3D Prints Skiff and an Airport baggage moving vehicle

My painting subjects remain uniformly chaotic so today will feature the Prime Mover for an Airport Baggage Handler Vehicle.

This printed as six parts: Hull, undercarriage, and wheels (x4).  probably about three hours of print time total but I've been really sloppy about tracking that... improvements for the future!

Size wise... it looks like its a tiny bit on the large side but its a print so that is scale-able if it really bugs me... I can always describe this larger one as an ammo load mover or something similar.

 I experimented with some "Chipping Fluid" for the first time and its pretty interesting stuff.  Basically you prime, or paint, the model then paint on chipping fluid were you would like the chipped effect then, when dry, paint the top color(s) let dry then re-moisten and tap or scratch at the areas you want to chip off to show the underlying paint.  It'll take some practice but seems like a pretty effective technique.

 Left is the underlayer.  I did much more than the areas to be chipped so I could practice making effective rust textures to reveal...  I may print another one to do as a burnt out hulk since I kinda like how the base layer turned out.

Models included for scale are Anvil Industries Traveling Salesman (This is a guess really I've fogotten where I got him and can't seem to locate it on the net), GW's Canoness Veridyan, Heresy Girls Sniper (Black Pheonix), Twsited's Tink, and Varaseesh the Venomous from Raging Heroes.

 The Skiff is pretty substantial with four gun ports... that is a sturdy skiff! I still have the fittings to paint but I'll wait for that until I get some dowels for the masts... yar! a two masted skiff!  Sturdy indeed! I'll want to make the rigging break down-able for transport and storage so that'll be interesting.

Due to the limited print area of my Snapmaker this is printed in three sections with magnets to keep it together during play.

I'm really interested to print the larger ships from this project (Rampage Lost Islands Kickstarter) but am waiting for the Snapmaker's new print area expansion (Z-Axis Expansion Module) to become available before heading down that rabbit hole!

I'm also making progress on getting the place ready for our next relocation and should have another update on the Tabletop World Fisherman's House soon.  Also on the desk Raging Heroes Executrix Command, The Order of Vampire Hunters Kickstarter exclusives, Tabletop World Wizard's Tower, Kingdom Death, Twisted, and more...

Back to the desk!

Raging Heroes Ash Tank Gunner and some Heresy Girl Assassins 3D printer experiments with the Snapmaker

 Raging Heroes' Ash Tank Gunner was initially thought of as a torso only sculpt for use in a vehicle hatch but had the lower body included pretty early on in the TGG1 Kickstarter process.  As a result she became useful in a Forward Observer or scout role.  I have a few iterations of her so its possible I'll do a tank crew version of her but I really like having her in stand alone form.

She's painted like the Veteran Jailbirds in a signature prison color scheme.  The orange is Reaper Lemon Yellow a wash of Secret Weapon Orange and Highlights of Reaper Marigold Yellow.

 Ash also sports the Blood Red Rags of Rebellion that were popularized by the Jailbird Freedom Fighter Raven the Chainbreaker.

 Next up are the remaining four proxy Assassins from the Heresy Girls Kickstarter 1.  The Deathshadow was examined here although I think I forgot to mention the name of it.  In a similar vein I've done one each of the factory resin model and a 3D print from my Snapmaker on hi resolution.  The elements of failure are painted blue for clarity and also because I'll use these as active camo/ecm versions.

 First is Black Phoenix which seems like a Vindicare proxy.  The Snapmaker had a hard time with this one and I was unable to get the waist region of the torso to fill in so there is a big hole at the join.  With glue its stable but the poor girl looks kind of undead.

The factory resin, as all of them are in this set, was cleanly cast with little flash and practically no cleanup required.  The bases here are also from the 3D printer and the Snapmaker does good quality on them.

 Ghost is next and was the most successful of the 3D prints.  I used the alternate factory resin head and the 3D print version was not good.  Even on this more successful print there is a lot of printer error and lost detail.

 Ghost look like a Callidus Proxy and its passable in that role.  Its also useful for any sci-fi assassin or operative.

Last up is Jade Devil.  A clear proxy for Culexis psi-hunters.

This one was the most trouble for the Snapmaker and I got zero percent clear print.  Nice stealth field effect but a complete failure as a model print.

Bottom line is that the Snapmaker can't produce acceptable resolution in 28mm humanoid models.  I'm generally happy with its performance for buildings, bases, vehicles,  terrain, and accessories like dice boxes etc... but I'll have to move into SLA printing to make .stl files of 28mm soldiers viable.

Not all 3D printers, or 3D printer formats, are good for all printing projects so don't expect nozzle extruded 3D prints to fill the ranks of your toy soldier armies at this time.  SLA has much higher resolution and I'll get round to it eventually but for now I'll be relying on the printer for the more coarse applications where its pretty reliable.  The right tool for the right job!

Back to the desk!

The Order of Vampire Hunters scenery pack and From the 3D printer: Rampage Gothic Pulpit

 From the 3D printer is the Rampage Gothic Pulpit.  Its a two part model with independent stairs so the exact layout of them is very flexible.  It's currently occupied by one of the insidious Lust Elves from Raging Heroes and Sister Veridyan looks set to shift the errant elf.

The Pulpit is intended for one of the Space Papess models but she's currently unprepared to assume her spot... Honestly the one I have mostly constructed is already on a large scenic base so I'll have to build a second mounted on a 25mm base so she'll fit in it!

 I've gotten some questions about print times for various models and, I confess, I hadn't made any notes about that.  In future I'll be sure to include print times as part of the basic description on the 3D printed items.

That said... I *think it took about 3 hours for each section for a total of six hours.  I'll make another one eventually and verify that.

 Some of the fine detail was a challenge for the Snapmaker and, while it painted up reasonably well, there was a lot of detail... particularly on the pulpit tower... that was just a but too shallow or indistinct for my liking.  The design elements on the stairs were larger and, generally speaking, more coarse so they printed up cleanly with no issues.

I knocked out the scenery pack for The Order of Vampire Hunters... only to discover moments later that many of these scenery elements, as well as some of the Vampire "Trash Mobs" also occur in the Kickstarter Exclusives box.

/facepalm

I usually try to paint all models of a similar type as a set so I don't have to try to match them later.  It just helps to make all the models look like they belong together.  Oh well... next workbench KS Exclusives .... yay!

 A view of the various terrain parts with an unpainted Vampire Hunter for scale.

The full contents of the scenery pack.  The Kickstarter exclusives pack has a couple of extra box/barrel stacks and a couple of collapsed ceiling markers so it'll add a fair bit of terrain to this package.

Dice Box of Death: 3D printing with Snapmaker

 More adventures in 3D printing with the Snapmaker.

As I'm specifically not allowed to touch my wife's dice because I might transfer my abysmal dice rolling luck to her set... I decided to print up the Dice Box of Death!

In spite of the title its not at all related to Kingdom Death... although protecting the purity of the dice for that game will be the box's first job.

The box is shown here with our Canoness Veridyan for scale.

 This print is at high quality due to the fiddly details of the bone walls and alcoves.  The white PLA material took paint well and seems pretty stable... if I don't leave it out in the direct sun!

I remember seeing the casket of the three wise men in the cathedral in Koln and the casket/handle for the box is painted to resemble it.  Its a minor modification of my most recent yellow metal process; Brass Casings (SW), Flesh Wash (SW), Brass Casings (SW) again, and Shining Gold (GW).  I left of the final highlight step of Rustungs Farbe (a bright silver metal color made for Fantasy Forest) to get a better separation between it and the metallic straps on the wood.

 The Bones were Tan Earth (Vallejo), Dirty Bone (Reaper) + Tan Earth 50/50, Dirty Bone (Reaper, Graveyard Earth (Reaper), Splintered Bone (Reaper).

The Wood is my regular wood process as described here.

Stone is a simple dry-brush over black using the Reaper Stone triad.

About the Snapmaker.

I got this from a kickstarter to experiment with 3D printing, Laser Engraving, and CNC.  The machine is transformable to do all three operations.

After several weeks of working with this machine I've discovered several things:

On the plus side:

It was easy to assemble.
The machine makes good quality prints.
The Snapmaker Shredder software, while short on features, is easy to use and is very helpful when dealing with a build area as small as this.

On the minus side:

1. The machine has a petite, as in on the small side of small, build area.  As you can see the Dice Box of Death fully covered the build area.  This has been a problem with some kickstarters... even the excellent Rampage range which offers a "Small Printer Format" option for most, if not all, of its STL files.  Even with that many models are not printable without resizing downward. I'm going to contact Rampage and ask about a "Petite" option but it'll be an ongoing problem. On the plus side the Snapmaker shredder software is designed for this petite build area and warns the operator when the model size exceeds the capacity of the build area.

2. The modular design and all aluminum body were attractive to me because I move often and would need to break down the machine and re assemble it post move.  Unfortunately the fasteners are poorly designed and often not actually anchored to anything so, for example, a screw holding the lower cooling fan just fell out onto the print during operation.  The print head impacted the screw which unseated the print bed. The print bed is no longer as stable as it was, has to be checked for position prior to printing, and is prone to slip.  I'll have to break it all down and see if its re-seatable.

3. The filament feed system is a twitchy and I had to disassemble the print module to get the filament to feed the first time.  During this process I discovered that the cooling fan screws are not anchored to anything and take advantage of the cooling fin spacing for traction... this traction disappears the first time the screw is removed and, since the cooling fins get hot, you have to consider that when coming up with alternative ways to seat the screws. There are effectively no guides for the filament but with practice, once understanding the interior geometry, the filament has change has become more manageable.

4. The enclosure is a nightmare!

Let me say that again... The enclosure is a nightmare!

90% of the problems I have with the machine so far are due to the design of the enclosure.

Some examples:

 The metal tabs are brittle and easily broken during assembly.  I only broke one and had to glue the support in place.  This isn't a major problem for a permanent location but kind of defeats my goal of re-locatability.

The filament feed tube is plastic and during normal operation can easily come into contact with a hot part of the machine.  This happened to me.  The tube melted onto the filament which eventually broke off very close to the print head which then had to be changed.  To change the print head requires loosening a small set screw that, in normal operation, becomes filled with PLA material.  The screw is made of low quality material and is easily stripped when trying to loosen it.

Basically any interaction with the machine, from transformation to filament changes, is made much more difficult by the enclosure.  The one advantage the enclosure has is that it does reduce the noise level.  Having the enclosure actively assault the machine is a pretty high price to pay for a little less noise.

Adventures in 3D Printing

 Its been a busy couple of weeks! I spent a week whale watching and then the past couple of days in the aftermath of having a seriously infected tooth extracted.  In the middle of that the SnapMaker Kickstarter delivered a 3D printer to my doorstep!

Assembly was straightforward and, after a couple of false starts with leveling the print bed, pretty easy to start exploring. The machine is performing pretty well although there doesn't appear to be any kind of auto shut off when a print is finished.  The nozzel and bed cool but the machine otherwise idles and the fan volume is not insignificant... which will hopefully be compensated for when the enclosure gets installed.  It's not hugely loud or poorly pitched its just a PC component fan running all the time the machine is on.

 The SnapMaker software is a beginners set.  Its simplified and requires little to no experience with 3D printing to get started.  Its also sized for the SnapMaker's relatively small print bed which was a big help already.  Once I get a little more up to speed I'll likely look into a more advanced  program.  Snapmaker supports several of these.

The enclosure... seen on the right... was kind of an afterthought and it shows a bit.  I'm assembling it but will probably wait until I finish my large model test print to install it.

 My first job was to print some scenic 40mm bases as my Knights of the Chalice (Raging Heroes) is in the paint process and needs bases badly!  These came out ok and taught me a lot about PLA as a material.  First... the heat from filing a rough edge will melt the PLA so be careful about that... that makes me think that I might want to be aware of the climate when moving, storing and using models and accessories made from this material!  I think the SnapMaker supports a couple of other materials and I'll have to experiment a bit to see what options are available.

 Next up are some scenic bits to make the Kingdom Death Monster board a bit more attractive.  3D replacements for some of the terrain types and a 25mm round with a Kingdom Death stone faces theme.  I'll have to experiment with adjusting these to serve as inserts in the 30mm Kingdom Death bases but I'm happy to have a couple of ways to mount Kingdom Death models on themed bases for use in other games.

I've also printed some blank 25x50mm bases to stabilize some of the more floppy furniture in Star Saga.  I think I'd still prefer to use clear Plexiglas for that because its stiffer at less thickness but ... experiments!

All of these types of bases etc... took about two hours each to print at high quality.

Finally... since I was going to be out of it for a couple of days with the tooth... I hit the start button on a "Dice Box of Death" to have a cool Kingdom Death(ish) theme container for the table!... Since it is forbidden for me to touch my wife's dice... due to understandable fears of "Cursed Dice" transfer ... I *may have to make two of these boxes...

At the time of this photo the print is about 12 hours on... looks like about that much longer? and then the lid will need printing.  After which... it'll be time to tackle the enclosure!

Off to see how the bases paint up!