I have always been into model making from my earliest Airfix kits as a child, I then picked up my fist warhammer miniature at the age of 12 and was hooked on the hobby and my model making followed that direction. During the early days of WH40k Rogue Trader with the lack of larger models we had to kit bash our own, with many of my early Airfix models being sacrificed to this end. Any of you old enough will remember the White Dwarf articles on building your own and I was the proud owner of the skimmer made out of a roll-on deodorant and the original Whirlwind with the rocket launcher made from a 40mm square base and some plascard. 

As well as Airfix kits part from all sorts were sourced as the basis of new designs such as Zoids and GI Joe toys, I had several old plastic ice cream containers full of all sorts of buts to filter through. My Father was also a hobby model maker but focused on making naval vessels, for which he used a lot of plascard, a material that I embraced scratch building several bunkers based on templates published in White Dwarf, but always adding extra part to my own taste.

When it came to choosing a university course I applied to study 3d visualisation and animation, but back then there was only place in the country running the course and with only 25 places available and over 400 applicants I realised that I probably wasn't going to get in with my grades, so I had a re-think and decided upon architecture, which seemed to combine a lot of the design aspects I was interested in. During my degree I Learnt CAD as well as producing numerous models for my projects all of which I enjoyed. After my placement year in a practice and the first year of my post-grad I decided becoming an Architect wasn't for me, as I excelled in the CAD/BIM modelling, but had no interest in dealing with clients and contractors. So I pivoted to becoming an Architectural Technician, which I have been for the past quarter of a decade, in which time I have learnt numerous CAD/BIM and 3d Modelling/visualistaion packages. 

My first encounter with 3D printing was in 2017 when the architectural practice I was with at the time purchased a fairly basic DLP printer to help with producing a model for a large masterplan we were working on, with me modelling in Archicad and then printing the individual basic shapes for buildings. About this time I decided to enter the Armies onParade competition at my local GW, so I planned out my 600x600mm board in 3d on the PC, part of which featured an entrance to a subterranean base set in to the side of a cliff face. The cliff and the majority board where to be shaped out of insulation foam, but for the doors themselves I decided make use of the office 3d printer and set off a print before leaving one evening to collect in the morning. I was happy with the result although the detail wasn't great and took a bit of sanding. 

I also decided to print a name plaque for the board, but decided as this was more prominent the quality of the office printer was not good enough so sent the file to Shapeways (RIP) and whilst it wasn't cheap I was more than happy with the print I got back. After this I had no real need to print anything else and at the time to get anything of a decent quality seemed prohibitively expensive. I still modeled a few odd things and even but a few things up on the shapeways store, such as an bolt rifle I had created as a learning exercise, but nothing really came of that.

A couple of years ago I finally bit the bullet and bought myself a resin 3D Printer as I had judged the quality to cost ratio for new printers had got to a point I was happy with. I bought an Elegoo Mars 3 and the wash and cure station as well, both of which had a fairly small footprint that I could find space for. This opened up a world of possibilities for me, with discovering the wealth of models available on sites such as Cults3D, I was left with the big question - what do I print first? 

At the time I was playing in a Bloodbowl league with some friends and wanted a Rat ogre for my skaven team and didn't like the available forgeworld option at the time, so this was the obvious choice. I sourced an STL file for decent model which printed well with decent detail, which I lovingly painted and based only for me to put it on the pitch with other models only to discover one of the big issues I have with 3d printing - scale! The model was about 1.3X to big, which not noticable at first, when put alongside the GW models just looked wrong, so I ended up buying and converting a couple of Island of Blood rat ogres from Ebay, which I was more happy with. 

I'm not one of these people who see 3d people as a way of saving money or avoiding paying for official products, but as a way of enhancing my hobby experience, the only full models I have printed have been ones I cannot buy from GW or are alternate versions of official miniatures that I already have to provide variety in my armies. I mostly use 3d printing to print custom parts for my models enabling me to give more individuality to them than I could with just kit bashing. I also print a lot of bases and invested in a kickstarter for cutomisable 3d nameplates, which I have printed for many of my kill teams.

In many cases I have not been able to find particular parts I wanted, and so turned to modelling them myself, originally I used the CAD/BIM software I use at work, but More recently I hve been learning Blender, which is free and a lot more usable for this kind of modelling. It is quite a step learning curve, but there are plenty of good tutorials out there, I recommend Artisans of Vaul on Youtube who specialises in modelling for 3d printing minis. 

These are some of the bits I have modelled for creating my Primaris Deathwatch killteam as seen in my last blog post, although in the end I didn't use all the parts, I uploaded them to my Cults account to sell for a minimal fee and they seem to have been quite popular. I created my cults account about the same time I got the printer and have uploaded a lot of the things I have made mostly put on there for free, but the few I have charged for have made me a bit of money, over £120 since I started, which is nice and not what I created them for in the first place. If you're interested you can see my available files here.

As I get better at modelling I want to try bigger and more complex models, I have already blocked out and started modelling parts for a Tau gunship and even what will hopefully be an overlord, although I have no idea where I'm going to find the time I would need to spend completing these. I've also been thinking about getting a larger printer at some point as my current one is fairly limited in print area, meaning if I wanted to anything larger than that, it would need to be cut up in to smaller parts and the re-assembled which from recent experiments is a real pain.

The latest DLP printers have much better quality output and I'm seriously considering something like the Bambu A1 as a possible purchase for printing larger pieces such as scenery. I recently brought a larger piece printed on a DLP machine as Xmas present for myself via Etsy - a full size Primaris Intercessor helmet:

(as modeled by my very understanding Wife and painted by me)

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know where I am with regards to this aspect of the hobby, let me know if you have any thoughts in the comments.