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Thread rule: People can post just about anything to one of these 3d printing file share sites, please refrain from sharing anything NSFW, or that may be violating copyright. Welcome to the wonderful world of 3d printing! Printers have been around for a while now, but its only recently that high quality prints are possible with even the cheaper printers. There is a great general thread in the hobbies subforum, but 3d printing can do a lot, and here we’re gonna focus on how 3d printing can help you on the tabletop. A printer is a great tool for making everything from miniatures to terrain to game pieces. What is a 3d printer? Pretty much every 3d printer falls into one of two major categories: FDM and SLA. FDM stands for fused deposition modeling, and in practice, involves a printer that is pretty much a computer guided hot-glue gun. You have a spool of plastic filament that is fed through a heated nozzle while a computer tells the nozzle where to move. This method of printing makes for much more jack of all trades machines, and while it doesn’t have the best quality, you can often print much larger objects on cheaper printers. A big thing to consider with this type of printing is the thickness of each layer of plastic you lay down, more often referred too the resolution of a print. A thicker layer may cut down on print time, but larger layers leave more noticeable lines between layers. These lines can be a pain to deal with, and can cause major issues with finely detailed objects. SLA stands for stereolithography, but its more commonly just called resin printing. Special resin that hardens when exposed to UV light replaces a filament, and instead of a moving nozzle, you have a flat surface that moves up and down. This flat surface, called the build plate, is raised and lowered into a vat of the resin, and the resin is hardened layer by layer into the shape of whatever is being printed. This kind of printing can produce extremely detailed prints with ease, but the resin is messy and can be dangerous if handled improperly. This method is also more often better suited for smaller objects, primarily due to the fact that most resin printers that would be considered budget are pretty small. They do make some giant printers now though, big enough to print an entire human sized helmet of your favorite character in a single go. Which printer should I choose? Each of the two kinds of printers have pros and cons, but for the most part, if you are going to be focused exclusively on miniatures, a resin printer should be your first choice. An FDM printer is better for larger objects, like terrain, or things that don’t need to be quite so detailed. That’s not to say that you can’t get great results with an FDM printer, but be prepared to be tuning your printer for many hours before you get results that are easy with a resin printer. That being said, if you expect to print stuff that needs to be more durable, you may want to stay away from resin. Once cured, it can be very brittle, making it a poor choice for functional prints. There is no correct answer though, and what printer works best for you is subjective. For FDM printers, you can get a printer for less than a hundred dollars, but I would save myself the potential headache and go with something like an Ender 3 for about $350. Filament can vary in price drastically, but a 1kg spool of your basic PLA will be between $15-20. Some printers can handle more expensive, higher quality filaments like carbon fiber and whatever, but PLA is a pretty good generic filament for just about every purpose. For resin printers, the best starting point would be something like an Elegoo Mars. Printers like that have been a staple of 3d printing for several years for a good reason. These printers are just about as close to plugging in and it working as a 3d printer gets. Without any sales, this printer typically starts at about $250, with resin costing anywhere from $20 -50 for a liter. Resin printing is a relatively new kid on the commercial 3d printing block, and as such there’s a lot more development here than for FDM. Resin printers also require Where do I find things to print? Once you get a printer and set it up your next step will be to get printing. Your printer should come with files preloaded on whatever thumb drive or SD card the printer uses but if not, your best bet will be one of the classic printer test files. For FDM printing, the go to is a benchy (think benchmark). An equivalent for resin printers is usually a modified rook. If these work on the firs time that is great! But don’t worry if your first few prints don’t come out very good (or don’t come out at all). There is a good infographic in the general printing thread in Hobbies related to troubleshooting a benchy, and one of the big benefits of the community all deciding to test with these files means that a lot, and I mean a lot, of time has been spent figuring out what every possible problem could be caused by. A quick google search should be all that you need to figure out the possible root issues causing whatever print problem you ran into. Once you have a test file successfully printed, you’re ready to move on to printing whatever you want. In my experience, this can be very overwhelming. There are a bunch of sites people use to share files for printing, and thousands and thousands of files on each of them. Most of these files can be split into two categories: paid and free. Some sites only do free files, but most have a mix of free and paid files available. Personally, I really like MyMiniFactory for tabletop stuff. As the name implies, they have a much bigger focus on printing for the tabletop than some of the other sites. A lot of the stuff there is paid, but they have pretty frequent sales on some of the biggest creators. They also have a membership option that I myself don’t use, but they offer discounts on printers, supplies and files that may make it worth it for you. The other big place I would recommend getting files from is creators on Patreon. There are a lot of great sculptors out there making great miniatures and terrain pieces, and usually all it takes to get access to them is pledging the right tier. Getting everything from a single creator usually guarantees everything will be scaled properly, and everything will be in the same style. This may not be a big deal for you, but if you want an entire set of miniatures that all go well together, this may be the best place for you to look. A lot of times these creators also have their stuff on MyMiniFactory or another site, which makes it easy to find new creators you might like.
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Feb 18, 2021 23:25
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My background is in the engineering modeling software so using something like zbrush is scary to me. That being said I have printed models that friends of mine have sculpted and it's really cool to go from the obj file to a physical object.
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Mar 23, 2021 04:22
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MeinPanzer posted:Are 3D printers like airbrushes, in that there are consistently sales at certain times of year that you should wait for if you want to buy one? I'm slowly edging towards getting something like an Elegoo Mars to produce parts for conversions and, eventually, terrain, but I'd just as easily wait a while if it means saving 30% or something like that. I know that places like MyMiniFactory have a deal if you order through them. Its a specially branded Elegoo mars pro. Otherwise a quick glance at Newegg makes it seem like they have a pretty good selection of printers, and I would assume that they would go on sale in their general site wide sales.
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Mar 23, 2021 15:50
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Realized I should probably show off some of the stuff I've been working on. I printed these up a little bit ago, assault intercessors for scale. Next step is a quick wash and then I'm going to make some green stuff vines so they look overgrown.
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Mar 23, 2021 23:30
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Off the top of my head the site I like the least is Yeggi but I think they’re mostly free. For paid stuff I particularly like MyMiniFactory since they have a pretty robust tabletop section and they also spotlight Kickstarter projects and other creators like that. There’s a creator called Artisan guild who makes pretty cool fantasy mini collections, usually one bundle a month. Last one was a skeleton themed one. They always include something they call a “pinup model”, which I think is dumb so I never print it. I tried the anycubic eco resin a little while back that I would highly recommend if you have smell concerns. It’s quite a bit more expensive but it’s completely biodegradable in a compost cause it’s made from soy. Accessory wise coasters are really simple, and they can be a great test print to make sure you have your settings just right before you start doing bigger more detailed things. Assuming you have your settings correct and you don’t have any issues with under extrusion or something the prints are pretty strong on an FDM printer. Depending on the size of the shelves you could run into problems but I’ve definitely seen people make stuff like that, and boxes you can for sure make especially if you use a metal rod in the hinge instead of doing just plastic
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Mar 26, 2021 15:42
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grassy gnoll posted:Resin's good for cosmetic stuff and that's about it. I'd never use it for anything structural. Yeah they have some more flexible resin that is not quite as brittle but I wouldn't use resin for much besides miniatures and other highly detailed stuff. Even for miniatures sometimes a spear or something will be so brittle that it will break from handling. Edit: Something that is worth noting about MyMiniFactory is that they do huge sales all the time. If you do see something you like, I would wait for one of them cause they will sometimes have huge discounts, like 50% off of an entire catalog. The Baumann fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Mar 26, 2021 |
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Mar 26, 2021 18:38
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aldantefax posted:So, in a happenstance, someone near me is selling four Flashforge Creator Pro units with spare nozzles at 250 per printer, so I'm considering just diving in and buying all 4. With the initial outlay comparable to buying a Prusa i3 but with a larger build quantity per rotation, should there be any considerations for operating at scale? Do a test print of a model on every printer before scaling up production? Well if one is a thousand getting four for that price is an amazing deal. Spare nozzles are always nice to have, they don't last forever and you will have to change one eventually. My main printer now is an i3 mk3s, and I haven't had any issues with it outside of printing some huge things that I was able to get around with some clever splitting of models. Anything that's in the ballpark is going to be more than good for 95% of things. My advice if you get them would be set up one to start, get that working nicely and then set the other ones up. I don't know much about the flashforge but with any printer you're going to have to do some calibrations and general setup and fixes before you get consistent nice prints. Print a Benchy, see how that goes and then tweak that printer. I think getting to know what you're doing working one at a time will be better than trying to juggle 4 at once. The times I've had issues with jamming the problem was usually from swapping out plastics wrong. I would recommend getting some thin wire to clear any jams you may have. An old toothbrush is great to have as well for cleaning the outside of the nozzle. Another thing you should definitely get is some glue sticks. I personally like the Elmer's Glue purple ones, but anything will work as long as its water washable. In my experience its the best for any bed adhesion problems you may have, plus it's cheap and they carry it everywhere. As for what to print, I've been working on my 40k terrain recently and I really really like the stuff here: https://warlayer.com/products/tower-city This is where I got the files for those towers I posted a picture of before. They also have a pretty neat looking modular building package but I have yet to play around with any of it: https://warlayer.com/products/warlayer-4-0-late-pledge-bundle If you're going more for a fantasy route there are a ton of things that go better with that flavor too. You can never have too many trees.
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Mar 29, 2021 03:31
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aldantefax posted:Yeah, I'm gonna spring for it (I think I'm getting 5 instead of 4 printers as a result). I'll have 1 or 2 setup (that's all I have space for) and the rest will go into the garage or storage until I have the new space ready later this year. Ah yeah you won't need it with PEI. It's mostly a necessity with steel or glass buildplates. With PEI just be careful with your leveling not to go too far into the material. The hot end can dig into the sheets in a way it couldn't with glass. If that happens you will have a very difficult print to remove.
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Mar 29, 2021 03:58
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aldantefax posted:Any specific filament brand, etc. to use? I think I want the durability and price per unit isn't a huge deal at the moment since I'm not trying to scale up for selling stuff on Etsy or whatnot (maybe in the future if I have enough to make a print farm at this rate). I’ve never done it personally but there are tutorials for time lapse videos. As for filament, it depends what you want. I really like some of the colors of the Prusament line, but depending on where you are it can take a while to have their stuff be delivered. I picked up a set of half kilo spools from aio robotics that I would recommend for people starting out. Nice variety of colors to start with and you can just get full spools of any common colors after you use up the half spool. I would recommend getting a brown spool to go with that though. Brown is such a useful color that it’s hard to print a lot of terrain without it.
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Mar 29, 2021 04:16
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One thing I would recommend since you have multiple printers is to get one printer set up for detailed stuff. If you have a smaller nozzle on a dedicated printer for minis you can get some nice detail even with an FDM printer. I tried to do the minis thing one time. I'm sure there are others as well but people like this have a huge variety of minis you would need for d&d available: https://www.shapeways.com/shops/dmworkshop But yeah all of those things are very possible. Do you have experience with a solid modeling program? Personally I use Solidworks for things like part trays but anything works. The only thing I can think of that would allow for going from a 2d image to a 3d object would be something like a telephotogrammetry set up. That requires hundreds of images from all different angles though, so having just one to work with won't make anything. In terms of selling I don't have a ton of experience, but a quick glance at etsy seems like d&d related stuff does very well. Depending on what you end up making you could also consider selling just the .stl files as well. Super simple things I wouldn't bother with, but if you make say a whole system of tiles for displaying conditions I'm sure someone would buy it. I just printed up a few pieces of terrain for 40k that I'll be working on more later. I'll take some pics of how they come out.
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Mar 29, 2021 15:48
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Personally I really like the new versions of Cura and the Prusa Slicer. I don't think there would be a need to pay for an alternative. Also, have some progress pics for some industrial 40k terrain I've been working on.   
The Baumann fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Mar 30, 2021 |
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Mar 30, 2021 17:54
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Those all came out really nice! Are those models presupported?
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Apr 1, 2021 18:08
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Verisimilidude posted:The rats were presupported, everything else I used autosupports with some small additions wherever I thought they'd need them. It’s a rough method but I usually have a figure I know is the right size and then I’ll scale the other models to that. Otherwise sometimes the sculptor will have what scale the file is in and I’ve done that as a proportion to get to about the right scale.
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Apr 1, 2021 18:18
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bbcisdabomb posted:Most people will say that if you have the money for a Prusa, get a Prusa. They're the best hobbyist machines around. Get the kit instead of pre-built, the instructions are awesome and you'll really know your way around the machine by the time you're done. The biggest con is the $750+shipping asking price, though they do run free shipping sales several times per year. I have a Prusa mk3 and I love it. It was my second printer so I had some experience before going in but the kit is actually pretty fun to put together.
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Apr 2, 2021 03:27
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Geekboy posted:Thanks for that advice. If you’re going to be printing stuff that needs higher strength, look into what the printer is capable of before you make the plunge. A lot of lower budget printers can only really handle PLA, which is a nice all around material, but it isn’t great for outdoor use and it isn’t the best under heat. Some materials are much better for more strenuous applications. One of the nice things about the Prusa is it can handle a pretty big variety of materials and the software has pretty good settings for all of them.
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Apr 2, 2021 17:26
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spectralent posted:I've been looking at 3D printing and I may well have a space I could set up. I've been eyeing the Mars 2 so far. I'm wondering what kind of ventilation setups people are mostly using? Also, people have mentioned resin being fragile: how fragile are we talking? Like, resin model fragile or more delicate than that? I have my printer set up near a window and I have a small desk fan to vent out any fumes. I wear a mask just to be safe but it isn’t a very serious ventilation set up. Once cured they’re probably pretty standard strength for resin. You have to be careful with thin parts like spears being brittle but they’re not super delicate.
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Apr 3, 2021 01:28
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Springfield Fatts posted:This going to sound weird, but does anyone have a use for all the waste resin printing creates? It's lovely just tossing all these support structures. I used a few to model 6mm ruins as they surprisingly come off well as fallen skyscrapers with some texture and pigments. And I know it's the same as the pile of sprues you toss when clipping plastic models, but I dunno, it feels different when you're the one making the waste. I started using eco resin recently which makes me feel better about the waste. It’s compostable so I just leave it on the side and add it to the pile. With filament there’s methods of recycling waste which makes getting rid of supports feel better but resin is harder to get rid of cause of how nasty some of the chemicals are.
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Apr 4, 2021 20:20
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aldantefax posted:On the craft side, so far I have found that printing multiple things at once produces a little better results than printing one thing at once, so I'm going to try an experiment where I print out multiple CaliCats to see if they're not going to suffer from overheating. Since the issue is with the PLA not cooling fast enough after being deposited on the bed, I suspect this may get some okayish results. I did a test print of a cable spool and it turned out great, and I suspect it's due to printing both sides at once instead of just the one side at 100% scale. 212C at 25mm/s with 0.3 layer height on the Flashforge Creator Pro. You may want to look at a better hot end fan if you’re having consistent issues with it. Sometimes the stock parts aren’t the best, I would check if your specific brand has a subreddit dedicated to it. I’m not the biggest fan of Reddit but they can be pretty good for super specific information like that. Filler primer and putty are great for bigger prints you have to break into multiple parts. I’ve printed a few helmets for cosplay stuff and being able to print in chunks and then cover any seems is really handy.
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Apr 4, 2021 20:25
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Springfield Fatts posted:drat I wish I'd know about this. I just got a bottle of regular grey and happily would of paid more for the eco version. Well, now I know going forward. This is what I’ve been using. I don’t print a ton on the resin printer so i don’t use a ton of resin but I’m still more comfortable using this stuff. It’s also not nearly as bad if you get it on your skin which I like.
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Apr 5, 2021 04:14
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Verisimilidude posted:Do you have a link for the brand you use? I’m currently using elegoo resin but wouldn’t mind switching to something a bit safer. I forgot to link it  https://www.amazon.com/ANYCUBIC-Printer-Plant-Based-Precision-Printing/dp/B07YZ78NN3?th=1
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Apr 5, 2021 05:50
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Just a note, 30% infill is very much overkill. I typically do like 15%, and I’ll go down to as low as 5 for things that don’t need to be very strong
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Apr 7, 2021 04:13
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I bought a $50 ultrasonic cleaner off harbor freight and that works great for me. If you put the print in a ziploc bag then you only have to dispose of the liquid in the bag instead of the whole tank. And for curing yeah I bought some UV led strips and a cheap aluminum pan and made a curing chamber. It’s not as good as leaving them in the sun for a bit but it gets the job done.
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Apr 7, 2021 14:50
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Fair enough, I’m in New York so its not cloudy 300 days of the year. To be fair though it’s not so much about sunlight as it is about UV, which comes through even on cloudy days. If you have some time before you get a curing set up that would work fine.
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Apr 7, 2021 15:57
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That would probably work great. The biggest thing to keep in mind if you aren't using a curing chamber is consistent exposure. You can run into issues if one side is fully cured and the other is still uncured. I haven't had any issues myself but I've heard people having issues with thinner parts breaking from uneven curing.
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Apr 7, 2021 17:39
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Blood stains make it 40kier. Do you have a direct link to that? I really love how those look and I’m a big fan of modular stuff that can come apart to store.
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Apr 7, 2021 22:05
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No. 1 Juicy Boi posted:Yep, it's a mix of the cathedral walls, cathedral ruins, and cathedral floors from this section These all look great! Honestly printing stuff like this probably comes off a lot cheaper than the terrain GW sells even factoring in materials and power consumption. I have some industrial lookin stuff printing now that I’ve posted pictures of previously as I’ve worked on it.
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Apr 7, 2021 23:23
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That's one of the things I'm always concerned about. Different creators can have very different styles, and trying to use multiple creators in one project it is very hard to get a cohesive look. Side note, I think I'm in love with openlock. I've been printing up the demon cathedral stuff they have as a base for some Word Bearers for a small game and man they look great and they go together so nicely. A lot of the modular stuff I've used in the past felt very flimsy when it was connected but these are very solid. I'll post some pictures when I get a few more pieces printed.
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Apr 10, 2021 16:56
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aldantefax posted:Anybody use this 3D XTC stuff to smooth out minis? It's a two-part filler epoxy that you sand to a matte finish after about 3 hours. It looks like it can remove the striations from FDM printing pretty well and the price isn't that bad? I'm also looking at other ways to finish PLA models. I did print out these voodoo stones at 100% infill by doing the top layer hack and it worked out okay but I do want to see what I can do to further improve the print itself, and also probably print it with less infill. I suspect that if the external shell is a bit thicker than default settings, I can get some positive results, and pre-supported the bottoms can be sanded down while still achieving pretty decent results. I’ve used similar to hide gaps on a helmet I printed, but I’ve never done anything like it on something detailed. People have done pretty good videos on different finishing methods but I don’t know if any apply to minis all that well. A lot of them are for large less detailed prints you want to get smooth
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Apr 11, 2021 04:58
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Verisimilidude posted:Does anyone have good recs for complete/mostly complete printable armies for games like 40k and fantasy/aos? I want to start a new printing project after this is done and it would be great to have a fully printed army I really like one page rules. They have a pretty cool stuff you could use necron and tyrannid proxies Edit: beaten
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Apr 12, 2021 20:31
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Printing up some of the openlock stuff on printablescenery as a ruined cathedral base for a word bearers force I'm putting together. Really like how these go together. 
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Apr 14, 2021 00:53
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I highly recommend that anyone printing resin should get an ultrasonic cleaner. I got one cheap off harbor freight and after a 3-5 minute cycle everything comes out nice and clean. I fill it with water and put whatever cleaning solution I'm using, usually simple green, in a little ziploc with the mini so that I only have to dispose of that instead of the whole tank. Works great and it's no involvement from me once it is running so I usually take the time to clean up my workspace while I wait.
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Apr 20, 2021 14:41
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jesus WEP posted:yeah i scrubbed them with ipa, then they spent some time in an ultrasonic cleaner, then a final scrub with some warm soapy water. i probably did a shoddy job with the ipa and then the other steps didn’t do much where i missed What percent alcohol were you using? One of my big reasons to switch to simple green was I couldn't find high enough percent with everyone buying it up last year to disinfect with.
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Apr 20, 2021 14:43
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Maybe bump up the exposure time for the first few layers? Other than that seems like it shouldn't have too many serious problems. Good luck with it! And share pics if it comes out good
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Apr 22, 2021 03:22
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Mikey Purp posted:I'm looking for a good source of AoS terrain, ideally elven flavored rather than the huge number of generic ruins that I keep finding. Has anyone found a source that fits the bill? Does this fit the bill? https://www.printablescenery.com/product-category/fantasy/elves/
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Apr 22, 2021 18:48
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Harvey Mantaco posted:So it was my lcd. It was fucky. Which brand was it? I know elegoo has been having parts issues for a while now.
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May 11, 2021 02:20
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Bucnasti posted:Thanks. Got all that ordered. I have pretty much used exclusively water washable and a bit of the eco resin recently, and the clean up is definitely a lot easier with water. You don’t need to worry about cleaning products, you can just toss it into a ziploc bag into an ultrasonic cleaner and do something else. You do have to worry about waste, but if you use a ziploc bag you keep that to a minimum that you have to dispose of. I would recommend water washable over eco for now, mostly cause of the price difference. It feels a lot better messing up cheap prints when you’re learning. As far as color goes, grey is probably the best bet. Some clear resins can be bad for detailed prints because of light bleeding through. Certain colors also have different exposure times, with grey requiring less exposure than black and other darker colors. I haven’t had any issues with spray primer, you just want to make sure you cure the prints completely and wash any excess resin off well. The Baumann fucked around with this message at 07:33 on May 14, 2021 |
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May 14, 2021 07:30
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Bucnasti posted:If you're using water washable resin, what do you do with the water after cleaning? I'm assuming it's not safe to pour down the drain or dump on my lawn. Yeah you don't want to just pour it down the drain. I have a bucket I use as a liquid waste disposal. If you put the print in a ziploc bag to clean you only have like a cup of water to deal with.
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May 14, 2021 17:17
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Nebalebadingdong posted:I'm trying to make some prototype bases for Warmaster. I've found someone who will print for me (He has an Elegoo Mars) Wide flat surfaces can cause the print to get pulled off the plate, I would try putting the print at an angle with supports and seeing if that helps.
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May 18, 2021 23:28
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It may be the case that a lot of traffic is being driven by youtube creators showing off the work of a certain patreon. I know I have definitely found stls from youtuber recommendations before. I agree it is weird that they don't do a better job of showing of their models, since that's the most important thing for anyone who would be buying them.
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Jun 18, 2021 21:28
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 18:04 |
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Does anyone have any recommendations for primer that will work with resin? I’ve been using army painter spray primer but I’m switching over to priming with an airbrush and I’ve heard some primers don’t adhere well to resin
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Jun 25, 2021 16:06
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