Next year's Historicon game, as currently envisioned, will require a lot of new 15mm scale early 19th century terrain and I wanted to see how 3D printing might be put to use. There is also an ulterior motive in that I wanted to get my tech-expert son back involved with the hobby.
Pictured is out first "co-production" - a walled French farmhouse in 15mm scale. I think it came out really well. Please note these pieces are just butted up together and haven't been fully cleaned up yet.
I purchased the 3D printable files from a company called
Printable Scenery. The files are originally scaled for 28mm but it's very easy to scale them down to 15 by setting the scale function to 60%.
I'm really happy with how these came out and will mount and scenic the farmstead over the next few days.
The whole thing consists of 18 separate pieces.
One of the cool things about 3D printing is the ability to have interior details in the print. The Barn has full interior detailing while the house model does not. The more detail one has the longer it takes to print and I selected the house file that didn't have interior detail for speed up the process.
The lower level of the house.
I'm printing at the recommended layer height of 0.2MM. You can't see the striations from 12 inches but if one gets up close they become apparent. Dealing with theses striations is print material dependent. A quick wipe with an acetone laces rage will clean them up in ABS. I use the cheaper PLA material - it's plant based, biodegradable and doesn't give off any gasses while been formed. Acetone doesn't work on PLA and I'd need to resort to a VERY light sanding. I'm going to see how these paint up and then decide if they need to be sanded. If the 12 inch rule still holds I doubt I'll bother with it.
I also printed up some lengths of stone walls (also from
Printable Scenery) and really happy with how they came out.
Looks like everything is perfect in 3D print land right?
Not Exactly.....
First get ready for a lot of your prints to look like this. "Bed Adhesion" or having the printed object stick to the print platform is one of the more common issues one struggles with. If the item moves the tiniest amount the print job is ruined and you need to start over.
Another factor is 3D printing is
VERY SLOW. The farmstead consists of 18 individual pieces and I think it took close to 23 hours of total print time - excluding time lost on miss prints!!!
3D Printing is also a very young technology and isn't exactly user friendly. In fact, I doubt I would have been able to get anything done without the help of my son and his Carnegie-Mellon University tech education. For me one of the goals of this project was to do something with him so that was perfect but if you're not technically inclined or have access to the free expertise of your offspring, this tech may be a bit early for you.
What printer am I using - a
Creality CR-10S. It's a printer with very good reviews and was moderately priced at roughly $550.00 US
It was the model my son recommended we get. There are other printers on the market that are less expensive but when the "pro" says buy the creality - I said Yes!
I did have to assemble this printer which Sean actually made me do myself to familiarize myself with the parts. That was a really good idea and the thing worked on the first try!
So is 3D printing the next revolution for miniature gaming. I think long term yes but shot term (next 5 years) I'm can't decide - color me intrigued. Hopefully with some more experience down the road, I'll be able to render a more definitive opinion.
I'm also trying to learn 3D modeling so I can make my own print files. My goal is to make a 15mm scale 74 gun ship on the line - we'll see how that works out....
17 comments:
This is something I have been wanting to do. Only one problem my son, took my printer home to fine tune it. That has been about a year now so I have given up on seeing the printer again.
what does your son think about the Prusa 3d printers? From what I can seen their is top of line.
You could print a Roman Galley. Just think of the dungeon you can print. Even historical fort or building.
Lovely work. I assume the 23 hours of printing is not supervised i.e. you can go out and just leave the printer running … or is that too good to be true?
He likes the Prusa design - in fact the Reality is based of the open source for the Prusa I3
The possibilities for 3D printing are really exciting from a creative perspective - I think the reality of the tech limitations needs to catch up a bit. Still, it's a lot of fun to learn something new - it seems old dogs can, indeed, learn new tricks!
Norm: It's pretty much un-supervised. 90% of my adhesion problems happen as the first few layers are going down. Once that set most (but now all) the prints were successful.
The temp of the room is also a big factor - cold rooms lead to a lot higher fail rate as the material cools to fast and can curl up from the bed.
Your milage may vary!
Thanks for the good tip on room temperature. I would not thought about this factor in printing.
Very, very impressive! Looks like La Haye Sainte. I see 3D printing taking over for terrain.
I'm impressed with your results Miles. I've toyed with this idea but lack my own printer. I may have to AGM bend gaming friends (Curt!) or Uni colleagues. It's neat when the off spawns are grown up to be useful isn't it!
Gary - Sean fiugured out the basement temp issue after a few tests. Sine we moved the printer upstairs into an unused bedroom the adhesion issues have gone from happening 75% of the time to less than 10%
Dean - given the slow speed I’m not sure 3D printing will dominate terrain making in the near further but I do see a hybrid mode where detail parts like doors and door frames, widows, lanterns are 3D printed and combined with more standard craft materials like foam core and eps for the bulk of the building. Doing so would look better and be a huge time savings as hand making window frames is a pain and almost impossible to do so in a consistent manner.
I think those buildings came out very nice. Should look even better when bases and painted.
Wonderful terrain, I look forward to seeing how this paints up. I have seen a lot more 3D printed models and terrain just over the last year. It certainly feels like a technology that is on the cusp of becoming truly available to all. For now the $550 price tag would put me off, but maybe in a few years the prices will come down. Incidentally I'm intrigued to know the cost of raw material and roughly how much would you say this farm cost to print?
Great post Miles, that French farmyard looks terrific. I'm going to have to check out that site.
I started out with a Prusa, but ultimately disliked how fiddly and slow it was - the constant troubleshooting and misprints were getting in the way of getting stuff done. Nonetheless, I love the whole idea of open-source 3d printing so I plumped down for a Moonray DLP resin printer and have never looked back. Great resolution, faster prints, but most importantly very few misprints. True, the resin is much more expensive than filament, but to quote Apple 'It just works'.
I look forward to seeing your upcoming ship-of-the-line. :)
Curt: The ship of the line may be in the electronic dry dock a very long time as I learn how to use 3D design software.
If I really like this 3d stuff, I may also pluck down for a resin one or see what the latest "hotness" is in the next 6-12 months. We should add a category for 3D printed models in the next challenge - no incremental points as not everyone has access but maybe a higher level side challenge?
Lee - the cost of a spool of PLA filament is roughly $15.00 US for a 1kg spool and I used less than 10% for the print (including a few misprints). The cost of PLA really isn't a big factor. There are other materials that are a good bit more expensive.
I did pick a spool of PLA that incorporates sawdust so the final product has a wood-like look and feel. Will be using that for any ships hulls I try to print.
Great looking farmhouse and I look forward to your ship of the line! Sounds cheaper than I would have expected, although I won't be dashing out to buy one,as it's early days you would expect the costs to come down with wider pick up,but nice results!
Best Iain
Cool to see somebody else I know exploring the world of 3D printing for wargames. I used my 3D printer to create all of the structures (fortress walls, cabins, village huts, etc.) for my Conan game that I ran at Historicon. My game was in 28mm, though, so print times were definitely longer!
Most of the best builds/designs for 3D printing are sold by companies like Printable Scenery, but it's amazing the quality of free files you can find on Thingiverse, if you haven't already fallen down that rabbit hole. In fact, every single piece I printed for my Historicon game was a free download from there. I also recommend buying inexpensive files from Hero's Hoard for a variety of great dungeon tiles (I've been working on a massive dungeon game for a couple of years and have probably printed 300 tiles now).
I purchased a Qidi X-Pro, which was a little more expensive than yours, but it came assembled and has a heated bed (which helps with the issues you were experiencing).
Wow that looks amazing.
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