44 PM, said:

The formlabs one might be able to get close to this quality. A bunch of patents on 3d printers expire in 2014, so maybe we'll get more juicy home printer tech coming soon.

Have you tried any of their other material from shapeways? A stainless one would be awesome.

I have actually, but not for mechs. and the result i got wasn't very appealing in places where there we're small details.

i'm actually considering getting a pin with my new company's logo printed in silver to test out their premium silver material.

[Ywan]

Valcrow, on 30 July 2013 - 04:44 PM, said:

The formlabs one might be able to get close to this quality. A bunch of patents on 3d printers expire in 2014, so maybe we'll get more juicy home printer tech coming soon.

I´ve ordered a Makibox HT today. With a actual Minimum of 50 microns in resolution and a price of 350 bucks its a perfect deal for those stuff. 16$ per Kilo ABS material compared to 3$ for 1 cm3 its a cheap deal. Maybe the Shapeway prints are a littlebit smoother don´t know the resolution 10micron? But the Makibox can print those Minis with ABS for round about 2$ per piece. Some Cleanup with 4000`s Sandpaper and its perfect.

[DirePhoenix]

Frisk, on 29 July 2013 - 07:39 AM, said:

I have over $500 worth of old ral partha miniatures still in their blister packs and I have 0 interest in painting them...

I personally have been waiting for the models from MWO to appear in the TT realm. Once those do, I will be purchasing a whole new lot of minis (and I'm sure I am not the only one waiting).

I don't think there are ever going to be any MWO 'mechs in the TT realm. One of the key limiters is licensing. Just like PGI does not have a license to use any of the TT sourcebook art (rights have to be licensed from Topps), Catalyst (current publishers of the TT game) licenses their art from Topps (from which IWM produces their minis from) but does not have the rights to PGI's art which is created exclusively for MWO. So, any MWO miniatures you see will likely remain "unofficial".

[Valcrow]

Ywan, on 31 July 2013 - 11:53 AM, said:

I´ve ordered a Makibox HT today. With a actual Minimum of 50 microns in resolution and a price of 350 bucks its a perfect deal for those stuff. 16$ per Kilo ABS material compared to 3$ for 1 cm3 its a cheap deal. Maybe the Shapeway prints are a littlebit smoother don´t know the resolution 10micron? But the Makibox can print those Minis with ABS for round about 2$ per piece. Some Cleanup with 4000`s Sandpaper and its perfect.

Congrats on your 3D pirnter purchase, 350 is a pretty amazing deal for a printer, but I'm not convinced it is ideal for miniatures such as these. While your layer height resolution may be able to hit 50 microns, you will always be limited by your nozzle size which is 400 microns.

Exemplified by this print, set at a layer height of 40 microns, you can see the layering is almost invisible, but at the top you still have your blemish. So while your Y resolution may be 50 microns, your x and z resolutions would be roughly 400 microns. Mechs at TT sizes have lots of pointy bits that are smaller than that.




Also, gravity is not your friend when it comes to mech printing. If you printed the same model as Sentinel's on your machine, you would either have to use a crapload of support material which would ruin a lot of the surfaces in addition to costing you a lot of cleanup time. Or you would have to break it up into gravity friendly print pieces. Which means you're going to be doing a lot more 3D work and post assembly.

Another thing to consider is, ABS is notoriously warpy. The corners tend to bend upwards upon cooling. Meaning if you are halving parts to glue together you will have massive seams. Consider purchasing a roll of PLA to test alongside ABS. It warps much less and smells a lot more pleasant. (simmering cornsyrup vs. burning tires) $16/KG is an amazing price btw. It's often ~$30-$40/kg.

From what I've seen so far, I'm not convinced current generation consumer FDM machines are capable of acceptable quality TT sized models without a huge amount of modifications and tuning. They just wouldn't compare to the finishing quality and ease of use of a shapeways print. I wouldn't hold onto the idea that you'll be able to produce similar results to what sentinel is producing here with a 300 dollar printer. Or even a ~3000 dollar printer so long as it's FDM.

But hey, look on the bright side, While tiny things are out of the question, you can make much bigger things that otherwise would be cost prohibitive on shapeways. You can make 1/60 scale mechs, and play TT across your house.

Just a few things to consider.. best of luck with your new printer! and post pictures!

Edited by Valcrow, 31 July 2013 - 10:12 PM.

[bloodybones jones]

so much want.

[Ywan]

Valcrow you are totally right with your suggestions and I don`t wanted to state here to get the SAME results like Shapeways Resinsinthercasts, thats impossible just because of the different Productionways as you mentioned in your post. But the makibox has 2 Advantages which will reduce the old known Problems with Extruderprinters.
In first I´ve ordered the HT version which has a temperable Tablesurface which reduces warping on ABS significant and should hopefully bring it to the results of PLA unfortunatly without the nice sirupsmell :-) PLA is ordered too so I will make Testshots with both.
Second Pluspoint is the new Extruderdesign which allowes to Change the nozzles quick and easy. And they have stil announced 2 Acessorienozzles with 0.5mm and 0.3mm. Especially the 0.3 Nozzle will bring up the surfacequality a bit higher.
Up from that the Extruder can handle a bunch of materials because it has a large Temperaturescale, which should include PS, PE, PC and Nylon.
As soon this pretty baby will enter my house I will make a lot of experiments with it and will keep you informed how much this new filamentprintergeneration has pushed the old frontiers forward.
Exept from this I really have write the formlabs machine on my Christmas wishlist xD Still knowing what my wife will say to this "little" invest.... Oh dear I love my couch to sleep on :-)

Edited by Ywan, 01 August 2013 - 03:30 AM.