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Hey Dakka,

So my handmade aegis defense lines aren't turning out well, so I've decided to go the 3D printing route. Please let me know what you think. Also, if there are any ideas on how to make the long aegis line while preserving the Eldar feel, please let me know!

I plan on rigging a blue LED on the back of the translucent frosty-plastic to give it a glow-y feel. I'll probably paint the generator bone white, with some black highlights.

**EDIT** added CAD drawing of long Aegis. Please comment - need help making decision if I want to print this or not!

These look a lot like the sheilds you can deploy in halo. very nice concept though.

Pretty staple sci-fi concept. I'm just wondering how I can get the long aegis to work, as it has a weird shape.

Maybe just have two field emitters a little way apart, and have the energy fields merging in the middle?

Maybe look at metal wire "binding combs" from an office supply - they are like spiral notebook bindings that are open on one side. I'm trying them on some Tau fortifications I'm scratchbuilding as kind of futuristic energy-barbed-wire.

You could link together the sections with the wire combs similarly?

Hmm thanks for the input guys. I want to retain the eldar energy field feel, so I kind of like Insaniak's idea... Although cost-wise having less models to print is cheaper.

What about having a flat pane of frosted plastic between the two? For example, if the above assembly is A...

Small Aegis: A
Long Aegis: A=A

where = is a rectangular pane of glass...Will post an assembly up in a few hours to illustrate the idea.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Assembly posted!

What's your plan for materials and construction? Which 3D service are you thinking of using?

No offense, but it really looks to me like you could make this exact same design out of common available materials for pennies... 3D printing (rapid prototyping) is usually for items that are too complex to build yourself.

Also, you don't have to rapid prototype every model, just one or two pieces. You can then use resin casting kits to make dozens more. This design would handle that process well, they sell the kits at Hobby Lobby, and have even started carrying a clear casting resin you can use for the shield portion.

That said the design looks solid and I'll probably be making one myself now...

Might be just me - but when I did my Eldar barricades I based them off from the shield on the support weapons/heavy weapons. It lends itself well to expansion and the design is easy enough to replicate.

Hmm resin kits? Could you walk me through on how to do that? I want to go 3D printing because I want to cast it in frosted plastic, not opaque. I've already constructed a fading LED circuit to simulate the shining light stuff, and it needs to be translucent to work.

How about the actual design? Look good?

dnptan wrote:How about the actual design? Look good?

The straight portion looks off when matched up to the curved parts. While it would change the specific sizes some - consider instead the way soap bubbles connect with each other when they touch.

http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~iman/SoapBubbles/Soap_bubble_3_RGB.png

I think that will end up being more natural looking and keep the aesthetic which you are after.

That's interesting. I'll work on that. I think that might make it look less awkward too.

dnptan wrote:Hmm resin kits? Could you walk me through on how to do that? I want to go 3D printing because I want to cast it in frosted plastic, not opaque. I've already constructed a fading LED circuit to simulate the shining light stuff, and it needs to be translucent to work.

How about the actual design? Look good?

The design looks very good. honestly I think that if you could find a good ball shaped object to chop up, some plasticard, a little green stuff and a clear plastic disposable bowl or something you'd have everything you need.


If you insist on going CAD/Resin there's tutorials out there that's waaaay better then anything I could write. Just look around.

As a guess, the core projector module part you could do as an easy one piece mold to get the feel for it, the shield itself would probably need to be a 2-part mold, though I STRONGLY encourage you to look for an easier solution though. If you rally can't find anything, just get together a solid starting piece to cast from (this can be opaque, it's the final product you need to worry about).

Supplies wise:
Here's the resin starter set. At Hobby Lobby it's typically sold an aisle or two over from the plastic model kits. It comes with (almost) everything you'll need. 2 part resin for the parts and room temperature vulcanizing (RTV) silicon for the molds.
http://shop.hobbylobby.com/products/alumilite-mini-casting-kit-579714/
companies like Smooth-on sell larger quantities, but this kit is a good starter to get the feel for it. The RTV silicon is a 10:1 mix with the catalyst, so you can half the batch included in the starter set for a 2-part mold fairly easily. There's also a stand alone large can of just RTV silicone if you need if for the shield.

For the shield proper:
http://shop.hobbylobby.com/store/item.aspx?ItemId=194166
I haven't used it, but reading the description. it should work, though I'd be ready to wait a good 2-3 days for it to be nice and solid.

Hmm how about I have the parts 3-D printed, but then use the molds for mass-production? As it stands, this Aegis needs 5 Unique parts, and at least 4x of each unique part (16 of the shield gens). I could use the parts as molds for the resin...

Thanks for the advice!

dnptan wrote:Hmm how about I have the parts 3-D printed, but then use the molds for mass-production?

Sounds sensible. You might also want to consider vacuum-forming for the shields.

The shield generators in the game are a little too boxy for Eldar designs due to the low poly-count of the model. Compare it to the gateway model, for example. Rather than copy the design exactly I'd make it a little fancy. May as well take advantage of the 3D printing to get nice straight lines and even curves =)



The centre shield span can be done with a low curve. It looks better if all three sections interfere with each other, rather than the centre span just joining the two outside spans. This is obviously easier to do if you print the entire long shield as a single piece but you could also just print the centre span then glue a long shield together from two short shields and a centre span before filing away the unwanted corners. (Or print the short shield as a centre section and two corners so you can make separate moulds for the short shield, the left side of the long shield and the right side of the long shield.)



Does anyone who has worked with clear resins know how thick the shield should be?

Looking forward to seeing photos of this on a board.

i'd say 3mm for the clear resin...
really curious and i have a friend who plays eldar and he will be so excited!

@Construct - those look great! Can you send me the STL files for those? I'll have them printed ASAP . Also do you use solidworks? If you don't mind, I'd like a copy.

Haha your 3D modeling skills are top-notch My designs were made on a whim but you're pretty much a pro lol. my e-mail is dnptan@gmail.com. Thanks bro!

So how much would those cost from a 3-D print company?

dnptan wrote:@Construct - those look great! Can you send me the STL files for those? I'll have them printed ASAP . Also do you use solidworks? If you don't mind, I'd like a copy.

Haha your 3D modeling skills are top-notch My designs were made on a whim but you're pretty much a pro lol. my e-mail is dnptan@gmail.com. Thanks bro!

Heh, all I did was copy you badly. I used Inventor unfortunately but if you're wanting to duplicate the look the changes were pretty much just to make the semicircular fin elliptical in cross-section (and draw the original gem on a tilted workplane so it lay flat), inset the circular notches more, and add the engraved lines. Look to all your Eldar stuff for design cues.

Arschbombe wrote:So how much would those cost from a 3-D print company?

Well, assuming Shapeways is used and you print the generator, the small shield and the centre span of the large shield (then create your large shield master from the centre span print and two trimmed casts of the small shield) and print the shields at 3mm thick then:

- The generator needs to be in the frosted ultra-detail material. (The frosted detail material gives really obvious print lines. They're still present on the ultra-detail but not nearly so bad.) The generator is ~0.5cm3 so the price is $5.00 + ($3.49 * 0.5) = $6.75. You could add, say, parts to help make an Eldar quad gun in the same file to offset that one-off $5.00 fee. You can also hollow out larger parts and fill them in yourself prior to casting to reduce costs.

- The shields are probably best printed as solid pieces in the fine, strong and flexible material then sanded smooth. The small shield (at least, the one in my model, which isn't as deep as dnptan's so may be a bit small) is ~5.5cm3 and the centre span is ~1.75cm3 so the price is $1.50 + ($1.40 * (5.5 + 1.75)) = $11.65.

Plus $6.50 for US shipping. So not cheap exactly but can be definitely be worth it depending on your scratchbuilding skills. Me, I'm about a 2 on a scale of 0 to Insaniak so were I to attempt this manually I'd be spending hours trying to layer Apoxie Sculpt over a form to create a lopsided shield and filing and greenstuffing a wonky generator, so from where I stand it seems like a bargain.
_____

I was browsing around to see what other Eldarised defence lines people had done and found some interesting - if somewhat rough - ones. They don't give quite as much cover as the Aegis line but is that so important?

I like where this is going. If you do use Shapeways, please do post the links and make the them available to other Autarchs.

Its kinda like a BRA

otherwise it looks nice

you could always use clear plastic easter egg shells cut in half to make the engergy part. just need to make the generator nipples lol.

This is pretty great and a fantastic idea. I never would have considered 3D printing.