3D Printers... Who has them

[sluggo]

And what do you tend to print?

3D Modeling skills?

I have a Creality CR-10S that is heavily modded. Best mod by far, BLTouch. This is a filament printer and will print pretty nice at .05 layer height but takes about 15 years to print anything of reasonable size and even at that resolution small details are a thing of fantasy. Best for printing larger items (.3 layer height) that need a decent amount of strength but not parts that need a pretty finish (unless you intend to prime and sand).

I also brought home a Creality LD-002R 2 weeks ago. Super nice prints at .05 layer height but comes with all the hazards and toxicity that come with resin. I have printed several Death Korps figures, a couple chess pieces, some bees for the wife and a Panzerhund which I scaled down by 50% and it's still huge. There have been a few failed prints also. 

I think I'm mostly past the curve on the resin printer now. Post production. clean up and disposal are a flippin' nightmare. If it was not for water washable resin, I would have put it up for sale already.

My 3D modeling skills thus far are limited to fairly simple models.

Here's some stuff I've done on both printers. 

I'll post better pics of some of the more interesting stuff but here's a short description of what's in this pic.

Red shapes: quilt cutting templates for the boss. CR-10S. .3 resolution.

Blue frame: Frame for 25th scale heavy wrecker project. CR-10S .2 resolution.

Blue muzzle: Muzzle brake for 1:16 Panther CR-10S, .05 resolution.

Red Barrel: 1:35 scale barrel. .12 resolution.

60mm DKOK Commissar: LD-002R .05 resolution.

28mm DKOK troopers: LD-002R .05 resolution.

Unknown scale Wolfenstein Panzerhund. LD-002R .05 resolution.

Skull Chess Pieces: LD-002R .05 resolution.

 

Panzerhund done on resin rig. Has a couple of newb errors but the surface is very respectable as is the detail. I will have to reprint a couple parts. When resin printing it is imperative to be absolutely sure there is no residual resin left on the print when you cure it. That's a 1:16 scale Panther G in the background. I suspect it was 1:16 scale before I reduced it by 50% which would bring it in around 1:32 (54mm). The 60mm Commissar looks just a tad big next to it.

 

Commissar upscaled from 28mm to 60mm and printed on the resin rig.

 DKOK 28mm Troopers printed on resin rig in black resin and dry brushed a bit to show detail.

Chess pieces printed on resin rig. The bumps are where the supports were located during printing. I have found that they are easier to remove prior to curing but tend to leave a divot in the model. I cured it this way to determine what's less work, fixing the divot or knocking down the zit. I will say that they are very tender prior to curing. It's very easy to dig into the surface and even break fine parts off the model.

35th scale barrel printed on filament rig at.12 and muzzle brake printed at .05.

I have printed quite a bit more stuff on the filament printer but most of it don't belong here. Printer mods, T-rex skeletons, more sewing stuff for the Boss, etc.

[biggtim]

I have an Anycubic Photon resin printer that I use to print model parts created in Fusion 360. I don;t ave time to post pics right now, but I can later. Still learning the software, but I've been very pleased with the print quality so far, as well as the cost and ease of use. I actually don't mind the regular resin that requires alcohol clean up, but I'm planning to try the water based stuff soon, too. Any recommendations on brand?

I think the resin printers like the nice Creality you've got are the way to go for modelers. The resolution and material are perfectly suited for model parts, in my experience. I'll throw some pics on after work.

By the way, your stuff is fantastic!!!

Tim

[biggtim]

As promised, here's some stuff I've printed:

Cowl spacer and exhausts for Russian P-40 conversion:

Cowling for 1/16 Sopwith Camel:

And most recently a low resolution test print of a Mk214A 50mm Cannon for a secret project I am tinkering with:

Definitely not the awesome stuff sluggo is doing, but I'm getting there.

Tim

[harv]

Holler Bat, Shit man. You both have such talent !....harv 

[sluggo]

1 hour ago, harv said:

Holler Bat, Shit man. You both have such talent !....harv 

Thanks but I can only claim credit for the modeling of the quilting stuff and the Panther muzzle brake. The rest was simply downloaded and printed with very little modification.

2 hours ago, biggtim said:

 

Definitely not the awesome stuff sluggo is doing, but I'm getting there.

Tim

something-A1/U4?

Nice work BTW...

[biggtim]

1 hour ago, sluggo said:

Something-A1/U4?

Nice work BTW...

Yes, indeed! A couple of other members encouraged me to try and make a cannon nosed conversion for the trumpy 262, so I'm exploring how hard that might be. The gun breach was actually pretty straightforward, and the barrel is on it's way from Germany. The nose and removable panels are proving much more difficult to master. I may actually have to try modeling them in Fusion and printing them, but that would be a serious jump in complexity for me. 

[IainMackayDall]

What 3d software interfaces the best for these printers. I'd love to get involved with them, but just waiting for them to shake out, or as just you are reviewing, helping see the plus and minus points. On that 1/16 Sopwith Camel cowling, how much effort in the 3d model do those cutaway support stuctures require when preparing the print. is it as ( a novice asking here ) built in.. somehow?? I cannot believe that would really be that case, so I'm assuming you have to scaffold the piece manually, well in the 3d file before printing?. Great article, Plus many thanks.

[Clunkmeister]

Tim, I still can’t get over that Klimov P-40.  That’s just pure genius

[biggtim]

4 hours ago, IainMackayDall said:

What 3d software interfaces the best for these printers. I'd love to get involved with them, but just waiting for them to shake out, or as just you are reviewing, helping see the plus and minus points. On that 1/16 Sopwith Camel cowling, how much effort in the 3d model do those cutaway support stuctures require when preparing the print. is it as ( a novice asking here ) built in.. somehow?? I cannot believe that would really be that case, so I'm assuming you have to scaffold the piece manually, well in the 3d file before printing?. Great article, Plus many thanks.

You create the model in software like Fusion 360 (what I use), Rhino, etc, then export it to an .STL file and open it in the slicing software, do the setup and then save it to a flash drive. Plug that into the printer, load it up, and start printing. Surprisingly, the cheapass slicing software that came with my printer does all of the supports for you, if you want it to. It's very simple and kind of clunky software, but it has worked flawlessly so far for me. The only thing you have to do is decide what position you want to part to print in (rotation, height, etc.) then tell it to add the supports. Set the layer thickness desired, and a few other settings, and you're done.

You can manually do the supports, or adjust them after they are added, remove some, whatever. They can be thin, thick, different styles, etc. I had to print the camel cowl 5 or 6 times before I got it the correct size, the last one was the one I showed you. It actually became too large a diameter to fit within the print area lying flat, so by rotating it up like that, it fit and kept the supports from marring the outside surface. The supports actually break off quite easily, and usually leave a little bump that sands off without any trouble. Occasionally they will make a little dimple that must be filled. You generally need to prime and lightly sand the parts before use anyway to get rid of the moire pattern created by the layers, but it's much less noticeable with resin than the filament printers.

So far, I'm really happy with the results I've been able to achieve with not much learning curve, though results probably vary from person to person.

[sluggo]

I use Fusion360 as well. They offer a free hobbyist license and it's made by AutoDesk so if you have any autocad skills or oddly enough vector drawing skills you have a head start. I use Chitubox to slice resin stuff and Simplify3D for filament stuff.

Just a quick run through.
3D printing is an additive manufacturing process. Meaning that the part is made by stacking layer on layer. Let's say you have a part that is 20mm in the z axis (height) and you wish to print it at .05 layer height resolution. Theoretically, your 20mm part is sliced into 400 layers. 

The process goes:

• Model part in modeling software or download files already prepared.
• Import in to slicing program. Here you can add supports, scale, copy and mirror, etc. Most are very automated but have very customizable settings which can get you into trouble if you don't understand what the settings do and how they affect other settings.
• Send to printer

Filament printing works pretty much like a plotter plotting around drawing the part layer by layer. Resin printers cure the entire layer at one time by exposing one slice at a  time.

Where the resin printer has advantage in my opinion is that it does not matter how many copies of your 20mm part you have, as long as they fit the print bed you simply have 400 layers so the print time remains the same. Whether you have 1 part or 5, if your layer cure time is 6 seconds your print takes 2400 seconds, or 40 minutes.  

A filament printer on the other hand draws each layer of each part one at a time until the whole layer is done. Let's say it takes 10 seconds to draw each layer of each part. Using the same layer height .05 (which some filament printers would struggle with) it would take 4000 seconds, or 67 minutes to print a single part. If you were to add 4 duplicates to the print bed, you can multiply the print time by a factor of 5, and arrive at 335 minutes, or 5.5 hours.