3d printing / design - how difficult is it?

[Blissful Brushes]

Howdy one and all,

 

With the crazy growth and (finally) affordability of 3d printers I am pondering entering that rabbit hole myself. 
 

On the printer front I have an idea that the Mars/Saturn is likely the route I’ll go if I buy my own but my FLGS also take print commissions so there’s that as an option for me too.

 

The STL design front though, I’ve seen mucho different things on the internet and Reddit, what are the B&C recommendations for software to create your own STLs? My main use case is biggerising 30k marine bodies - at the moment I’m greenstuffing primaris into MkIV and it’s starting to wear me down. 
 

Any advice, or indeed directions to good quality vendors/pre-exisitng STLs would be appreciated

 

:)

 

[Grotsmasha]

1- with affordability these days, once your comfortable with your resin printer of choice (Mars / Saturn are solid) if also consider a FDM printer to enable those larger prints (terrain, THawk etc).

- EDIT: don't skimp on a cheap resin, pay for a good miniatures one (I use Sirayatech), non-miniatures resin are brittle, and will shatter if dropped, or even just knocked over. A good resin will behave like FW resin, mostly firm, with a bit of bounce, and can be shaped with heat.

- EDIT 2: some printers can bundled with a wash and cure station, also worth the investment.

Location, weather, time of day are all variables that will effect a print. So taking the time to fine tune settings will save time in failed prints.

 

2- TinkerCad is a free design web app that lets you design 3D files with basic geometric shapes. It's major drawback is a max file size that excludes very complex, hi-res files.

A more complex one ( I think it's still free though) is blender.

If all you're looking to do is resize / scale existing files, then that's something the slicer program that will be supplied with the printer will handle, no problems. Most slicers will also allow "digital kit-bashing", you can import multiple files, position the together, then save than as a new combined 3d file.

When slicing, take the time to learn supports, it will also save so much time in failed prints.

 

3- yeggi.com is a 3d file specific search engine, that is great for a quick browse. Cults3D ard myminifactory are two file specific sites that have both free and paid for files.

A tip for searching for files, is when you see a model of good quality, even if it's not of the faction you're chasing, I'd check it out to get to the creator, they may have also done what you're looking for.

Edited June 16 by Grotsmasha

[sarabando]

the programs you are going to want to learn are blender and zbrush, Blender is free and there are lots of very good tutorials on Youtube to get you started. 

For the printing itself i can strongly recommend the mars 5 ultra by elgoo along with their wash and cure station. 

I have also bought an enclosure for it that allows me to seal it off and vent the fumes out of the room. 

 

 

The basic premise of model making is pretty simple if you can make a square you can make anything. its all down to your patients. 

[Blissful Brushes]

Thanks for the advice! I shall look into Blender and once I have worked it out look into buying some hardware