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After finishing the chickens - see the other thread -, I go and try for something bigger.
Not sure whether I will manage and the resin will be the right choice of material, but I give it a go.
Starting as often, but not always, with the feet.

I love how puny guardsman look next to the mighty God-Engines.

nice job

Fdm would probably be a better material, but yours won't lack for detail. Looking good.

It's growing up - literally

New day, new Photo.
It's still growing, slowly, but surely.

image

Remember this is the alpha version. To find out which parts need some more work. And I do some "manual" corrections, which the final print shall not have.

How do you get rid of all the little lines?

Depends on how he's printing. The univeral method is high grit sandpaper and/or primer filler. If he's FDM (plastic extruder) printing in the right material, he could also use a Q-tip soaked in IPA to produce vapor.

It looks worse than it is.
The small nuts have a diameter of .8mm.
Most of the lines are in the range of 25 to 50 µm.
That's a fortieth to a twentieth of a millimetre.
The bigger ones might be calibration or other printing issues.

We'll see what's left after priming.

Watching this in horrified awe.

Yesterday was terrible. Misprint, after misprint, after design error, after user error, after misprint ... you get the drift.

I just managed to print the femoral and that not in the best quality. While my pride is hurt and I burn a bit to get it perfect, I just gritted my teeth, and did some post processing read a lot of sanding. The result is still only bad at best, but I know, it will be hidden by the armour anyway, so nobody will see it - but I know it, I do not have to see it. I'll go back to this, before I do the "real" model.
Talking about armour. I inserted magnets in the holes left for mounting the armour, so I will be more flexible later - no not me bodily, but I will ... you know what I mean.
So that's where I'am.


That's where I would like to be this night, but after yesterday,

I'm doubtful.
The worst thing in yesterdays disaster was not the time lost, but the resin wasted. I've nearly run out of it. I ordered some last week and it's scheduled to arrive tomorrow, but at the moment ... who knows.

Wow - "horrified awe" sounds about right. How long is it going to take (and how much in terms of raw materials) to do the whole monster??!

I can't say yet.
I think a fortnight for design and print. And a total of three bottles of resin. But that's for the prototype.

For a "regular" unit probably a bottle of resin and 3 days to print, if everything goes well.

But those are only guesses. I will know when I'm closer to the end of the design stage.

Ooh, what a cool project! Subscribed.

Ouch. Sorry Brumbaer. I don't know much about 3D printing - do you know what caused the misprints?

There was more than one reason.

And I could have prevented most of them, if I had shown some more discipline and invested more time in checking than „knowing it all“.
That would have saved some time and a lot of resin. But somehow I couldn‘t pull myself out. So it was at least as much a psycological problem as a technical problem.

The day before yesterday was a disaster print-wise and to my total surprise yesterday was absolutely great.
The prints went through without hassle, the quality was as good as you can expect and there was just enough resin to get all things printed. ))

So that's that:


And today. I was a bit under-motivated yesterday, so I started to paint some Scionesses and didn't go ahead with the design. That's half the truth, the other half is I have to make a decision how to go on. And I tried to avoid it. So I do not have anything ready to print today. I'll have to do today what I should have done yesterday.


The boxes are the space taken up by body and head. And now I have to start and unbox it, or in remembrance to an old ivory carver: "I just have to cut off everything that doesn't look like a Warhound carapace or head".

I think doing a frame printed from PLA and mounting the detailed surface printed in resin on that. I have to think about it and probably design some subsections, like weapon mounts. And that's my task for today.
One decision I've already made, no interior detail, but that still leaves the question, whether to reserve space for it.
Tomorrow I hopefully will have come to an decision.

Glad to hear that today was a good working day. I think the progress so far is really impressive. Excited to see what the rest of the body looks like!

Still tip-toeing around the major decisions.

So I did the arms and weapon holders, instead of something major.



The weapon holders have magnets the one for the pivot is standard. For the up down I try something new.

Anyway I think I go for the head next.

you are quickly heading toward god-status.
I hope you realise this!

No print today ... probably, eventually ... no ... it's still printing and even if it goes well, it will not be finished before midnight. So really, no print today.
What's printing is the head. Here you can see the size compared to the rest.



I'm quite happy constructing technical things, but I'm always uncomfortable, with smooth curved areas and so called organic forms, so the head took a bit longer than other parts.
I learned some new feature of the software, new for me that is. It's about deforming parts of parametric objects, really helpful if you want to keep your objects parametric. Before I learned about that, I had to convert the parametric object to a polygonal object to e.e. bevel one edge only and the advantages of the parametric were lost.

I reduced the mass of the head by hollowing some parts out.
I hope it will print ok, it's big, it's heavy and it's dense (in contrast to some grit structure like the Eiffel Tower). All things that make printing with resin more difficult.

 bubber wrote:
you are quickly heading toward god-status.
I hope you realise this!

Demigod, anyway.

If you really want to be impressed, look up Blackadder's scracthbuild projects. I think he's even done one of these Warhound titans.

Not to take anything away from your project, brumbaer; you are definitely doing it the sane way and thus far it looks really good. Blackadder is just at a special level of crazy dedicated to his craft.

Busy Week, life and such.

The Head finally printed and on closer inspection was a bit too small.
So I changed some parts and did it again.
Here are the 2 heads side by side. You will see, that it is not much larger, but looks more massive, because of the raised snoot.


In the meantime I designed the shoulders and the prints failed miserably. It doesn't help that I have to cut the part in two, because otherwise it is too large for the printer.

So I took the decision I postponed for that long.

I get another printer with a larger build space. My resin printer is 8 years old and is still giving great prints. I modified it heavily over the time, but it's time to add a new one. Not for detail work like man sized miniature in 32 or 6mm (Epic) - the old one is doing them still like the best of them -, but for larger stuff.
And right now the first batch of resin printers with larger build space, decent resolution and speed showed up. So I took the plunge.

I hope to receive the printer next week.

For this project it means, it will take a bit longer, because I will have to learn the specifics of the new printer.

In the meantime I will design parts and print those parts I'm able to fit as complete parts on the build table of my current printer.

Right now that's the inferno cannon.

Current status: Red parts will be left for the new printer. Yellow is printing or at least prepared to print and the rest are parts of which the prototypes are printed.

Next step.
The Inferno cannon printed and it's .... huge.



Current status


The new printer shall be shipped today - at least the forwarder has been notified.
I'm really chomping at the bit, because my current printer shows more and more issues. Right now he started to show a wavy pattern, which points at a misaligned or bent z-screw.
Probably something different and it is only a symptom for something different.
I'll try to fix it, but even if fixed, a lot of time will go to waste. The test prints will eat up a lot of time and resin.

The Plasma Destructor.


Finally, the new printer is on its way.

I'll to the little knobs on the arms next, should be done in a second.

And it's a small part. That's important, because the wobble seems to be there all the time, but it gets more visible with increasing height. And the weapons are about 5 to 20 times as high as the models I usually print.

I'll do the knobs and have a look wether I can fix it by readjusting whatever.

Only partly understanding the logistical problems but still watching with interest anyway. I enjoy seeing all these parts appear.

I hope you're happy with your new printer, when it arrives.

@Vermis
Thanks for your interest.

A somewhat lengthy explanation:

When you do your own model, the result will not only be influenced by your ability, but also the method of creating the model you use.

Kitbashhing and scratchbuilding will be heavily influenced in the design stage by what's available to you in terms of materials and tools.
The build process itself is straight forward, if you took your tools, experience and the material under consideration in the design stage. I do not say it's easy, I just say if you designed to your abilities there will be not many surprises.
We all know that there are differences in theory and practice and I understand that many people do not do a separate design stage, but just go along and see what happens: "It's your world, you can do what you want", "We do not make mistakes, just happy little accidents".
The quality of details and surfaces is usually good without additional work, because the materials were chosen with the needed properties in mind.
Kitbashing obviously allows you to get the same level of detail and surface quality as any other kit. When scratchbuilding you might have to put a bit of extra effort to make the details right.
3D print in contrast limits your design only by constrains imposed by your printer.
One is parts size. You can scratchbuild a fortress and could build a wall section from a foamed polystyrene block of a meter length and height and carve a stone structure directly in it. Most people don't have 3D printers able to print such a large piece.
So you must cut down large designs into smaller parts. Usually it is a good idea to do so anyway, but sometimes it's annoying. This is especially true as some 3D printing materials are chemically inert, you can't glue them as easily as the plastics you're used to.
Another constrain is the opposite smallness. What is the smallest detail you can print and that will survive handling. When scratchbuilding you can use different materials, e.e. if you need some really thin rod, you could use a pin made of metal, which will neither break or bend in later use. Of course you are free to combine 3D printing with scratchbuilding techniques.
Surface quality is always some kind of an issue. The 3D model is printed in layers, one atop the other. This offers two chances for ruining surface quality.
One is an instable z-axis. z-axis being the axis of the model which the layers are stacked along. If the z-axis (assembly) isn't stable or just misaligned the layers will be shifted ever so slightly. Usually the shift will not be to one side, but radial around the z-axis-screw.
After one rotation of the screw the layer will be where it started from.
This shift can be seen clearly in the Inferno Cannon image. Look at the barrels. they are supposed to be even, but they are wavy. The pattern repeats every 2 mm - the distance traveled forward and sideways by the build table when the screw completes one turn.
When the z-axis is stable all vertical and horizontal surfaces will be perfect.
The quality of slanted surfaces depends on the angle and layer height.
Imagine building a house from lego blocks. The vertical walls are looking smooth. The slanted roof will not. Instead of the blocks you might use the the thinner lego boards. This will look for most angles better. Using boards instead of bricks is the same as using smaller layer heights. Having smaller layer height looks better, but it takes longer to print. Simply put twice as many layers, take twice the time to print - depending on technology it might be more.
You can get rid of those steps by mechanical and sometimes chemical means after print and some printers claim to have methods to improve the surface quality.
But whatever you do will most likely no be able to distinguish between layer line and detail. So whatever you do to reduce a layer line will cut also into the fine details. You might be able to design around that.
Most 3D printers will work like plotters drawing lines between points. That's great because this will automatically create smooth lines. In paper printing plotters went mostly out of use, because dot matrix printers are much faster and if you make the dots small enough the lines just look as smooth - from ordinary viewing distance anyway.
I use a 3D printer that works like a dot-matrix printer not like a plotter. The draw back is that the lego effect described above will also be visible along the x- and y axes.
For that reason I always choose a printer with a brick size of a maximum of 50µm along x- and y-axis. The achievable layer height is always lower than that.

So my logistical problem derives from the fact, that my current printer has too small a build space for this kind of print and that the z-axis is not stable enough when printing large parts, delivering a quality too low for my demands.
As I have the possibility to get a new printer hopefully solving those issues, instead of trying to repair the z-axis and work around the size issue, I decided to buy the new printer and retire the old one to what he does really well. Print up to Sentinel sized models in even higher resolution (30µm).
To be seen in the other treat.

Cool to see the progress so far! I'm excited for the new printer to arrive. I know very little about 3D printing but your written explanation was very helpful. Good luck with the new gear! The plasma destructor looks awesome.

Ok, ordered the printer - I live in Germany, but the dealer was in France. They announced it as sent, but the forwarder said they had only received notice, but not the shipment. After two days, they got the shipment, they sent it away towards Germany, I received a notice for a delivery date. A day before that, it arrived - at the starting point. It just made a nice tour through France, but never made it to Germany. They snet it off again and it finally arrived after just over a week. To put that in relation, I order Resin from Spain, Printer Accesories from UK or Netherlands and other parts from China. And it rarely takes more than 3 days - okay the China orders are DHL express, while the rpinters delivery was an ordinary service.
Anyway it arrived and test print of small miniatures were exceptional. The material feels like ABS, the detail is ok, but ... large models didn't print well or not at all. I fiddled a week with it and did a lot of tests until I finally decided to test a resin from a different manufacturer and suddenly all is well.
I just finished printing the weapons and Body part that failed so miserably with my other printer. And I even didn't have to cut it in two.

Ok, that was a bit of a vent. Anyway I'm just beginning to start designing again, but I lost a lot of drive, so it might go more slowly than before the printer issues.

To show you what that was all about, here's an image showing the wobble in the old prints in comparison to the new prints.

Oh, yeah, that's very noticeable.

Improved just by changing the resin? Amazing.

(Glad the printer got to you after it's trek!)

You misunderstood me. What you see in the picture is the effect created by the "wobbly" z-axis.
The resin was complete a print or not.