Tired of Tanks Yet?

Sorry.  Couple more to go!   Here are some examples from the 1:200 collection!

Luchs and Nashorn 1:200 in front of 1:100 Tank

Luchs as Printed

Luchs Cleaned Up

Two Luches Scaled to 1:100

Opposed Landing

T-34 with Coin for Size Comparison

If you want a tank but you don't have a printer you can, in effect, rent some time on one by winging your way to 3DHubs:

3D Hubs: Local 3D Printing

Find fast & affordable 3D printing services in your neighborhood. With more than 19337 connected printers worldwide, 3D Hubs is the world leader in 3D printing.

If you are in the UK you can visit my hub:

Wisar's Hub

3D Prints From £5.00 | I am a Maker that enjoys 3D Printing enough to try and help others. Your prints are my challenges. The Wanhao Duplicator 4S will print AB...

Removing Support from a Tank Print

This post shows the sequence of events as I strip the support structures generated by Simplify3D from on of the tank models.  The model is actually that of a combat carrier but they run with tanks!

I use Simplify3D as my slicer and it does really good work with support structures.  Still, I find that you need to examine the support built for each model and adjust as needed.   In the case of this carrier I needed to remove the support around the heads of the driver and gunner.

 I have also found that prints done in PLA can be cleaned up but expect a fight!   Finally notice how the support stuff hangs out from the side of the model.  This is a configurable option and really helps with cleanup.

1. Starting Point

2. Starting to Strip

3. Halfway Through the Bottom - You Need to Start Here!

4. Bottom all Stripped

5. Ready to Strip Right Side

6. Right Side Stripped

7. Ready to Strip the Left Side

8. Left Side Stripped

9. Ready to Strip the Front

10. All Stripped

I used one tool for the above with that being the small needle nose pliers that I dremel'ed down to have a very fine tip.   I could have gotten a lot of the support material off with a small screw driver and my fingers but am ok with the pliers!

3D Hubs

3D Hubs is a cloud based service that allows people with a 3D Printer to make that printer available to the wider community.   People without a 3D Printer, or even someone who has one but has a capacity issue, can find a local printer to which their models can be sent.

I have made my printers available to this service and while business is not brisk I have gotten two jobs that I have learned from having completed.

Below is a chart that illustrates the cost versus time to print pricing model that I have on 3D Hubs.  The model is based on the time and plastic that it takes to print a "Marvin".

					Marvin
	3D Hubs Resolution	Layer Height	Speed (mm/m)	Startup Cost	Cost per cm^3	Cost	Time to Print
Ultimaker 2	Low	0.25	2500	7	0.5	7.99	24
	Medium	0.15	2200	8	0.7	9.39	40
	High	0.1	2000	10	0.85	11.79	60
Duplicator 4S	Low	0.25	2500	5	0.4	5.89	32
	Medium	0.2	2200	6	0.5	7.09	40
	Medium	0.15	2000	7	0.6	8.29	54

There are two factors at work in the above model.   Resolution of the print is governed by the layer height.   The smaller the layer the higher the resolution, and of course, the longer it takes to print.  The speed that the printer moves while extruding plastic does not impact resolution, however, it has an impact on print quality though this can vary from print to print.  Obviously speed has an impact on the time to complete the print!

In either case, the longer a printer is tied up the more one needs to charge!

Some More Tanks

The prints that I am most impressed with were Shermans that were printed in PLA on an Ultimaker 2 with layer heights of 0.1mm and 0.15mm at 30-35/mmps.

0.15

0.10

0.15 and 0.10

Finally, since I live in England, how about a British tank? This is the Matilda Centaur IV. It is printed at 0.1mm resolution in PLA on my Ultimaker 2.

If you want a tank but you don't have a printer you can, in effect, rent some time on one by winging your way to 3DHubs:

3D Hubs: Local 3D Printing

Find fast & affordable 3D printing services in your neighborhood. With more than 19337 connected printers worldwide, 3D Hubs is the world leader in 3D printing.

If you are in the UK you can visit my hub:

Wisar's Hub

3D Prints From £5.00 | I am a Maker that enjoys 3D Printing enough to try and help others. Your prints are my challenges. The Wanhao Duplicator 4S will print AB...

Tanks, Tanks, and more Tanks!

Now let us see some tanks per my last post!   As I said, the source of the tank models is on Thingiverse and they are the creations of a New Zealander (m_bergman) that has done some absolutely stunning work.  He has three collections of tanks but I am only talking about World War 2 in 1:200 scale (Part II, Part III) and a subset of the latter in 1:100 scale in this post.

Here is the truck for which I got my second 3DHubs order.   This is printed in ABS on my Wanhao Duplicator 4S with a layer height of 0.2mm.  The detail, as you can see from the closeup, is pretty amazing.

These are 1:100 scale models and for reference see the image with the coin.  That is a pence but is also the same size as a yank penny.

These are not particularily easy models to print as acknowledged on Thingiverse by m_bergman.  If your printer is not well calibrated for detail these models will not look but so good.

These models need support to print correctly. I found that each of the models that I printed needed a little adjustment of the automatic support placement.

I am going back and forth on whether to print these models on a raft.  This takes longer and adds more pain to the cleanup but it helps greatly to ensure that the model does not come unglued making the print more robust.  I think it is on a model by model basis.  Try it on one print without the raft.  If it works print any more that you might want and if not use a raft.

I use Simplify3D and it does not
seem to support a 0 tolerance for support so I used 1mm. On tanks this left the gun barrels unsupported so I went back and added support manually.

The raft and support are much harder to remove from the PLA prints but both require patience and the right tools. I would suggest a hobby knife, a set of small screw drivers for prying (jewelers for example), and a needle nose pliers with a very small nose. I had a small one that was extra but not small enough until after my Dremel got to it. The tip needs to be tiny.

Getting support off PLA prints is easier if the model is slightly warm. Remember that PLA melts at a low temperature if you are going to try and re-heat a part! I sit it on a heated build plate set to 75c. I use either 3mm or 4mm support columns with PLA as removal is such a challenge. There is also a setting in Simplify3D that allows you to specify an overhang amount for support. This is really helpful.

Follow m_bergmans direction of removing the support between the tracks as this does really help.

In the next post I will show more TANKS!


If you want a tank but you don't have a printer you can, in effect, rent some time on one by winging your way to 3DHubs:

3D Hubs: Local 3D Printing

Find fast & affordable 3D printing services in your neighborhood. With more than 19337 connected printers worldwide, 3D Hubs is the world leader in 3D printing.

If you are in the UK you can visit my hub:

Wisar's Hub

3D Prints From £5.00 | I am a Maker that enjoys 3D Printing enough to try and help others. Your prints are my challenges. The Wanhao Duplicator 4S will print AB...

Second Order on 3D Hubs was for a TANK!

Guys like tanks.  Not all guys but a lot of guys.   If I think of the top things that a guy is going to like I think of the following:

• Girls
• Beer
• Cars

Then the list starts to branch out.  Things like boats, motorcycles, and the like come in.   But in the everymans top 10 list I have to bet that Tanks would be in there somewhere...even if they have to be reminded as I was!

So, when someone put an order out onto my 3D Hub to print a sample tank for a local war gaming club I was happy to oblige (it was actually a truck but it goes with tanks).  The idea being that other club members might be interested in getting some tanks printed to augment their collections with vehicles that might otherwise be hard to find.

The source of the tank models is on Thingiverse and they are the creations of a New Zealander (m_bergman) that has done some absolutely stunning work.  He has three collections of tanks.  World War 1 in 1:200 scale, World War 2 in 1:200 scale (Part II, Part III), and a subset of the latter in 1:100 scale.

The club member that met with me had payed me to print a sample vehicle.  I printed a couple extra for him as I, well, I like tanks!   The idea is that club members would find the tank they need, upload an order to me on 3D Hubs, and voila they have a tank that other wise might not be in their army, without investing in their own 3D printer.   What I am not doing is printing and selling tanks as that flies against the non-commercial license for the models.

Obviously if someone has a 3D printer they can print as many of these as they want.   That is, of course, assuming their printer is pretty well calibrated as some of these models are a challenge.

If you don't have a printer you can, in effect, rent some time on one by winging your way to 3DHubs:

If you want a tank but you don't have a printer you can, in effect, rent some time on one by winging your way to 3DHubs:

3D Hubs: Local 3D Printing

Find fast & affordable 3D printing services in your neighborhood. With more than 19337 connected printers worldwide, 3D Hubs is the world leader in 3D printing.

If you are in the UK you can visit my hub:

Wisar's Hub

3D Prints From £5.00 | I am a Maker that enjoys 3D Printing enough to try and help others. Your prints are my challenges. The Wanhao Duplicator 4S will print AB...

Easy Road to Dimensional Accuracy?

I have been fighting some dimensional accuracy issues for quite a while.   There are is all kinds of advice out there as to how to go about doing it and I have only gotten about as far as to make sure that my printers are extruding the right amount of plastic!  Leaving that out as an explanation for parts that I print being out of whack by 2-4% in either direction!

Part of my challenge has been translating the advice from people that use other slicers into stuff that makes sense for Simplify3D which is what I am using.   So I asked for help on the user forum for Simplify3D.   Someone pointed me to an option called "Horizontal Size Compensation".  It takes a number of millimeters (+/-) as an input but frankly I was not sure how to use it...and assume that it would be better if I tried to calibrate things the "right way".

More fool me.  I finally decided to try it and found that it ... works?  Below are a sample of the results that I got on my first couple of tests:

 

The first test was for a spacer that will hold an 8mm nut.   As you can see the print without adjustments was too small.   The print with a -0.1mm compensation was perfect.  So I thought that I would try a bigger and more complex piece and printed a #3DBenchy with the same compensation not really knowing what to expect.  As you can see, I got the same kind of positive result.

Am I missing something?  It seems a little to easy.  This is a feature that has been in Simplify3D since I bought it a couple months ago (not just since the upgrade to 3.0) so I really should have tried it sooner.  If I had I might not even written my mean post about Simplify3D as that feature alone is worth the price of admission!

UPDATE

This setting is not the answer!  At least not for all cases.  I am finding that when I print a large-ish part in ABS, one that requires dimensional accuracy, there is some shrinkage that needs to be accounted for when the part is printed.  I have not measured this on the UM2 but on my D4S it is about 1%?!?!   I know that the printer is moving accurately as I have measured physical movement on the x-y dimensions but my parts are still too small.  I am finding myself doing a test print, measuring it, and then reprinting with an adjustment factor.