Meet the Squirrel, Scale 1/12

[nönöbär]

Meet the Squirrel, 3D Print

The last thing that I could print with the 3D printer before it passed away was the model "Girl in Shorts". Which also was the first figure i printed with it.

Printed with an Anycubic Mega S, PLA+, the model of the girl was seperated into three parts (legs, head&shoulders, body) for better printing. Size is about 15 cm.
Additionally, I printed the little Squirrel and the base.
Hand painted with Revel Aqua Colour, some model railroad grass was used on the base.








My engineer looks a bit confused....




The following 3D-Models were used:

Girl in shorts by Amforma (Published on August 15, 2018) www.thingiverse.com/thing:3050473
Squirrel by schlossbauer (Published on December 25 2018 ) www.thingiverse.com/thing:3313467
Figure Base by Torleif (Published May 28 2015 ) www.thingiverse.com/thing:853244

[NARSES2]

That's come out really well. Shows what the technology can do.

The last thing that I could print with the 3D printer before it passed away was the model "Girl in Shorts". Which also was the first figure i printed with it.

It's probably still hot under the collar 

[loupgarou]

How did you prepare the file for the printer. Do you have a 3D scanner?

[nönöbär]

How did you prepare the file for the printer. Do you have a 3D scanner?

I do not have a 3D printer, I just downloaded the .stl wile from Thingiverse (see link in my original post). There is almost endless stuff to download an print from there.

My first try was to use Cura as the slicer and print the figure in one piece, but then after the legs were almost done, it loosend itself from the base as the first alyers were just too small to hold the weight of the figure.

I then used a programm called "Meshmixer" to divide the .stl file in three seperate parts. I googled for "how to seperate a stl file into parts" and found an instruction for it using the Meshmixer program.
But you could also use the "3D Builder" program which is included in Windoes 10. I used it to seperate anoter model, but could not print it so far as I need a new 3D printer first.

[loupgarou]

Thanks.
As I am completely ignorant about 3D printing and stuff, I had thought the names you quoted at the beginning wre "brand" names of kit producers, and you had the kits, modified, scanned etc..them

[nönöbär]

Thanks.
As I am completely ignorant about 3D printing and stuff, I had thought the names you quoted at the beginning wre "brand" names of kit producers, and you had the kits, modified, scanned etc..them

No, those are actually 3D objects made on a computer which can be downloaded for free. You find thousands of them at Thingiverse - from "useful" stuff like tablet holder, parts for your car or models (figures, ships, cars etc) like the ones i used.

Usually they are in .stl format, which is a file format for 3d objects that does not contain any texture information as you do not need this for the 3d printer. You then need a so-called "slicer" software (I used the freeware "Cura") which then takes the 3d object and slices it into single layers which then can be printed. The slicer software knows your 3d printer, and created a ".gcode" file which contains all the commands for the printer so that it knows where to move its print nozzle and where to print.

The print itself is quite time consuming, the three parts of the woman figure took about 8,5 hours to print.

Of course you can designs your own 3D objects using a 3D CAD software, but I have not tried this so far. Altough  I have an What-If project in preperation where I could use that. But i have to get a new printer first, as I had to returm the other one.

[loupgarou]

Thanks for all the info.
Can you also enlarge or reduce the scale of the objects too, before printing?

[nönöbär]

Thanks for all the info.
Can you also enlarge or reduce the scale of the objects too, before printing?

Yes, you can. And you have to do it quite often as objects are either too big for the printing space you have, or they are too small to print at all. As they are 3D models, you usually can enlage them quite good, but maybe they are not so detailed then.

And if you scale down something, you have to keep in mind that if itis too small, it cannot be printed.

Here is an example with the "girl in shorts" model I used:


This is a screnshot of the slicer program after loading the model. The blue space is the room the printer can print. This is the model in 15cm size.



This is a visualizazion of the sliced model. The red part is the model itself, there you can see the single layers that will be printed. The blue parts are helper structures the slicer automatically adds. A 3D printer cannot print parts that float in the air (for example a swotd taht is potining horizonatlly from a figure), therefore the slicer adds some help strucure below it that you have to remove from the printed model. But this works quite good.


This is the 3D model scaled to 10% (1,5 cm in height). In the 3D view this still looks good.


But the visualisazion of the sliced model shows how few layers will be printed, so this will not be very detailed at all. The green part insige the model is the infill, you usually do not print those models 100% solid, this would be too time and material consuming. Instead the slicer makes an rastered infill that saved a lot material and time.

I tried to print some 1:44 scale models - a truck and a Ju52 plane in 1:700, but this was too timy, that some parts (like the wings of the Ju 52) were not printed completly. Of course this depends on the printer as well.

[loupgarou]

Thanks. Very informative.