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Hi everyone

Long time lurker here. I wanted to share this journey with fellow enthusiasts as I think you may be the only people to appreciate the process.

Story time
In May of 2019 I found this model on everyone's favourite 3D printing website of a Warlord Titan. I periodically check for Titan models as I have a special place in my heart for giant machines of war. I always wanted these amazing titan models on 40k scale but the closest I can get is looking at Forgeworlds models on the web and drooling. As I was browsing the website I found probably the best 3D model for a 3D printed titan I have ever seen. So much so that my theory is the guy who made it works there and decided to share the plans for a lol. The problem was that this model was MASSIVE. It would take a lot of time and a lot of material. When you start something like this you have to commit to finish as a half printed model cant work for anything (maybe as terrain pieces?). So I decided "F it. Im doing it!"

The journey
After going through the very thorough component list of the model I decided to print the parts for a Lucius pattern warlord with 2 Volcano cannons and 2 Laser blasters (for the shoulders). I put the pieces together in 3d software just to see how they fit and if their orientation are good for printing. Kudos to the creator that not only are the parts designed to fit really well but they are also oriented to almost perfection to come out the best when they need to be fitted.

A 3D printing aside
When you print a model the printer will make layers. These layers may make it really hard to paint as a smooth surface (think armour plates on the titan). You also have the challenge op print supports. When there is a drastic overhand in a 3D print you need to set the software to print with supports. These supports get removed and thrown away. The surface of the part that is printed on top of the support is always very rough and may need lots of sanding and filling. In the case of this model the pieces were oriented in such a way that they will either be hidden behind another piece or that it is small enough for you to clean effectively.

The journey continues
I made an excel sheet with the parts list on it to keep track of how much material I use, how long each part prints and what I still need to print. In total I would have to print 173 pieces which ranges from the size of a plague bearer (with lots less detail) to pieces as big as landraiders (the models, not the real thing). I started the project in the middel of May 2019. The very first piece I printed, the head of the titan, took 20 hours to print and the power cut out at around 19.5 hours. Not a great start. Deciding not to reprint I cut of the tip in 3D software and decided to let greenstuff do the work.

The next few months, yes months, I printed pieces every day. Sometimes I used 2 printers to print at the same time. And now Im finished printing. Some stats on the print:

- Pieces: 173
- How long did I print: 69 days
- Hours the printers where printing: 1031 hours
- Material weight: 5465 grams (5.5kg)

The journey has only started. I still need to clean, sand and paint the monster. There are unique challenges to that part that I will share in later posts but for now I want to share the story and show you some pictures of the process. I will add images as I progress. Sometimes I do dry fits on the model just to marvel at the scale of it. I will share those images as well.

The warlord titan


Sorry about the vertical video, its the only way I can fit it in without taking video of mostly my working space

Edit - a full fly-by video of a more complete titan



The Dakka gallary for the titan. Sorry for the crappy fotos, my work space is really dark most of the times.

Credit
All credit to the creator of this amazing model, Stroganoff over at thingiverse If you use it, please tip the creator as that is a massive amount of skilled work!



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Here are some more recent fotos

All the armour pieces with the guns magnetised (head as well).


The primed volcano cannons

I anxiously await paint on that beast.

Wow, nice.

That is amazing! Great job on all of the details. If you printed in PLA and looking to smooth it a bit, I use the gloss enamel spray and clear polyurethane spray combo trick and it really does work nice. Just be sure to have the fan blowing on the model to quickly dry the steps and do not go really thick, but build up a few layers. You can find this on Youtube, but essentially it is enamel spray followed immediately by the clear poly, followed immediately by the enamel again.

You will find some recessed areas will build up a bit thicker, but when it dries those go down and smooth out to keep your details. Try it on a spare piece of armour to see how it looks.

Once you have your desired smoothness, I hit it with some matte enamel spray, since it will be really shiny - just be sure to let the layers dry well before you put on any more coats of spray.

Nice work so far and look forward to seeing some close ups once you start painting. I've got an Ender 3 that's heavily modified to get the most out of a FDM printer but never even considered doing such a huge project.

Eagerly waiting to see more!

 Eggroll wrote:
Nice work so far and look forward to seeing some close ups once you start painting. I've got an Ender 3 that's heavily modified to get the most out of a FDM printer but never even considered doing such a huge project.

Eagerly waiting to see more!

That is an amazing printer and I've seen awesome results with the mods. I would say it's worth it as this is a great model. The time and material commitment is significant though I have a large Google photo album with more detail shots.

@MDSW: yeah I saw that video. I was worried about the surface finish on that technique so I have have spent significant time on each armour plate. I sand it smooth. Then I paint it with acetone that smooth it out more. I then sand it again with fine sand paper. Will hopefully have some great results.

This file is literally a 3D scan of the individual parts that make up the warlord titan from FW. My job involves the use of both 3D printers and scanners, so I have a little knowledge of them, and the detail you can achieve by merely hand scanning an object is insane. I imagine each part was put onto a revolving turn table and allowed to be slowly and meticulously scanned for the best possible render.


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So unless Im very wrong, the "creator" didn't really do anything more than purchase a titan and scan it, then release the file.

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
This file is literally a 3D scan of the individual parts that make up the warlord titan from FW. My job involves the use of both 3D printers and scanners, so I have a little knowledge of them, and the detail you can achieve by merely hand scanning an object is insane. I imagine each part was put onto a revolving turn table and allowed to be slowly and meticulously scanned for the best possible render.


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So unless Im very wrong, the "creator" didn't really do anything more than purchase a titan and scan it, then release the file.

Looking at the files from Thingiverse, I'd say you are indeed very wrong.
Look at the mesh on the parts. It's the minimum necessary to represent the geometry and crisp and clear.
Sure, on pictures or printed a very good scan might look similar, but all the scans I've seen are always slightly "melted".

To me, the quality and clarity of the mesh means export from a CAD program, rather than a scan. Just like the creator states.

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
This file is literally a 3D scan of the individual parts that make up the warlord titan from FW. My job involves the use of both 3D printers and scanners, so I have a little knowledge of them, and the detail you can achieve by merely hand scanning an object is insane. I imagine each part was put onto a revolving turn table and allowed to be slowly and meticulously scanned for the best possible render.

Wow, I don't even know where to start here

First, no, each part is 3d modeled from scratch, typically with picture reference, source: I do it myself

Second, no, it is very difficult to get a good 3d scan of anything with concave features, cheap 3d scanners simply stitch together outlines from many different angles, so that any engraved features are lost, structured light scanners that don't do this start at like 100k+ You can get good-ish detail out of much larger objects, but overall its a gak show, 99% of the scans you see the shittyness is covered up by mapping photos overtop of the model to give the illusion of depth like a video game.

Third: it lacks all of the soft edges you get from 3d scanning with a scanner that doesn't cost as much as a house

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
This file is literally a 3D scan of the individual parts that make up the warlord titan from FW. My job involves the use of both 3D printers and scanners, so I have a little knowledge of them, and the detail you can achieve by merely hand scanning an object is insane. I imagine each part was put onto a revolving turn table and allowed to be slowly and meticulously scanned for the best possible render.


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So unless Im very wrong, the "creator" didn't really do anything more than purchase a titan and scan it, then release the file.

Gonna have to go with a slight "no, you're utterly and amazingly, wrong here".
firstly, photogrammetry is where the hobby has access, which churns out results like any random sketchfab scan, such as this beauty:


Which I think we can all agree looks delightfully morose.
much of the "HERMAGERD IT AM 3D SCANNED" is caused by how well photogrammetry actually works, with textures, producing results of the porridge above that look very .. "decent":


Now, there are industrial solutions and purposebuilt scanners that do not use photogrammetry that produce astounding results, but these machines are pretty much out of reach of the SME sector, which means its not accessible to hobbyists.

But as with anything 3d modelling or CAD related, you'd be astounded by how accurate you can get by going by eye measurements and the rule of heads.

or i mean, i'd be laughing my freckled hiney off if someone were to claim this to be a scan:



footnote:
images screencapped from here: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/ultra-marine-space-marine-974a5d3cc4ed4d8aac76f41c71a8a5c7

Maybe his job involves scanning and printing, but he's just bad at it

Must be.

Looks fantastic!

Well, if that is the case, that's how it be. Hence the "unless im very wrong" statement. At first glance it looks like a scan, which I guess is credit to the creator's work.


I work at a custom slot car track company, so the vast majority of my job is making buildings and stuff from scratch. We just have a few Form 2 printers and a pretty badass scanner, and having seen what the latter can do I could easily see scanning a Warlord with very high quality results. (We use it to scan cars, minis, and buildings for replication) Although I think the scanner we have is upwards of 5k. Not sure.

Id like to think i'm very good at my job thank you very much, but I'm unsure why that would even concern you seeing as my comment was in no way meant in a negative manner.

That is an awesome project. Can't wait to see it painted up.

Nice work, we have one of these (also 3D printed) stomping around our group locally.

And so we see the Deathknell of Forge World.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
And so we see the Deathknell of Forge World.

I honestly dont think so. It is really cost prohibitive for me to buy the Titan from forgeworld as it is the equivalent of a months salary (and Im considered middle class ito my income). Also, the printing process is absolutely crazy. 1030 hours! That is just super crazy. And then the work afterwords to make everything neat is indeed a few hundred hours. I think 3D printing is a very nice compromise. Would I buy the forgeworld model if I had the cash? In a heartbeat


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Couldnt help myself during the priming and cleaning work and had to put everything together.

I agree FDM is never going to kill FW, but I think when something like the Peopoly Moai 200 hits the $500 mark, that is going to be about it for them. I can't see a lot of people shelling out 2 grand for a resin model when you can spend some time and $100-ish on resin.

The Form One was something unattainable 5 years ago, and now you can get DLP printers with nearly the same quality for $300 on Amazon. It's only a matter of time.

I was being a bit flippant but does anyone think that 3d printing is going to become more expensive, slower or less common in the next 10 years?

Not at all, it is and should be the death knell of Forgeworld - only so far as Titans are concerned. They're a comical luxury product that is still absurdly priced. I don't care how much "resin" you're getting...a wargaming model should never cost as much as a small used car. Forgeworld will continue to exist, but they will definitely lose sales on mega-size products like Titans.

It's not like spending $500 and $50 per liter of resin will just magically pop a model on your workbench, even if you happen to have a digital model to print. It takes expertise in preparing the file for your specific printer, getting orientation and supports right and of course slogging through the print time required, ignoring any misprints. Then, after you assemble the parts you sub-divided for printing and spent a long time sanding to remove printing artefacts (even with resin) you will be roughly where a delivery from FrogeWorld would put you..

Considering how many ForgeWorld kits are sitting in gamer's pile of potential and remain unbuilt because people are reluctant to face the challenge of building these kits, I dare say the group of people who want a titan and are willing to do all that work and the additional work to print it themselves is small indeed.

Let me use a comparison. It is absolutely possible to build things like furniture, shop tools, bikes or cars yourself, but very few people chose to do so due to the time and skill required. Last I checked, sales for all of these items are doing just fine.

 Stephanius wrote:
Considering how many ForgeWorld kits are sitting in gamer's pile of potential and remain unbuilt because people are reluctant to face the challenge of building these kits, I dare say the group of people who want a titan and are willing to do all that work and the additional work to print it themselves is small indeed.

Sure, but the group of people willing to spend $2,000 on a big resin robot toy is also small. Titans aren't aimed at the Timmys, the're dircted firmly at the most engaged section of the customer base with the generally the highest technical skill and the most disposable income... the same people inclined to do the things you mention. How much overlap in those groups are there? I suspect it's more than you are thinking, but I guess since I print in resin I have a bit of bias; perhaps I'm wrong. It's hard to call it.

Putting aside the things you mention, another factor to consider is the people that are willing to take the time and $50 of resin, do the printing and sanding, and are willing to sell it on ebay for $500. They're going to hurt FW just as much if not more, since now you just need money, not expertise. What happens when FW can't shut down auctions because they don't own the rights to a model designed 100% by someone else?

It's not the same as casting, in which you have expensive resin, wear on molds, and an enormous amount of time. Casting takes forever with a different mold for each piece done by hand, but with a big old SLA printer, you're doing most of it at once, and you're doing it while you're sleeping or at work... and once you nail down the orientation and supports, you are good forever. At that point it really is down to loading the file, adding resin, and then doing the same cleanup you would with FW.

Anyway as I revised and edited and revised again I realize OP might be annoyed we're having this debate again right in his P&M thread so maybe we need to make a different thread for this, just like all the ones preceding it. Heh.

I don't mind the conversation. I asked the admin before I posted if it is fine to post a 3d printed model. My goal was not just to share the experience with fellow enthusiasts but also to hear different perspectives. A kudos here and there is fine but it is more for that one individual who is wondering "can I really print this?" or "how much material and how long". This is just me sharing my experience. The debate is also welcome.

A general comment from me. It is interesting to see how many of you actually print in resin. It is so much more expensive than filament printing where I am (x 100). So if i was to print this beast in resin the cost would have been closer to half the cost of the FW model where it is now a 20th of the price. Resin printers print amazing quality but on this side of the world the price is just to high for "playing around"

Yeah, I hear that - it's a pretty common complaint in the Facebook groups. In the US it's definitely not expensive but not like, ruinously so.

Siraya just launched a new resin on Amazon (like literally today) - Siraya Fast - it's $33USD for a liter. That's crazy inexpensive - you should see if you can get it. It's on backorder but still available to order. Not that I don't know how good it is, their Tenacious, Sculpt and Blu are great but people seem to hate their Easy.

 Ouze wrote:

 Stephanius wrote:
Considering how many ForgeWorld kits are sitting in gamer's pile of potential and remain unbuilt because people are reluctant to face the challenge of building these kits, I dare say the group of people who want a titan and are willing to do all that work and the additional work to print it themselves is small indeed.

Sure, but the group of people willing to spend $2,000 on a big resin robot toy is also small. Titans aren't aimed at the Timmys, the're dircted firmly at the most engaged section of the customer base with the generally the highest technical skill and the most disposable income... the same people inclined to do the things you mention. How much overlap in those groups are there? I suspect it's more than you are thinking, but I guess since I print in resin I have a bit of bias; perhaps I'm wrong. It's hard to call it.

Putting aside the things you mention, another factor to consider is the people that are willing to take the time and $50 of resin, do the printing and sanding, and are willing to sell it on ebay for $500. They're going to hurt FW just as much if not more, since now you just need money, not expertise. What happens when FW can't shut down auctions because they don't own the rights to a model designed 100% by someone else?

It's not the same as casting, in which you have expensive resin, wear on molds, and an enormous amount of time. Casting takes forever with a different mold for each piece done by hand, but with a big old SLA printer, you're doing most of it at once, and you're doing it while you're sleeping or at work... and once you nail down the orientation and supports, you are good forever. At that point it really is down to loading the file, adding resin, and then doing the same cleanup you would with FW.

Anyway as I revised and edited and revised again I realize OP might be annoyed we're having this debate again right in his P&M thread so maybe we need to make a different thread for this, just like all the ones preceding it. Heh.

$50 for a liter, just over 1/4 gallon, of resin. That's not going to make a worlord, even if you digitally hollow each part. I was talking about the case of someone building this themselves, which as a hobby project ignores a bunch of cost factors.

Now, if we consider people making pirated titans for ilicit sale, that brings completely different factors into the equation. Even before there were 3D printers, illegal recasting and sale of recasts existed. If you are a criminal business, I assume that besides demand, official and pirate competition, only the risk of repercussions and cost of producing the counterfeit goods are relevant. Casting resin has comparable cost to UV resin. The casting process requires different skills and instead of printer hardware and maintaince we have silicon moulds that wear out. Clearly, 1000 hours of printing followed by sub-assembly and sanding would take longer than the traditional (re)casting process. While I don't expect recasts to disappear, I also don't think there is reason to believe that on a titan scale, 3D printing is going to be a significant factor.

Humans have a tendency to seek opportunities to be outraged and perceive only the negative as newsworthy. Those two points favour the exaggeration of threads and risks. ;-]
Edit: freudian slip. I meant to say threat, not thread, but I guess both are true =]

Im not trying to causing a stir here but how is this legal?
Its basically a FW Titan? If someone released prints for a space marine wouldnt GW be all over it in an instant?

PS I know nothing about 3d printing or creating designs etc etc.

I think it would fall under the same lawsuit that they lost so spectacularly last time they decided to try shut this side of outsourcing things down....

EDIT: or rather, that is to say that they likely wont attempt it, if it is different at all, due to what happened.


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As to the project, I am impressed.... I may have to start browsing Thingiverse now and again, I might be able to find something

For the "will this kill Forgeworld" debate - I don't own any titans but I'd put myself in the target market. I'm a hobbyist with a deep fondness for the setting, spend a lot of time modelling and painting, and have the disposable income. And while I don't own any Titans yet, I'd love to buy one (or more - eep!), just trying to convince myself to work through the pile of shame first. And while I have an FDM printer - and could buy a resin printer if I wanted - I don't have much inclination at all to try to print a copy of a Forgeworld model. I'd rather buy the model, support the company, and bypass all the extra work involved with a 3d print. The issue of piracy/recasting etc. is one where I'm typically on the 'don't do it' side, enough that I felt a little bit dirty after I bought a couple of OOP eldar models on ebay that I realised were recasts once they arrived. I'm not saying I speak for all of the target market for this sort of model, but there must be a fair few people like me out there. I'm not totally opposed to 3d printing alternative models though. If it's not a copy of something I could buy from Forgeworld, maybe it's an alternative pattern or class of titan that they don't do, or a weapon option that they don't sell, I'd be much happier about printing.

In fact I feel the biggest segment for 3d printing titans are folks who aren't in the target market. Those who would like a titan but think the price is too ridiculous, or can't afford/justify spending the money. People who actually have real life commitments to spend their cash on! If you were never going to buy one from Forgeworld in the first place, 3d printing is a route to actually having a titan in your collection. If those people are printing titans, it's not cutting into Forgeworld's sales at all.

Now, having said all that, koosbeer - that's an impressive result from a huge amount of printing. I don't envy you the amount of sanding in your future!

 Ratius wrote:
Im not trying to causing a stir here but how is this legal?
Its basically a FW Titan? If someone released prints for a space marine wouldnt GW be all over it in an instant?

PS I know nothing about 3d printing or creating designs etc etc.

There are a lot of files of Thingverse and other places created by fans that are 'in the spirit' of GW models, but are not direct copies. Generally if someone created something themselves rather than copy it it's an original work, even if it is within 99% of the original.

When does my Giant Gothic Robot STL upload infringe on GW copyrights? We'll find out in court. Or not. Since I'm not likely to post it under my real name and address.