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3-d printing questions

 Post subject: 3-d printing questions
PostPosted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 3:12 am 
Brood Brother
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Joined: Mon Nov 04, 2013 12:38 am
Posts: 29
hi, just have some 3-d printing questions.

Can 3-d printers produce the detail necessary for 6mm miniatures (including infantry/cavalry,tanks), or is it only suitable for flat surface type designs?

Is it commercially viable for an individual to print 3-d designs?


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 Post subject: Re: 3-d printing questions
PostPosted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 5:23 am 
Brood Brother
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Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2012 4:53 pm
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Here can you see what is possible to do with a 3D Printer

http://www.taccmd.tacticalwargames.net/ ... =7&t=26528


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 Post subject: Re: 3-d printing questions
PostPosted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 7:57 am 
Brood Brother
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I'll do you one better. Thats a decent 3d printer but it's resolution isn't the best as you can see from the stepping/striations. If your really interested to see what 3d designed models look like and see how they come out once printed with the level of detail take a look at onslaught miniatures design thread. As far as 3d printed miniature go these are probably the best 6mm on the market at this time.

viewtopic.php?f=158&t=23815


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 Post subject: Re: 3-d printing questions
PostPosted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 1:57 am 
Brood Brother
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Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 11:27 pm
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Commercially viable is a very tricky definition. If you go on shapeways and see what kinds of beautifully detailed models you can get....and then look at the price. I work for a 3d printing company and we have several machines that print the "frosted hi detail", but they cost $35k and up. They are finicky machines to keep running, materials are expensive and the post processing to prepare them is significant. The time it takes to make a single tray of miniature spaceships for example is about 8 hrs. So two trays a day, plus a worker to spend about 4hours processing them afterwards. Shapeways tacks on a minor fee for themselves and a minor royalty for the creator of the STL. The markup is not very large.

However, if you are good at 3d modelling, it can be quicker and a more productive use of your time and money to fab it up on the PC and pay $75 or whatever to have me or shapeways print it for you than to spend however long scratchbuilding or sculpting it. Use that model as your master for resin or metal casting and there you go.

We have a quasi SLA resin printer that we sell that costs around $15k including a starter kit of materials and such, Im trying to worl the bugs out of it and try offering it to local hobby shops as a service for their customers.


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 Post subject: Re: 3-d printing questions
PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2014 3:14 am 
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macall> thanks, that is quite amazing what he did. At least I know it is capable.

blind horizon > I think he does mock ups in plastic but then casts in lead? correct me if Im wrong. What I want to know is about casting directly in plastic.

orpheus> What I want to know is if it is viable to 'cast' everything in plastic directly from the printer? I have no ability to lead cast, and I have tried resin but cannot make it viable that way, given my lack of skills. Looking at the threads it seems that doing it myself might not be time viable either, time wise.
If a design is sent in to a 3-d printer company, do I retain the rights over it, and do i have to pay $75 each time for a print run? How does that work?


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 Post subject: Re: 3-d printing questions
PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2014 3:30 am 
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blind horizon > I think he does mock ups in plastic but then casts in lead? correct me if Im wrong. What I want to know is about casting directly in plastic.

Okay a little info on how i believe onslaught does their casting, They print in frosted ultra detail it looks like. Then has a bronze created, which is a very durable bronze(metal) master. This is then sent to a company to make the single bronze into a bunch of masters to be placed into a production mould. The production mould can hold large and small pieces, and probably holds around 50-80 pieces when talking 6m infantry. To cast directly into plastic, i believe you have to get a mould plate made and have an injection mould machine. The mould plate can cost anywhere from $2.5k to 5.5k. This is a job you would send the plate to a company, the company usually can fabricate it for you or works with someone that does fabrication for them. This step is for big production. Resin home casting is below this type of casting, it's can be amywhere from a small hobby to a medium sized business. Resin is inexpensive once up and running and doesn't take a whole lot of space to setup. Some people add another pressure pot to their setup so they can move faster(I am on my way to getting my second pot and a larger compressor, this will not make me twice as fast but i should have very little down time, capping my 1 man efficiency).

I learned everything i know about resin casting here. Most of these people are spread all around the world so i never had any direct in person help. I also am not very technological literate, i had to read and get a basic understanding of what they where talking about. This is a very friendly community, if you wanted to try your hand at casting in resin again this is the place to become a member.

http://www.resinaddict.com/forum/index.php

*If a design is sent in to a 3-d printer company, do I retain the rights over it, and do i have to pay $75 each time for a print run? How does that work?

-You retain full ownership of your IP (intellectual property).

-Every print is priced based on it's size, this account for how much room on the plate it takes up, how much material and how much time it sits in the machine. These machines are kept running as much as they can so their space and use is at a premium.

-You can have an effective store on shapeways where you get to markup above what it costs to print for profit in your pocket. If you mark up to high you might not see a lot of sales if any. You can also group items together to bring the price per piece down for an overall larger sale for shapeways if that makes sense. What i mean is instead of 1 tank for $3 you could possibly to 5 tanks for $12, overall each tank is cheaper but they get more money in sales.


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 Post subject: Re: 3-d printing questions
PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2014 8:21 am 
Brood Brother
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firebug wrote:

orpheus> What I want to know is if it is viable to 'cast' everything in plastic directly from the printer? I have no ability to lead cast, and I have tried resin but cannot make it viable that way, given my lack of skills. Looking at the threads it seems that doing it myself might not be time viable either, time wise.



3d printers vary widely. most on the market extrude plastic, which is tough enough to survive the tabletop, but they physically cannott get down to the detail needed for 6mm infantry. (tanks and stuff are probably ok)

frosted ultra detail is very fragile, but has an amazing resolution. It's great for this, but becuase it's so fragile you need to send it off to a jewlers to be turned into a bronze ASAP.

a third type that starting to come through uses a laser to activate a liquid resin. cool as it sounds. It can do the detail and has tough plastic results, but cost wise I'd bet it's still cheaper to buy models.
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=26528

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 Post subject: Re: 3-d printing questions
PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2014 9:05 pm 
Brood Brother
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The laser activated resin is what I mentioned as the cheaper machine we have on offer. Ill post some pics of what I made this weekend so people have an idea.

If you are turning the plastic model into a lost wax type cast through a jeweler, there is a resin printer we sell for about $6k that has some nice detail. The material is cheap too, about $2 a ring or so.

And yes, if you send us STLs of a design to print for you, you retain all IP rights. Its no different than if you wne t to a welder or machine shop to have something made. Even if you payed for artist time from one of our 3d guys to fix up a rough model the IP is still yours. We have standard forms for that kind of thing.

Pricing is hard to say, since I fix the machines and only deal with customers if their printers break but lets say roughly a BFG cruiser would cost about $35 canadian


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