"Printable models/cards, Good or Bad?" Topic

First let me admit that my printer is not good for this purpose. It will not print acceptable copies of photos or colors. They all come out in bands of color. Black and White works fine. As a result most printable PDFs or other downloads are of little use to me. The topic link below is a perfect example.

TMP link

How bout the rest of you? Do buy and use the printible models and PDFs?

I do. In fact, I have completey replaced both terrain and miniatures by paper and cardboard.

And if you have problems printing in color or even 50 shades of grey (derp :D), why not try something artsy?

TMP link

If the problem is your printer, my daughter prints my products with acceptable quality on a low end printer from WalMart using home refilled cartridges.

Try printing a model out on a friend's printer. Note, however, that the quality of the card stock is actually more importantly in my experience than the quality of the printer (assuming a new or relatively new printer).

your printer can be adjusted. turn off interlacing in your adv options.

He might actually have a pure b&w laser printer with no real grayscale option (using weak dithering as a substitute).

A good inkjet canon printer goes for about 75 USD.

Brother Printers are quite good and have cheap ink. I use on to print all my card stuff up in color.

My Brother laser printer for everything not color.

Thanks,

John

I have a Canon Pixma inkjet printer. I paid $65 USD for it from Amazon. It's been doing an excellent job for over a year now. And since I produce and sell card models, it gets a lot of work. It's a great printer.

Where I live I can print A3 200gsm for less than 50cents.

you can go to a staples or office depot and have THEM print on heavy stock in color laser for a buck or two a page, and (in the case of staples) even get them to spray-adhese it to foamcore (they call it mounting board).

Not good for all stuff, but for a lot of buildings, that's handy!

Color laser doesn't fade, and is not going to run if it gets wet.

link

These turned out suprisingly easy to make. I printed these at home and they are very easy to assemble.

Lost Pict

Personally I like PDF building kits. Gives you a lot of options. Buildings made for one scale can be printed out at at another scale. As a preference though I only tend to go down scale i.e. 1/76 to 1/100th rather than 1/100th up to 1/76th. Hate wasting ink when the so and so's charge so much for it and never sure how much detail you will lose.

Been working on this lot on and off over the weekend.

link

Printed on Canon MG5200 (low to mid range inkjet printer)settings – high quality on Rymans matte photo paper (about 9p a sheet) at 56% for the IKubes and 76%, of original size, for the containers.

WIP as the edging, bit more weathering and basing needs to be done.

Combination of Antenocities containers and the IKube buildings. Both free downloads. Metal fittings are from GZG and are there to give the models a bit more 3D feel. Elements of 15mm SF Forward operating or survey base.

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Allen, even if your printer isn't up to doing a good colour job. Another use for PDF download files is as a plan, especially for vehicles. Use a B&W printout to make the building/vehicle out of styrene sheet/mdf etc

Another advantage. You can mess around with the buildings. The Ikubes are a standard rectangle shape. If I'd had to buy these in Resin for instance no way would I have started hacking them around to create the larger sized buildings. Just picked up a paper model (2 versions) of the French TGV, this will get hacked around to make an SF maglev train. You can't get it in 1/100th scale and even if you could, the cost would probably prohibit any major conversion work.

Suggestions, try using proper photo paper as a test. hopefully scrounged from somewhere instead of buying a full pack. Also try using the lowest "weight" paper in range 90gsm to 120gsm, then mount this on card stock. Personal preference is to build a shell from 1.5mm artists mount board and then fix the print out to this.

Also note to anyone converting the Antenocies containers for 15mm use. At the 56% reduction in scale you can print one, then turn the paper round and get a second container on the same sheet.

Khurasan SEAL figures show scale.