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So, the library I work at did a renovation/add-on and as part of that, we got a makerspace. Long story short, I got tapped to pick the equipment and design the programming. I was pretty excited for it, as I think most of us would be. If you want to read a bit more detail, I made a blog post here.
The only problem was I had 0 experience with 3D design. None. Zilch. Nada. So I learned.
I started with, and still use quite a bit, a program called Tinkercad. It's free and browser based. It has some limitations and is far from perfect, but there are some workarounds.

Below is the very first thing I ever designed.


Since that auspicious start, I've broadened my horizons a bit and have branched out into using Wings3D as well.

My first 40K-ish design was an attempt at making an M48 for my small Catachan force. It...left a *bit* to be desired, and it soon got abandoned.


And finally, the model that really got me excited for 3D modeling was the below. It's a gun mount for a Destroyer Tank Hunter. I had tried to scratch build one out of styrene, but the results were less than satisfactory.


And here is the final render of the Destroyer gun (I think, there might be a newer one)


Finally, here it is printed out on our Formlabs Form 2.


And here was the impetus of the project:


Of course, that wasn't perfect, the compensators need to be moved down and the mounting plate needs to be made shorter by a mm or so.

Like every other hobbyist, I have a dozen other half-finished projects that I'll post here in the coming days. Including a bunch of parts to convert a MK 1 Rhino to a Vindicator that I need for am upcoming Escalation league.

Hey some of this stuff looks familiar , keep up the good work man

 Ustrello wrote:
Hey some of this stuff looks familiar , keep up the good work man

Heh, Thank you sir! I'll post the artillery that didn't kill you soon.

Looks good. You should make few machines designed by you and start to cast them

Tinkercad is good, I'd also recommend giving Autodesk's Fusion 360 a whirl. It's free for hobbyists and startups.

And a Form 2 in a library? I'm ridiculously jealous!

 ROTTEN_FACTORY wrote:
Looks good. You should make few machines designed by you and start to cast them

I've thought about that, but it's a lot of work. I mostly go, "Hey, you know what would be cool?" or " Crap, you know what I need for the game next week?"

Which in that vein is my quick and dirty conversion to make an old MK1 Rhino into a Vindicator. I'm facing a Ravenwing force for my escalation league and didn't really have anything that could reliably ignore the Jink.


The gun is just a reworked version of my Destroyer gun mount. Like I said, nothing fancy, but it's obvious what it is on the table. I'll also being doing a new top and sides, but I don't think that'll be ready in time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

inflatablefriend wrote:
Tinkercad is good, I'd also recommend giving Autodesk's Fusion 360 a whirl. It's free for hobbyists and startups.

And a Form 2 in a library? I'm ridiculously jealous!

I've played with it a bit, but I have some help with Wings3D so that's where I'm going. Plus it's free and no non-commercial clause in case I do ever have anyone want to buy my stuff.

And yea, the Form is my baby. I fought hard for that thing. Almost as hard as the lasercutter I'm trying to get. You can't have a makerspace without a lasercutter!
But back to the Form, we just got some of the v3 gray and it's great. I'll post some pictures of the above plate tomorrow.

And here is the new front plate printed on the Form in .025mm in Form's new Grey v3 resin.

Wow that actually looks much cooler than the smooth bore barrel that normal vindicators have

 Ustrello wrote:
Wow that actually looks much cooler than the smooth bore barrel that normal vindicators have

Thanks! I had some professional help on that one, and it looks much better for it.


Currently I'm trying to force a Soviet BA-10 to fit in a chimera foot print. It's...going.

To fit the "really wide" aesthetic of Imperial Guard vehicles, and to get the rear firing hatch in, I ended up having to make quite a few deviations from the BA-10. And, uh, well it kind of ended up as a Taurox count as with Chimera dimensions. Mine Taurox is still in the box so I don't know what the dimensions are for that, but I'll take a gander.

I really wanted the turret on the back shelf like the BA-10, but to get a hatch back there that could even maybe look like it was kind of close to the size on the Chimera meant that the turret had to go on top of the drivers compartment. I also moved it off-center like the Chimera. I'm kind of liking how it's looking, but it's not what I wanted when I started out.

When the soviets start to export designs to the Imperium . Looking cool so far though

Second re-working of some Rifleman Dreadnought arms.
The file I'm modifying is this: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:92623

But as I'm using a form, the not-perfectly round gun cylinders were very obvious, so I decided to rework the file.

The first re-working I made the barrels way too big. so this should be better.

Looks cool so far

I love that 3d printed turret! Are you using the Form2, the blog post in the OP didn't work for me?

Looking forward to seeing more

 RiTides wrote:
I love that 3d printed turret! Are you using the Form2, the blog post in the OP didn't work for me?

Looking forward to seeing more

Ah thank you, I fixed the link for the post.

And yes, we've a Form 2 and I love it like a second child. It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn amazing and I've got a pretty good handle on it now. I want to try printing silicon molds with it, but that's a bit further down the to-do list. Currently my project is pestering the Library Board to get us a laser cutter.

I should have the dreadnought arms done today and maybe started to print.

Well, the rifleman Dreadnought arm is done. I had hoped to do some fine tuning in Wings, but it kept crashing on the .stl and .obj file—so It's probably good enough. Especially since it's just for my old broke down Black Reach Dreadnought. Now I just need to whip up a nice RFL-3N mast aerial and I'll be all set.

Cool stuff dude.

EDC

Misprint!

When I'm not trying to take the CompTIA A+ class/test in a week, I'll dissect what went wrong here. That said, this does show how nice the Form Grey version 3 is.

Some quick tank taps from thingiverse printed on our Ultimaker 2+

For no reason what so ever....

That looks an awful lot like heresy

Thanks for the confirmation on the printer and that is awesome! I am very interested in your continuing impressions of its performance, as it seems like they have really worked out the kinks with this system. (I was an original Kickstarter Form 1 backer, then upgraded to a Form 1+, but eventually sold it for all the reasons they seem to have fixed on the Form 2 ).

I was talking to Impact Miniatures at AdeptiCon, who are also using one, and they mentioned they love the settings of 0.7 density and 0.41 fill. I believe this is how many supports are created, and how large their connection point is. He showed me a model where he broke off the connection points, and it was so much better than I remember from my machine! They are using the black resin that you can use as masters for a metal mold, though. He also mentioned his biggest trick is changing the tank every time he changes a liter of resin (rather than trying to get 2 liters out of it - and this also matches my experience with the Form 1 / Form 1+, changing the tank often is totally worth it).

Anyway, looking forward to following your progress

 RiTides wrote:
Thanks for the confirmation on the printer and that is awesome! I am very interested in your continuing impressions of its performance, as it seems like they have really worked out the kinks with this system. (I was an original Kickstarter Form 1 backer, then upgraded to a Form 1+, but eventually sold it for all the reasons they seem to have fixed on the Form 2 ).

I was talking to Impact Miniatures at AdeptiCon, who are also using one, and they mentioned they love the settings of 0.7 density and 0.41 fill. I believe this is how many supports are created, and how large their connection point is. He showed me a model where he broke off the connection points, and it was so much better than I remember from my machine! They are using the black resin that you can use as masters for a metal mold, though. He also mentioned his biggest trick is changing the tank every time he changes a liter of resin (rather than trying to get 2 liters out of it - and this also matches my experience with the Form 1 / Form 1+, changing the tank often is totally worth it).

Anyway, looking forward to following your progress

I love it. Reaper and Victoria Minis have a Form 2 as well. We talked quite a bit of shop. I use .4-.6 for support diameter and .8 for density for must stuff, but I do adjust. I'd rather clean off some extra supports than have a print plop off the platform and fail the print. And then you have to clean the tray. Double un-fun.

If you leave the print in the alcohol bath for a few hours, the supports fall off. And I've never had a problem with the print getting messed up. Heck I've fogotten a print in the alcohol for a couple of days with no adverse effects.

That, however, doesn't work if you use aftermarket resin. I tried Matterhacker Makerjuice and while it printed "ok" (it's half the cost) the supports don't ever soften enough and leave big honkin' divots in the print if you try it... The smell was also pretty strong.

you can also re-coat the tray saving you ~50 every two liters, which is nothing to sneeze at. Look up z-vat.com. I've done it on a junk tray and it worked, just make sure your scale has a long "stay-on" setting.


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 Ustrello wrote:
That looks an awful lot like heresy

It's merely an alien portal to another world, why would that be heresy?