[BFG] - Designing new ship types - 3d printing madness

[marell le fou]

Nice

[Malika]

A little box arrived at the post yesterday...


(not all the boarding pods are in the picture)


Compared to FUD by Shapeways (front ship) this stuff is (a) a lot more detailed and (b) a lot smoother, which is all very nice!








However, there have been some issues with the bottom parts of the ships:



Hopefully this can be fixed with some (liquid) greenstuff and some filing/sanding...

Oh, and I really love how the boarding pods came out!

[Gun_wun]

 Ere we go!!!! Looking good, Ummmmmm perhaps you could send Timdp you're miss casts.  I'm pretty sure he would happily make a Nurgle sandwich out of it.  Loving yer pods too.  Nice to see it go from sketch to life, very cool.

[Geep]

I also really like the pods. The corners of the ships look a bit more rounded than I expected- is that a trick of the photo?
Any idea why the bottom of the ships would be melted like that?

[Malika]

Ere we go!!!! Looking good, Ummmmmm perhaps you could send Timdp you're miss casts.  I'm pretty sure he would happily make a Nurgle sandwich out of it.  Loving yer pods too.  Nice to see it go from sketch to life, very cool.

These are just single prints. I need to fix them for the casting process. After that they could be turned into anything, from rotten version to ones looted by Orks...

I also really like the pods. The corners of the ships look a bit more rounded than I expected- is that a trick of the photo?

They are a bit, but I don't mind that much, could have been worse.

Any idea why the bottom of the ships would be melted like that?

It's the way the printer works, the model needs support beams on the bottom to make the print possible. I need to figure something out in future versions of my ships.

[Blindhorizon]

2 part ships where the support beam meet the ship where the ship comes together will get rid of the loss of detail from them being clipped off. You can then mix and match your parts to make more ship styles from a variety of parts.

Blind-

[Malika]

2 part ships where the support beam meet the ship where the ship comes together will get rid of the loss of detail from them being clipped off. You can then mix and match your parts to make more ship styles from a variety of parts.

Blind-

I was thinking of that but it's tricky to pull that off right. I am thinking of something along those lines for the next generation of ships. However, whilst small ships would then consist of multiple parts, I'd still need to put them together so they can be cast as a single piece model (saving space on the mould and such if also something to keep in mind).

Mangozac gave me some amazing feedback a little while ago, and I definitely what to experiment with that. And I'd love to more into something more high-tech looking, so moving back to the older stuff, but with the lessons learnt from my later experiences. Not sure yet on how this will go exactly, I guess it would be another one of those long term projects.

Another thing I'd then do is also to have them printed at a somewhat higher resolution and maybe also a different material. These prints (the pink ones) are done in E-shell 200, not sure yet how they'll work for casting, but I've heard many people telling me I should go for HTM140, I'd love to experiment a bit with that. Hopefully that will be possible in the coming months...

[Blindhorizon]

I wouldn't assemble and then cast them, I would cast them separately so people can assemble them the way they want.

[Geep]

It would depend on the size of the pieces and the casting material as to whether that'd be a good idea. Wrong material and pieces too small will see warping, breaking and all sorts of fun.

[Blindhorizon]

The only reason youd get warping is if you didn't let the resin set completely before removing it from the mould, or poor mixing of the resin. I figure he's talking about ships the size of imperial cruisers, and I can successfully cast objects the size of turrets or 6mm troopers with no issues(smaller items also). The prow of a cruiser is thick to the point that the resin will actually get a solid chemical reaction, I' wouldn't forsee any casting issues apart from learning how to cast if limited to no experience.

[Malika]

I wouldn't assemble and then cast them, I would cast them separately so people can assemble them the way they want.

Whilst multipart kits are cool, casting the ship as a single piece tends to be cheaper and faster. Another thing to keep in mind is that these cruisers are super tiny, multipart here might be a bit overkill. When we're talking (light) cruisers of battleships though, having a multi part kit becomes more interesting I think.

Also the orientation of the models can be quite tricky when printing, meaning that you want the model to lie down when printing. So if I were to do it in two pieces, I would do a horizontal cut through the half of the ship, having a top half and a bottom half. Then print them, clean up the halves and glue them on top of each other.

[Malika]

Early teaser... (and yes it's a miscast)

[harec]

Not bad for a miscast How do you get rid of the bubbles?

[Malika]

I didn't do that casting, it has been done by the fellows over at Fox Box.

[Malika]

More pics of the cast Destroyers:

(gunship on the left, carrier on the right)



Here are pics of the original prints.

Carrier:


Gunship: