Original post: 3/17/2018
This is the tale of my first 3D design & print efforts with my brand new XYZprinting Da Vinci Mini 3D printer.
After getting my new 3D printer for Christmas 2017 (Thank you Anne!), I naturally wanted to make something. But not just any old thing, I didn’t want to waste filament on the stock objects that XYZprinting suggested. No, no, no! I wanted to print something I could use…
So, I downloaded the free XYZmaker software from XYZ’s site and for the next couple of days I tried to figure out how to use it. There are youTube intro video links on XYZ’s site and they are definitely helpful, but there’s no substitute for getting your hands dirty. I dove in and after a couple more days could easily make moderately complex objects. At this point I decided to try and print replacement Bofors for my Revell Helena, as I’ve never liked the kit’s stock parts, heck I wasn’t fond of the 5″ gun turrets in that kit either – and while on the model enhancement kick I figured, it would be nice to finally have some small AA guns for my Revell Yorktown, and who doesn’t love a cool radar array? – can’t have too many of them lying about. So I took to 3D designing these objects in XYZmaker, did a pretty fair job of it too.
My objects complete, I next figured out how to scale them down to the size I needed: 1/450. The fact that all the detail I lovingly poured into them was now stupendously under the minimum size the Da Vinci Mini could handle, didn’t worry me in the least. I figured the printer would do the best it could and all that extra information would be averaged into what it could handle.
And these are my first two prints (that actually completed).
The first was only on good quality – I wanted to see how fast it could print and what the loss in detail would be…
Humm… Not what I expected, I’ll try excellent quality.
OK, better for sure, but I wouldn’t be replacing those ugly Revell parts any time soon…
Next came several attempts to simplify the designs of my tiny WWII arsenal in the hopes that it would help – and it did, but not enough. Next I tried making my own supports for overhanging design elements and again things got better but were still not great. After about 4 different attempts at this, I’d reached the results below (Ya, I gave up on the radar arrays…)
Definitely an improvement but still not better than the Revell parts.
Starting to get discouraged, I decided to work in a larger scale, thinking 1/450 was just too tiny for the da Vinci Mini. I decided on 1/48 and since I’d done a bunch of work on the 40mm Quad Bofors mount (that was wasted on 1/450 scale) I decided to reuse and embellish that work for my large scale print project.
Voila! My first (mostly) excellent results!.
The rest is recent history 🙂
Nice work!
You seem to working towards a parts-based 3d ship printing capability. Very interesting. Do are you working from some basic hull and superstructure shapes that you adapt for a new ship? Do you print in color? If you’re interested in trying your hand at passenger ships, please send me a note.
Best
Jim
Hi Jim,
Thank you for your comments and interest.
I try and reuse as much as possible, many US WW2 ships (and Japanese to a lesser extent) have a decent amount of standardization when it comes to: secondaries, AA, radar, planes and launches. For me the lower hulls are the hardest part to model and if I can find a good example online or one I can adapt I’ll use it. At this point I’m seldom starting from scratch.
No color printing for me! I enjoy painting models as much or more than designing and building them. I ‘m still on the fence on weathering my 3D printed projects. Sometimes it works but others it can emphasize the 3D-printed-ness and detract…
Currently a project takes way too much of my free time for it to ever be something I would attempt commercially. Priced competitively, my hourly pay would be laughable. Too much competition out there doing it better, faster and cheaper, it’s a labor of love.
– Joe