Ye Olde Inn

I find I have a lot more energy since I have changed roles at work. I have done more household projects over the past 3 months than I have in the past 2 years. I'm also finding more motivation to work on various crafting projects, which all started with cleaning out my lab in the basement... you know, that room where your spouse dumps everything your child(ren) are done playing with? I re-claimed mine and use it regularly/daily. My son and I have already built several Gundam robots and worked other projects together. I will post them as I complete them and have pictures to post.

My son had been asking for a 3D printer for a while. But I had been avoiding it because I did not want it to own me (expensive, and time consuming). But a few things happened recently that pushed me over the edge. (1) I started watching YouTube crafting videos involving 3D printing and discovered there is enough free and high quality SW out there to make this work for me. (2) There is a $200 printer available out there that does not suck. (3) A fellow on YouTube posted incredible results with the cheap 3D printer and using the same settings others are reproducing it.

Owning one, I cannot recommend everyone get one. For me, I should have done this a long time ago... I'm a Mechanical Engineer that my friends in college initially mistook for a Computer Scientist. I work in robotics now and I usually make things work in software and usually get it right the first time because I create good models for simulations. But I roll-up my sleeves and fix buggy hardware as well. If your not ready to do this, you could get very frustrated.

My second print was this guy.


When he came of the bed, I realized he was well worth painting, so I did.

He can be found on Thingiverse, search for "Dragon Knight".

I did not get the 3D Printer to print models, I got it to play with my son and we have printed all kinds of cool things from Thingiverse. I do see myself using the 3D printer to print small parts for other crafting projects (and mini bases) and will post the results.

I love that knight. Is he HQ scale?

is this your own paintjob, too?

Yeah, sorry.

The knight fits HQ scale, 28mm Heroic scale, which is why I painted him. If he is a little big, you can scale it down no problem. He is not taller than my version of Ampersand's Barbarian figure, so I looked no further. He fits for me, and I may print the other 3 to use as a palace guard in some future quest.

And yes, that is my paint job. I'm told 3D printed parts do not accept washes very well... even with the fine layers shown here they may be exagerated. But I don't paint with washes, so it had little impact. I was pleased with how far my painting without metalics has come. These close-up pictures always show so many flaws. On the table he looks perfect, I need to get glasses to see it much closer than that now.

that paintob is brilliant! very unique... are you aware of Alfonso Giraldes #fucksmoothness initiative? the style on that mini deeliberately or inadvertantly fits the bill. i like it and i'll try more expressionist or impressionist stuff when next i pick up a brush.

everybody, make sure to study that paintjob as closely as you can, whitebeard is on to something here, humility or not.

Glad you like it, but I would rather paint smoothly like so many of the others on here. The reality is that I've watched a few painting videos and the wet pallet just does not fit my workflow. All my color mixing happens on the piece and with the paint drying so fast, the closest I can get is discrete steps in shading based on applied layer thickness.

I am not humble, I will tell you when I know something and I will never pretend I know something. In this case I'm lazy, not brilliant.

whitebeard wrote:All my color mixing happens on the piece and with the paint drying so fast, the closest I can get is discrete steps in shading based on applied layer thickness.

I am not humble, I will tell you when I know something and I will never pretend I know something. In this case I'm lazy, not brilliant.

Let me put it this way: the result is brilliant and unique, intended or not...

knightkrawler wrote:Let me put it this way: the result is brilliant and unique, intended or not...

I'll drink to that!

Pancho wrote:I love that knight. Is he HQ scale?

Like I said, I think so. You may want to scale him down as he appears to be 1/2 a head taller than the Barbarian but lines right up with the GW Chaos Warrior .




Also if you are planning on printing, please check out my "Make" on Thingiverse for my printer settings. The secret is small layers and taking it slow. It has also been pointed out that 100% infill achieved by calling every layer a "top layer" (e.g. 99999) top layers in Cura gives the highest quality. Of course you will wait 7.5 hours for the model. But I think it was worth it.

Here it is before paint (and final clean-up).



As my first print, I ended up tossing him across the room and breaking his sword when removing him from the platform. But it glued back on very well. If I were printing a bunch of these, I would cut the sword and helmet fins off, and print them separately. I have not optimized the setting on my printer and it is likely I need a higher temperature to prevent the stringing... and maybe different retraction settings. With results like these, I'm not going to bother.

Good Luck!