3d Printing General Topic...

[UN_MARINE]

This is probably the smallest model I've printed.

Quick & dirty Gundam marker paint job.

 

[tekering]

Omega Supremely tiny!  

[UN_MARINE]

On 9/12/2019 at 12:56 AM, tekering said:

Omega Supremely tiny!  

Indeed it its! I was half expecting the printer to ignore the model.

[Knight26]

On the other end of the spectrum, I am getting ready to cut up one of my fighter designs to start my biggest print to date.  I will be ordering a lot of different colored filament for this and taking the Bandai path for assembly, printing each section as close to the color is should be.

At what scale you ask?  1:18
How big will that be?  2'1.3" Long x 1'5.75" Wide x 4.25" Tall
Why?  As a display piece at conventions and other book selling opportunities.
Will it have a pilot?  Yes, customized GI Joe figure.
Am I crazy for doing this?  Probably.
Will I light it up?  Unlikely.
Full Cockpit?  Highly likely, just need to print stickers of the displays.

[mikeszekely]

Been interested in 3D printing for a long time, but my wife never really saw the utility. So, while I know I probably should invest in something better in the future, I managed to compromise with her and get something like baby's first 3D printer... an XYZPrinting da Vinci Mini w+. Not totally sure what I'm doing yet, but I'm test printing a missile for Siege Hound. 

[mikeszekely]

Well that turned out alright.

File off some of the rough edges, give it a coat of paint, and...

That'll do.  I mean, you can still kind of see the layers, but it's solid enough and fits well in Hound's shoulder cannon.

Now, I found the .stl file for this by searching for Transformers stuff on Thingiverse.  But I have some ideas for simple parts I'd like to try to create myself.  Can anyone recommend a good, newbie-friendly, and inexpensive program for designing the objects to be printed?  The printer came with XYZMaker, but I'm not totally sure if that's adequate or not.

Finally, would you guys say that calipers are a good investment?

[wmkjr]

I'm new at this also so just giving my $.02. 

I'd say calipers are a good investment. You're gonna make custom parts and need to take measurements for existing parts if they have to attach. It helps me a lot for doing my projects.

When I was looking into this I'd say most programs have some kinda learning curve. Some can do more than others. I use Fusion360 but tried out 123d design, freecad, and blender. I'm still learning how to use it. Fusion360 is free for hobbyist for a year and you can renew but comes with some limitations,  Autodesk has a 30day free trial if you wanna try it out. There are other free ones out there. Other members here have used Sketchup. Try all the free ones and see which one you think works the best for you.

 

Edited October 20, 2019 by wmkjr

[Chronocidal]

If you are interested in building fairly complex models, I would look into Gmax.  It is the same base interface as 3D Studio Max, but with a smaller feature set targeted at game design, and perfectly capable of making very detailed and complex printable models.  The export process may have an extra step or two to generate usable files, but it is well worth the effort to learn.

[Sanity is Optional]

If you're doing things that are more mechanical than artistic, sketchup is supposed to be pretty good.

It's worth deciding what you want to do. Some CAD packages are optimized more towards mechanical parts. They're good for getting exact shapes, with angles and flat faces or consistent curvature.

Others are more artistic, and they're better at indefinite organic shapes.

 

I like to think of is as "machining" vs "sculpting".

[UN_MARINE]

On 10/20/2019 at 12:38 PM, mikeszekely said:

Well that turned out alright.

File off some of the rough edges, give it a coat of paint, and...

That'll do.  I mean, you can still kind of see the layers, but it's solid enough and fits well in Hound's shoulder cannon.

Now, I found the .stl file for this by searching for Transformers stuff on Thingiverse.  But I have some ideas for simple parts I'd like to try to create myself.  Can anyone recommend a good, newbie-friendly, and inexpensive program for designing the objects to be printed?  The printer came with XYZMaker, but I'm not totally sure if that's adequate or not.

Finally, would you guys say that calipers are a good investment?

Good initial print! The layers are pretty much a constant with these type of printers, you'll want to adjust the 3D model to compensate for what kind of artifacts your printer makes.

A digital caliper is well worth the investment. I started with analog calipers, but quickly switched to digital when the opportunity came around.

On 10/2/2019 at 11:50 PM, Knight26 said:

On the other end of the spectrum, I am getting ready to cut up one of my fighter designs to start my biggest print to date.  I will be ordering a lot of different colored filament for this and taking the Bandai path for assembly, printing each section as close to the color is should be.

At what scale you ask?  1:18
How big will that be?  2'1.3" Long x 1'5.75" Wide x 4.25" Tall
Why?  As a display piece at conventions and other book selling opportunities.
Will it have a pilot?  Yes, customized GI Joe figure.
Am I crazy for doing this?  Probably.
Will I light it up?  Unlikely.
Full Cockpit?  Highly likely, just need to print stickers of the displays.

Very nice!

 

I used Solidworks (education license) for this guy. I've heard Fusion 360 does the same thing for free, and it's cloud based, so computer specs aren't a problem.

Very effective, especially when you're working with assemblies and moveable parts.

 

 

[Dangard Ace]

On 10/20/2019 at 12:38 AM, mikeszekely said:

Well that turned out alright.

File off some of the rough edges, give it a coat of paint, and...

That'll do.  I mean, you can still kind of see the layers, but it's solid enough and fits well in Hound's shoulder cannon.

Now, I found the .stl file for this by searching for Transformers stuff on Thingiverse.  But I have some ideas for simple parts I'd like to try to create myself.  Can anyone recommend a good, newbie-friendly, and inexpensive program for designing the objects to be printed?  The printer came with XYZMaker, but I'm not totally sure if that's adequate or not.

Finally, would you guys say that calipers are a good investment?

Use TinkerCad, if you’re a visually inclined type of person.  At least to start off with.   It’s a webbrowser based design program to get your feet wet with.  Making a TinkerCad account automatically gets you a sign in account for Fusion360(same company).  You just have to tell Autodesk you’re a hobbyist to get the yearly renewable free fusion account.   If you’re a more script/code writing person I’d suggest OpenSCAD.  
 

Calipers are a definite yes.  

[mikeszekely]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone.  I've never worked with any kind of CAD or 3D modeling software before, but I'd say I'm definitely more visual oriented ( haven't coded anything since grad school, and that was just HTML and Javascript).  More mechanical than artistic... for now, I expect I'll be printing parts more than anything else.  But they'll probably be fairly simple things.  For example, I'm not a fan of the sword that comes with Siege Megatron, but part of it becomes his tank mode's main barrel.  You can take the blades off and have him carry it as a rifle or a second smaller arm cannon, but I've thought that the most G1 thing would be to stick it on his back.  Using the pegs and holes on the toy itself most of the barrel will stick up over his shoulder.  I was thinking I might make a part that would basically be a 5mm peg to go into the hole on his back with a flat strip, maybe an inch long, that has a second 5mm peg on the other side, just so Megatron could carry that cannon barrel lower on his back.

Still not sure what software I'll end up settling on, but you guys gave me some options to look into.  And I'll see about grabbing some calipers this weekend.

[Knight26]

On 10/22/2019 at 10:33 PM, UN_MARINE said:

I used Solidworks (education license) for this guy. I've heard Fusion 360 does the same thing for free, and it's cloud based, so computer specs aren't a problem.

Very effective, especially when you're working with assemblies and moveable parts.

I'm still using an old ACAD license of mine.  I am debating moving over to Fusion-360, but only if I can import my existing models and not remake them all.

[UN_MARINE]

38 minutes ago, Knight26 said:

I'm still using an old ACAD license of mine.  I am debating moving over to Fusion-360, but only if I can import my existing models and not remake them all.

The parametric history-based modeling is a game changer. I started with AutoCAD, and tried Rhino, and I've never looked back.

Looks like Fusion 360 has a pretty comprehensive list of compatible files.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/fusion-360/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/File-formats-supported-by-Fusion-360.html

[Chronocidal]

I might have to check that out as a way of adapting my 3DS Max files, since most of mine are from game development, and not meant to exist as solid objects.  Being able to cut adjustable panel lines in things would be an amazing thing that I can't actually do.  

[UN_MARINE]

12 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

I might have to check that out as a way of adapting my 3DS Max files, since most of mine are from game development, and not meant to exist as solid objects.  Being able to cut adjustable panel lines in things would be an amazing thing that I can't actually do.  

Panel line detail is surprisingly easy. You can pretty much have 1 sketch for the panel lines, and build/cut every feature from it. And you can adjust the dimensions on demand.

This is covered in panel lines, and it was a pretty quick turnover, even with the constant adjustments. It's got 277 parts (so far), compared to the SDF-1's 135.

[Chronocidal]

Yeah, the big thing for me is that 3D Studio Max isn't meant as a solid modeler, so it operates at the polygon level.  Cutting panel lines is actually a destructive operation, because you have to insert new polygons, and while I can draw the cutting curves and apply a width easy enough, it's not simple to just subtract a shaped channel from the base surface, say if I wanted rounded or square or triangular channels.

This gets really painful if I decide I want to scale up the model, because it means re-cutting all of the details in a smaller size so the panel lines don't get blown up too big. 

I'll have to check this out this coming week.. I've got a few components with the lines cut already, but I've saved the base blank model, and if they're this easy to re-cut, it should be a quick operation.  I just need to learn how to translate the design into a solid format.  The parts are already all fully-enclosed surfaces, but I now from past experience that CAD software doesn't tend to get along well with polygon models.  

[UN_MARINE]

10 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Yeah, the big thing for me is that 3D Studio Max isn't meant as a solid modeler, so it operates at the polygon level.  Cutting panel lines is actually a destructive operation, because you have to insert new polygons, and while I can draw the cutting curves and apply a width easy enough, it's not simple to just subtract a shaped channel from the base surface, say if I wanted rounded or square or triangular channels.

This gets really painful if I decide I want to scale up the model, because it means re-cutting all of the details in a smaller size so the panel lines don't get blown up too big. 

I'll have to check this out this coming week.. I've got a few components with the lines cut already, but I've saved the base blank model, and if they're this easy to re-cut, it should be a quick operation.  I just need to learn how to translate the design into a solid format.  The parts are already all fully-enclosed surfaces, but I now from past experience that CAD software doesn't tend to get along well with polygon models.  

If Fusion 360 is capable of importing a watertight model, it should also convert it into a solid body by default. One way I use to transfer models is by exporting them to .STEP format, it usually turns them into solid bodies.