Anyone know much about 3d printers?

[gnat]

I joined a Kickstarter for Hero Forge to color print miniatures. They have has a UI for awhile where you can build your own miniature and then either buy the STL so you can print it yourself or have them print it and mail it to you.

Here is the result:

MVIMG_20200803_132649.jpg (612.89 KiB) Viewed 1479 times

I'm more impressed than I thought I would be, but at $45 a pop ($100 for larger minis) feels steep. Although I was picking up some paints from a hobby store this weekend and saw that Games Workshop has gone nuts on the cost of their minis and $45 isn't far off what GW wants for one of their hero minis that you still need to assemble and paint yourself.

This definitely looks better than I could have painted it myself, but as you can see the colors in the UI don't really match the real thing.

[gnat]

Just some first layer porn from the printer last night to make Schnelly jelly

[32wildbilly]

Just some first layer porn from the printer last night to make Schnelly jelly

What that be?

[gnat]

What that be?

The bottom of a paint palette. I've gone as far as I can using newspaper as my palette for the miniature painting I've started doing with my oldest.

[theprf]

Alright I have a question.
What size part can you print with the machines that you're using?
Why am I asking. My "other" cars are mostly VW Corrados. A great car, but since it's 30 years old everything is NLA. There are some tiny interior screw caps that I'd like to have. These are about the thickness of a dime and about as big around as a pencil. They were made in gray, black, and tan colors to match the car's interior.
I can make a solidworks model of the part and solidworks can export to a bunch of file formats. Could one of you whiz kids look at the model & see if it's a candidate for 3d printing?

There are other parts, too, that would be nice to make. Side marker housings which are 4" x 1.5" - new lenses are available but the housings are not. The linkage for the center air vents. The switch operator for the power seats. Probably 50 different small plastic parts that just aren't available anymore. Nothing structural, I'm not going to 3d print a control arm. All these are trim pieces.

[gnat]

It's more complicated than simple basic dimensions unfortunately.

;tldr - Yes it's possible and I'd be happy to take a look. I'd need a STL or OBJ file.

At the basic level, the print volume depends on the printer. Mine, for example, has a 210x255x215mm volume. Others have less and still others have more (was just reading about a DIY 900x900x900 printer that someone built). So at that level, yes printers can handle those sizes (that plate in my last picture is 140x120mm and after it was done I ran something that was 210mm tall).

Where it starts to get complicated is when you start tailing about the detail and purpose of the part. For example, I currently have a 0.4mm nozzle installed (I have a 0.25 on hand though) which means that is about the thickness to expect from a single line. The nozzle size directly impacts the amount of detail that can be shown on the X and Y planes. Pretty much any FDM printer will do 0.05mm layers (though how well can vary between printers) and up to 80% of the nozzle size (so about 0.3mm for my 0.4 nozzle) and this directly impacts the detail on the Z axis. The other option is resin SLA prints which can do insane detail, but there are some significant downsides.

Next up we have the filament that you want to use (resin doesn't have an issue here so much). If you want something like a carbon fiber blend for more strength, then you'll be forced to a larger nozzle and thus less detail. In a car environment your material will be important as you need both strength and heat resistance.

Strength is an serious issues to consider. While something with thin areas can be quite strong if it is cast or molded, it's not likely to be as strong from a printer. Basically, the more layers or perimeters it has, the stronger it is going to be. In other words, if it's less than 1mm thick, I wouldn't count on it for more than decoration.

If you look at the TIE fidget spinner I posted, the silver balls in the wings are 10mm (so you can get some idea of scale) and the cockpit (including the black surround) is about 27mm. The cockpit was printed separately (silver and black together) at a 0.15mm layer height while the rest of the TIE was done at a 0.1mm layer height. It's hard to really tell in the pic, but look at the lines in the silver and compare it to round areas connecting the body to the wings to see the difference.

[gnat]

The secret is out. It's really spiders that do the work!

[32wildbilly]

The secret is out. It's really spiders that do the work!

That is spooky good.

[gnat]

Here they are cleaned up a bit.

[32wildbilly]

Here they are cleaned up a bit.
15973330310684020941416192879715.jpg

I'm beginning to understand why 3D printer guys enjoy it so much.