Adventures in 3D Printing

 

So I finally got one. I've been talking about doing it for years and the wife apparently heard too much and decided to push me off the ledge as a birthday gift. With as much miniature work I do it's a smart move in general but the details ...

My main interest with them is printing a lot of the "extra" stuff like terrain, or custom bases, or different parts to use with "real" miniatures. Being able to print whole figures - indeed whole armies - is certainly a good option to have but it's not the priority.

A couple of weeks I am no expert at any of it but let me share some of the early challenges I have run in to in case anyone else is considering the option.

• If you mainly want to do figures you may be better off with a resin printer. They look more complicated to me involving toxic fumes and some kind of curing process after you print them but they do it without the layer lines you get with the other kind of printer.
• The other kind of printer is a PLA printer which uses stuff that looks like fishing line or weed eater string which it melts and squirts out into a shape layer by layer. The upside is that they seem to be easier to manage and I suspect plastic is more generally applicable for some things than resin but for the tiniest of things like miniature figures you do get some lines that will show. 
• The basic input - besides a spool of plastic string or a bottle of resin - for these things is a 3D model that you have probably seen discussed somewhere as an STL file. There are tons of them out there free and paid and it's pretty easy to find something you might be interested in. I signed up for One Page Rules monthly Patreon a while back in anticipation of doing this someday and they put out a big batch of STL files each month supporting various armies for their games. For a few bucks a month it is -way- cheaper than buying regular miniatures and each set includes some custom bases in various sizes, movement trays, etc. 

Now I knew a little bit already about the types of printers and I knew I would need STL files. I had some of those so once I got the printer hooked up I'm good to go right? Well ...

• The part you don't hear about so much until you wade in is the slicer. This is not a Star Wars NPC - it is the program that you use to translate the STL file into code your printer can use. Now each printer comes with one from the manufacturer and there are several that are not tied to any particular company. These are often a) free and b) generally thought to be better than the in-house slicers. I am sticking with the basic one for now but I can tell you it's a whole new thing to learn. This is a complex piece of software that will let you tweak all kinds of things but learning what all of the different fields and settings and their values mean is an uphill climb.
• At the basic level you open the slicer, import the STL you want to print, hit "slice", and it exports a g-code file somewhere, and then you send that file to your printer and print it. I've done this with some bases now and it works just fine because it's basically a flat square or rectangle or circle with some still flat-ish details on top so it's pretty simple. 
• The pit I fell in to is "Supports". This can be an absolute nightmare and is still blocking me on some models. Supports are those line-y framework-looking things you see on some 3D prints and while they exist for a reason they are a huge pain a lot of the time - at least at this point in my journey. 
• You can often get STLs in "unsupported" or "pre-supported" versions. Pre-supported means you don't need to change anything about the model - like adding supports ... until you do. Which is "sometimes". Depending on the model. Insert eyeroll here.
• Unsupported is for rugged do-it-yourselfers who prefer to add their own supports without the clutter and possible screw-ups of whoever did the pre-supported version. Basically if it has wings or arms outstretched or weapons out it's going to need some kind of supports to print those out and it's really just a question of do you trust the creator of the file or do you want to do it in your own slicer. 
• My determination at this point is that both are a pain in the ass. The promise of clean pre-supported models is great but I've found the reality to be decidedly mixed. The idea of doing it myself is also attractive except that I don't know what I'm doing at this point and end up with more support than actual model sometimes.
• The actual printing on this latest wave of devices is pretty easy. Most of them are network-capable now so you can send files to it directly from a PC in another room and some have a camera so you can watch it print in real time without ever going in there. You can also use a device like an SD card or a USB drive to to manually transfer files. The printers work, the PLA spool just feeds right in ... the physical part works great. The results depend mightily on your model and slicer results and that's the part I am still fighting regularly.

I will press on though. I had a flash of insight while running my D&D (er ToV) game the other night: monsters on demand. There are numerous files out there for all of your typical D&D monsters and while I have a lot of miniatures for that kind of thing there are times, especially when running a published adventure, that I need more of them. The Temple has one room where I need something like 12 gargoyles. Now I have some gargoyle minis but I do not have a dozen of them. But now, knowing the party is nearing said room, I could crank some out in an hour or three and have them ready to go next session - possibly even with a basic paint job. It's a dream worth fighting for ...

 I will post more on this down the road as I figure more out. Once I have some better things to show I will share some of the early disaster prints for comedic value. Onward!