Adventures in 3D design and printing
Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 8:52 pm
So a couple of years ago I bought a 3D printer, another entry in the startlingly long line of expensive things I've bought and then never used enough to warrant their price tag. It was an XYZ Junior, a model that any 3D printing enthusiast would tell you to avoid (more for the silly DRM functions baked into their filament spools than the actual quality of the printer itself). It is what's referred to as an FDM printer (for fused deposition modeling); it prints by melting a spool of plastic filament, and depositing it onto a build plate, building a 3D object by effectively drawing 2D shapes on top of one another. Here's a thing I designed and produced using it:
It's a holder for the various tokens used in the X-Wing Miniatures game. I actually designed the piece using Windows 10's built in 3D modeling software that, much like MS Paint, ridiculously basic compared to other software. It's a bit crap, but as a first attempt at industrial design I don't think I did too badly.
The problem with the XYZ Junior is that each individual layer is very obvious; it effectively has a very low resolution on the z axis of 0.3mm (the minimum height of each layer). As the bottom-end of the FDM market, that's not surprising, but unless you spend a lot of money, you're not going to get very fine detail with this technology at present.
Enter the new machine, an Anycubic Photon that I bought at the weekend and used for the first time today.
This is the included test print that ships with the machine. It's a lattice cube with the name of the printer through the centre at two different angles. This is a design that's basically impossible to produce in one piece using traditional manufacturing methods.
This is what's known as a DLP printer (for digital light processing). This one works by submerging the build plate in a vat of resin, then shining ultra-violet light up through an LCD panel that cures the resin in only the spots the machine chooses. Each layer builds up on top (technically underneath) of the last in the same way as on the FDM machine, but instead of drawing a shape, the entire layer is cured at the same time. It's *much* higher resolution on the z axis, with a minimum layer height of 0.025mm.
While the FDM printer uses solid spools of plastic as the raw material, the liquid resin that the DLP printers use is much less convenient. It's toxic in its liquid form so you need to wear gloves at all times, and you need to use 99% alcohol to clean everything afterwards. You also need to stick the finished piece under a UV lamp (or strong sunshine, if you don't live in the north of England) afterwards to finish the curing process.
My first project is this:
It's what was referred to as the TIE Advanced in the X-Wing PC games, later retconned as the TIE Avenger to differentiate it from Vader's TIE Advanced x1. It's going to be a model used in the X-Wing Miniatures game. The intention is to paint it and attempt to detail it in the same manner as the official models are. After that I've got a YT-2000 (the Otana from the family missions in X-Wing Alliance) and a Missile Boat (from TIE FIghter) to have a crack at.
And in the future I'm going to try and learn to create my own models in Blender. I've taken the first steps today, but I expect that'll be a lengthy process.
It's a holder for the various tokens used in the X-Wing Miniatures game. I actually designed the piece using Windows 10's built in 3D modeling software that, much like MS Paint, ridiculously basic compared to other software. It's a bit crap, but as a first attempt at industrial design I don't think I did too badly.
The problem with the XYZ Junior is that each individual layer is very obvious; it effectively has a very low resolution on the z axis of 0.3mm (the minimum height of each layer). As the bottom-end of the FDM market, that's not surprising, but unless you spend a lot of money, you're not going to get very fine detail with this technology at present.
Enter the new machine, an Anycubic Photon that I bought at the weekend and used for the first time today.
This is the included test print that ships with the machine. It's a lattice cube with the name of the printer through the centre at two different angles. This is a design that's basically impossible to produce in one piece using traditional manufacturing methods.
This is what's known as a DLP printer (for digital light processing). This one works by submerging the build plate in a vat of resin, then shining ultra-violet light up through an LCD panel that cures the resin in only the spots the machine chooses. Each layer builds up on top (technically underneath) of the last in the same way as on the FDM machine, but instead of drawing a shape, the entire layer is cured at the same time. It's *much* higher resolution on the z axis, with a minimum layer height of 0.025mm.
While the FDM printer uses solid spools of plastic as the raw material, the liquid resin that the DLP printers use is much less convenient. It's toxic in its liquid form so you need to wear gloves at all times, and you need to use 99% alcohol to clean everything afterwards. You also need to stick the finished piece under a UV lamp (or strong sunshine, if you don't live in the north of England) afterwards to finish the curing process.
My first project is this:
It's what was referred to as the TIE Advanced in the X-Wing PC games, later retconned as the TIE Avenger to differentiate it from Vader's TIE Advanced x1. It's going to be a model used in the X-Wing Miniatures game. The intention is to paint it and attempt to detail it in the same manner as the official models are. After that I've got a YT-2000 (the Otana from the family missions in X-Wing Alliance) and a Missile Boat (from TIE FIghter) to have a crack at.
And in the future I'm going to try and learn to create my own models in Blender. I've taken the first steps today, but I expect that'll be a lengthy process.