maandag 21 oktober 2019

The future is 3D...

Hmmm, I've gone quiet for a bit again, haven't I?
Stuff happened (family stuff, a case of the flu, just general real-life nuisances).
But a little over a week ago, I received my newest toy/tool: An Ender 5 3d printer.
I've been debating if/how badly I need/want one for the past year or so.
In the end it came down to the realisation that I don't have the swathes of time and energy my younger me used to have.  And that to actually have a chance of finishing some of the more, ahem, megalomaniacal projects I started in the past, I need to work more efficiently. Handcrafting a repetetive item "x" times for a scenery project may have been fine in the past. But now I can design/download it once, and print several of them, while I get a good night's sleep at the same time. :)
As I had the past week off, I took some time to get to know the machine and calibrate it.
I'm already through half a kilo spool of filament, and the other half is going fast as wel...
 Here's some of the stuff I printed:

The first two prints, after the little cartoon piggy provided by the manufacturor:

I also printed some upgrade bits for the printer itself:  A bracket to take strain of a cable that is known to be damage prone. And a set of supports for the semi-freefloating print bed, to reduce layer lines a bit more.


After using most of the white PLA provided by the manufacturor of the printer, I switched to the dark grey PLA I bought.  And print quality immediately went up.
Even more when I got some tweaking in:
 The base on this thing is 40mm in diameter, to give a sense of scale...

Ofcourse I had to see how certain items looked painted:
A Sister of Battle ( a somewhat rough print, being done in low-grade PLA and before any calibrating) in 54mm aka Inquisitor scale:




And to celebrate upcoming Halloween (as well as try a larger print) I printed Cthulhu:


Oh, and this is what half a kilo of plastic filament got me:
Some wall pieces for Necromunda/zone Mortalis. Detail bits for my Space Hulk/Multiverse gaming terrain projects. A set of terminals for Cyberpunk gaming, a set of (too large) BFG escorts, a set of 25mm diameter bases/battery holders,  a Necromunda token, a dead Fallout person and an icon of an ancient evil.... Not bad. Missing from this overview is a couple of calibration prints, a handfull of support structures, and one of the printer's bed support arms.

Oh, and as I have a spool of translucent PETG as well, I had to give this a try:
 A virtual entity for use in cyberpunk skirmish games. It's a translucent print glued atop a 25mm diameter base/battery-and-led-holder.


See you next time!

6 opmerkingen:

  1. Very interesting! Definitely the future of the hobby.

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    1. Thanks! It is part of the future at least, I prefer to see it as another tool to add to the repertoire. But with quality going up and prices going down, it will become available to more people, and manufacturers will have to take that into consideration...

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  2. Exciting stuff, and that 54mm sister turned out far better than you would expect from a filament printer.

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  3. That surprised me as well, and she isn't even the cleanest print I got... Quite excited to see what I can do with this. :)

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  4. Oh wow, an exciting addition!
    This past year I came across some posts showing of some amazing models, I look forward to see what you're going to print and perhaps even create.

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    1. Thank you. :) I'm looking forward to see what I can do with it as well!

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