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Whether I'm playing warhammer 40k or 30k, there comes a point where I would like to field some big and expensive models. Key word here is expensive. Now, before I go and download a bunch of stl's, I'm curious at how easy it is to fit these beasts onto my little old Mars Elegoo. I'm really thinking land raiders or maybe even a baneblade. At what point is it not worth cutting and breaking down a model to fit onto these smaller printers? Has anyone had experience with this issue?

So first up a lot of the well made models are often cut (if not cut and supported) for the mars build plate. Being as its popular and one of the smaller printers so its a good default many use.

The main issue with big things on a little printer is that you end up with a lot of parts that might only be printable one or two at a time. That means a tank can take a week or more to print.

You can also end up with connection issues if the cuts are very crude. For example flat surfaces that are split creating ugly joins that take longer to fix.
Worse if your resin has more random contraction/expansion during printing and curing whcih could lead to parts being miss-matched (varies resin to resin)


Personally I've just mostly finished printing a dragon which took me a week and the wings are made of 4 parts and it worked. But its not as nice as I'd like and if I had a larger saturn printer I'd have loved printing those wings better (and with less work for me) as a single part.

For fielding multiple tanks and titans and such. Yes you can do it on the small printer, but its not as practical as on something like a Saturn or a Phrozen Mighty class printer.

It can be done, but you're going to be doing many long duration prints and in my experience the join lines don't fit as well in practice as they do in the computer model.

Personally, if I can buy a big model, I'll just buy it. For me, printing is for stuff I can't just buy off the shelf.

If you have the typical FDM printer, you should have the plate space to print in one piece, or possibly two. Lately, I have been doing large RC warships and the hulls are done in 6-8 pieces that all get joined together, but they are not super detailed, so can fit together nicely.

For resin, yes, I split files all the time and piece together. I use Microsoft 3D Builder - super easy.

I printed a tower that was to big for my printer and i could cut it with the programm from my printer and that whent great, only thing you need to remeber when cutting several peaces is where you have make the cut.

 skeleton wrote:
I printed a tower that was to big for my printer and i could cut it with the programm from my printer and that whent great, only thing you need to remeber when cutting several peaces is where you have make the cut.

That is one of the reasons I like 3D Builder so much is you load the entire stl file and split it into as many parts needed and save each one separately as an stl - perfect fits every time.