troez3D

Hey guys, slight disclaimer here, I don't actually own a Photon.  I would love to, but at the moment it just isn't on the cards.  One of my friends, however, has just bought one and i wanted to take a moment to talk about the quality of the prints. ( Go and check out his Instagram here! ) If you remember back to my post about the different types of 3D Printing you'll remember that DLP is the process of curing resin one layer at a time using a UV LCD screen.  Meaning that can be faster than both FDM and true SLA.  I do feel it loses a bit of sharpness on the details against a print on a true SLA machine like the Form2 but for nearly a tenth of the price (less than a tenth if you factor in the curing stations from Formlabs) you can't really complain. At the time of writing the Photon is for sale for around £410, which is insanely good value for a resin printer that can produce prints of this quality. Another huge benefit of DLP printing is that it cures ...

First things first, I think  I have solved the jamming issue I talked about last week!  All seems to be running smoothly for the moment so fingers crossed it should be good for now.  I probably will order myself a set of new nozzles anyway just in case something like this does happen again. In the past I have found myself talking to people about scales in tabletop gaming (I know, life of the party right?) and being met with a blank stare so this week I'd thought I'd quickly go over some of the scales relevant to the games I've previously mentioned on my blog and how they are worked out. Probably the most popular scale in modern wargaming and tabletop gaming would be 28mm or 1:64.  Most well known miniature games use it, for example Heroforge , DnD and Games Workshop all use 28mm scale miniatures. Although Games Workshop uses 28mm, their models appear larger due to the bulkier sculpting and style.  This is also sometimes referred to as 'Heroic scale'....

Hey guys, one of the most important things to think about when 3D printing is the support material.  With out sufficient support, models with steep overhangs or floating parts will simply fail to print correctly and you will end up with a pile of spaghetti. Most slicing programs will be able to create their own support, as mentioned in my "How to print" series of posts, however, for some models this is simply not good enough.  The most widely used alternative is Meshmixer, and in this post we're going to look at how to generate support material using it's analysis tools. Import the model, this step is fairly self explanatory.  Open Meshmixer and import the model you wish to print, either by clicking on the import button on the home screen and navigating to your model, or dragging your model into the program. I'll be using the standard bunny included in the program for this tutorial. Head over to the menu bar on the left of the screen and click on anal...

If any of you play table top games like Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder you will know there is no limit to the companies providing high quality miniatures for your games.  However if you want to stray from the norm, and for example have a steampunk Dwarf or Elf, where do you go? Games Workshop make great miniatures but they are limited to the armies that they use in their games.  Places like Dark Sword Minis or Reaper provide a more traditional set of miniatures for fantasy type games and even a few for Sci Fi, but what if you need that one miniature that suits your character perfectly but doesn't exist? Well with the advent of 3D printing, some companies have begun to offer online customisation of miniatures which you can order printed or even download the STL files to print yourself at home.  The most well known of these sites is Heroforge . Heroforge allows you massive amounts of customisation for your miniature, from race and gender all the way d...

This week I thought I'd talk about some Heroforge prints I had done and some issues that occurred and why I think they happened so that you guys don't make the same mistakes as I did. I use Meshmixer for all my miniature or complex model support.  As much as I love the Cetus3D and the ease of use of the propriety software, the support generation leaves a lot to be desired.  using Meshmixer you have all the control you need to create accurate support structures allowing for much more complex models and finer detail (it is also a hell of a lot easier to remove than the Cetus generated supports). Support generation in Meshmixer Id like to also preface this post with the fact that I'm pretty sure all the failures were my fault and not due to either the models or the software. Print No.1 This print was a simple case of poorly designed and checked supports.  I didn't ensure there was enough under the shield and had also told the software to make the support sticks...