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Ive not been around for a while, ended up working at a uni and doing crazy hours. I did treat myself to a cheap 3d printer last year and after printing literally a ton of pointless plastic rubbish, the machine was pretty well calibrated, so I thought id see if printing models was viable.

I started with a couple of models already made by other people
The land raider took about 11 hours and around £2.50 in ABS


Generally flat panels are ok, but some of the finer details don't come out well.

Then I tried a drop pod.



I really wanted a crassus and having a lot of large flat panels, I tried modelling one. I was careful to design it with printing in mind, so left off some of the surface detail to add later and tried to keep all angles with the capability of the printer



Ive been adding plasticare armour panels to improve the surface and obviously many rivets are still to come.

Currently im working on a thunderhawk, after my foamcore one crumbled.

This front section took around 9 hours to print and itll take a little sanding to get the surface as flat as Id like. Ive modelled the back half and ill probably print it over the weekend.


My thoughts so far are if somethings modelled correctly, you can get some pretty good results. It wont ever completely replace scratch building for me, printing is good for getting superstructures built. While it takes longer, it does mean you can be getting on with something else in the meantime.
Mine only prints done to a 0.1mm resolution, which is fine for vehicles, but some of the sub £1000 printers can now do 0.02mm, so it wont be long before home printers are potentially capable of decent infantry miniatures.

Neet

I could see it being useful for a lot of the base model, but id love to add more detail with plasticard and green stuff.

I dont have the cashola for a 3d printer though :(

Very cool start with that T hawk

The thunderhawk grows, this puts it at around 13 hours print time so far

Well this certainly doesnt look bad at all. Ok you have to add some details and decorations but overall I think you can be satisfied.
Would be a problem for you to share with us what is the cost of machine like yours? And what about repro material?

Mines a CTC, which is a makerbot clone. Cost aroun £400
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CTC-3D-Printer-DUPLICATOR-4-Dual-Extruders-Transparent-Casing-3D-Printer-Rep-/251811080589?_trksid=p2054897.l4275
Took a fair amount of patience of practise to get it set up properly, but it now prints well. Its also done 250 hours without any faults yet, so im pretty impressed with it.

I print with ABS, it smells worse, but I prefer the finish and find it performs better. Ive been paying around £20 per kilo.
Ill weigh the thunderhawk when its finished, to work out how much it cost.

My crassus is on thingiverse if anyone was interested in the flles

Well that is not too much, I presume by your standards (Great Britain) you can buy one without problems (6-12 monthly rates or something like that)?
I am watching with interest 3D printers because they are such fascinating technology. I really like concept of it but it steel feels that something is missing and when that "brick" falls into space we will be able to print everything.
What is plan after thunderhawk, titan maybe?

Very impressive results.

I can see on the Crassus the lack od rivets you mention but I do wonder if perhaps there isn't an opportunity in that, creating more sophisticated versions of 40K vehicles; they would represent superior STC blueprints and the like, where rivets and other crude manufacturing processes are for those machines built without access to the more complete STCs. Very interesting progress you've made so far, great stuff.

These are very impressive.

Very impressive work there my friend! That Crassus looks glorious..... and yeah a very nice base to then add some details and rivets etc...

Been mulling over the idea of a 3D printer for a while so its nice to see the experiences of others!

Looking forward to seeing how the Thunderhawk goes.....

Looking pretty cool. Does your printer software accept models from 3D scanners as well as CAD packages?

Thanks everyone.
I found it extremely useful so far. Saves loads of time when building robots.

I scratchbuilt a warhound last year and did start on a reaver. A few days ago, I tried modelling the same foot I built, so its certainly possible.
Theyre slowly getting detailed, printing is a slow process, so you can work on another model in the meantime.

The software I use takes .STL files, but most formats can be converted. The only problem with scanning I can see is that it wouldn't necessarily be optimised for printing. Overhangs are an issue, so they either have to be avoided or printed from another plane.

I did try something smaller to demonstrate. I pulled some space marine legs from thingiverse.

This is printed at the highest resolution it can manage and its not perfect due to the overhangs, but I guess its passable from a distance.

I did some more modelling on the thunderhawk, but Ive run out of filament for the printer, so it'll have to wait till more arrives


Not 40k related, but this is my other major project right now

R2-D2?

Yep, some sort of astromech droid. The motors arrived yesterday, so he'll be mobile soon.

More 3d printing filament arrived and a week off uni, so made some progress on the thunderhawk

Another 3 odd hour print and we have a wing

How hollow is your thunderhawk?

The main body is hollow mostly. Its got 3mm walls, but theres places where it needed chamfers to avoid overhangs.
Even the other parts are printed at 10% infill, so it fills the interior with honeycomb.
I think Ive got a failed print from the other day, ill post a picture.

almost done with the printing, then its onto riveting. How fun that'll be

that looks pretty awesome I have to say! I know to spend more time adding rivets to the 3d model would be a nice thing to do but there is definetly something appealing about almost printing a "blank canvas" and then adding all the details and rivets etc yourself! LOVE the Crassus by the way....

Can your printer use files from the Sketchup programme? or does it need to be a specific file type, .stl??

I have a few 3d models drawn up and would be interesting to see how they would come out!

Anyways..... looks awesome, I didn't quite realise how large a Thunderhawk actually is!

Hmmm... we have a 3D scanner at work and can export in stl format... may have to take some models in with me

Thanks guys.

I used to use sketchup, but I had to do a uni project on creo, so im much more familiar with that now. As far as I know any stl will work, I do my own designs as well as downloading files from sites like thingiverse and Ive yet to find anything that wont load.

I did half build one from foamboard, but it started to crumble, so I abandoned it. I still didn't quite realise quite how big it is though.

I printed the upper wing things and its looking pretty complete now. Theres only a few engine parts to go underneath and the turbo laser on top.

Is this allowed? I found this in the "Intellectual Property Policy" on the GW Homepage:

- Non-commercial recasting and 3D printing. Do not cast or scan any materials based on Games Workshop’s IP. Reproduction for personal use is not an automatic exemption from copyright protection in many territories worldwide.
Likewise, do not produce and distribute designs which substantially copy Games Workshop’s products (see ‘Imitations’ below).

If you don't distribute them and you make it yourself instead of scanning in the model it's Fair Use in the US, don't know how UK law treats it.

As i modelled it myself, i don't see its much different to scratchbuilding. Possibly takes longer, with the modelling, printing and finishing.
Probably shouldn't share the files online, but I'd remove them if asked.

Just gonna say, just because GW writes something on their website doesn't automatically make them in the legal right. UK law is more abiding to this sort of thing than US law. From my limited understanding, the UK law requires some attempt to commercialize and make profit, while US law only requires some attempt to confuse or diminish their product. Either way this is fine.

Probably only a matter of time before gw knock on your door and demand you destroy your scratch builds.

I weighed the thunderhawk as is, its at 715 grams. With support material and a couple of failed parts, it cost around £15 in abs
I did some calculations using the max power of the printer and it wouldn't have cost anymore than about £1.20 in electricity

Super Nice work likes fantastic!!!

Looks superb. Watching with great interest.

working.....

Its been a while since I posted anything, but I've gotten better at knowing what details will and wont print and have access to a slightly better printer.
I modelled and printed the marauder destroyer.

Nice work, but sharing the files online and advertising them to others is iffy. At that point its going beyond 'scratch building'.

Theres a risk that as the tech improves, people like yourself sharing files will kill off the wargamming scene, by making it possible to print off copies of designs other people have worked hard on.