Waco Joe | 25 Mar 2017 11:18 a.m. PST |
I received my hex grid sea mat from Banners on the Cheap and took a few snaps with some ships printed from TMP member epengr's excellent designs on Thingiverse.
So far I have printed 4 1st rates, 4 2nds, 8 3rds and a 5th. The hexes are 1.5 inch and the ship bases are 3 inches. |
15th Hussar | 25 Mar 2017 11:20 a.m. PST |
Not bad! How much are the ships in print costs? |
Waco Joe | 25 Mar 2017 11:27 a.m. PST |
The ships come in at around 25 grams. My roll of filament was around $20 USD for a kilo so around 50 cents in material. I am moving to a more expensive filament for quality reasons so the next ones might be as much as 75 cents! Print times: Hull around 2 hours .2 layers Sails around 4 hours .05 layers Bases around 20 minutes .3 layers I print multiple hulls at once so the total print time is longer. The time above is per hull. |
15th Hussar | 25 Mar 2017 12:03 p.m. PST |
Huh, the prices ain't nun two bad, all things considered. Goofy question: Are 3D printers reliable enough at this point in time where you don't have to sit and babysit them while they're printing? |
attilathepun47 | 25 Mar 2017 12:10 p.m. PST |
Hmmm, those really look pretty good. However, unless you also use the printer for some money-making venture, the cost of the printer itself has to be factored into the cost per unit (ship); so, I have to ask, how much did the printer cost? |
Waco Joe | 25 Mar 2017 1:15 p.m. PST |
Attila: I bought a Prusa i3 Mk2 assembled directly from Prusa. $899. USD If you are handy you can buy the kit form for $699. USD The machine is actually open source design so you can buy essentially the same thing for as little as $165 USD link if you are willing to tweak and experiment with it. Since I had come into a windfall by selling my old Magic cards, I splurged and went to the original source. If someone does not have a printer and does not want to invest in one I would suggest scouting out your locale for either a communal makerspace or a library that offers 3d printing. There you just pay per piece, either by weight or time. Andrew: Once you become familiar with the settings for your particular machine and the filament used, it can easily be a set it and forget it process. You will occasionally get the odd blow up where the print comes loose from the bed before finishing and you wind up with a glob of string. So it is not quite 100%. I have found it is in the first few minutes that I will experience a problem, after that I walk away. This chapel was done in several pieces and probably involved around 3.5 days of printing with no problems.
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15th Hussar | 25 Mar 2017 1:19 p.m. PST |
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martin goddard | 25 Mar 2017 2:34 p.m. PST |
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attilathepun47 | 25 Mar 2017 3:17 p.m. PST |
Thanks for the information Waco! I would have to say the price is reasonable for what it can do, though rather steep for my budget. I have to recall that some of the first or second generation of personal computers went for about $800.00 USD around thirty years ago, even though their practical capability was really pretty laughable. |
Blutarski | 28 Mar 2017 6:13 a.m. PST |
Waco Joe – Fascinating projects. The ships look very interesting; the chapel is just o u t s t a n d i n g work. Questions – Can you post a close-up shot of one of the ships? How durable/flexible do you consider the plastic used? How well/easily does it paint up? Attila – I used to be in the IT business in the 80s. When they first came out in 1984, a well-optioned IBM AT "business" computer with Intel 286 CPU and a 20MB hard drive was priced at USD 5,700.00. In 1990, a "high speed" IBM 320MB SCSI server hard drive was USD 3,200.00 – 10 dollars per megabyte of storage capacity! We live in unbelievable times today as far as cost of computing power goes. |
attilathepun47 | 28 Mar 2017 10:06 a.m. PST |
Blutarski, You're certainly right about how incredible the capacity of computers now is in relation to price. The figure I cited was an approximation of the price of Atari, Commodore, or Apple models aimed at the home market. The first one I had came with a whopping 64K of memory and no hard drive, just an external 5 & one-quarter inch floppy disk drive. Still, it seemed kind of magical at the time. |
Blutarski | 28 Mar 2017 2:57 p.m. PST |
Attila – I was just thinking after sending my last post that, at $10 USD per megabyte, a 1TB HDD would be priced at 10 million dollars !!! Good Lord! B |
Waco Joe | 29 Mar 2017 1:00 p.m. PST |
Blutarski, here is a shot of an unpainted ship. I did a slap dish paint job on them so you can see more detail on the unpainted piece. It takes paint well, I have used both a spray primer and brush on. The spray primer is better in my opinion. They are quite durable when assembled. I have the biggest probelm getting them to turn loose of the print bed which has resulted in some superglue fixes. Weighing only 20 grams means there is not a lot of stress if one picks up the ship by the masts.
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Blutarski | 29 Mar 2017 6:22 p.m. PST |
Impressive work indeed, Joe. Bravo. B |
epengr | 30 Mar 2017 8:49 a.m. PST |
Wow! You've been busy! That looks amazing! What material is the mat made of? I've been busy, but I will get back to that project. A 4th rate and unrated vessels are coming… attilathepun47: I would not recommend to anyone to buy a 3D printer to save money on anything. Short of doing your own rapid prototyping before taking a product into production you won't *save* anything. However, 3D printing is an amazing hobby in it's own right for anyone the least bit technically inclined. As a bonus, it's a hobby that compliments other hobbies quite well – wargaming in particular. |
epengr | 30 Mar 2017 8:51 a.m. PST |
Oh, Waco Joe, I noticed that you've printed the open gun port 1st rate, and I've only made closed gun port versions of the others. I'm not even sure if I printed an open gun port 1st rate myself, but it looks *really* good. Do you find they are better open? Thinking on it now, they may paint up much easier? |
Waco Joe | 30 Mar 2017 12:30 p.m. PST |
Thanks Blutarski Epengr: The mat is made of vinyl. I use a sign company, Banners on the Cheap to do the printing. I find an image such as the water and run it into a graphics program, GIMP2. In that I can superimpose grids, either rectangular or hexagonal as in this case. I then size it to the desired size. In this case the mat is 4'x8'. I catch them on sale with free shipping so this mat cost me a whopping $28.00 USD I am probably partial to the open gun ports but I can see as the ship gets smaller the ability to leave a discernable opening gets more difficult. I have printed some 2, 3, and 5 ratings trying to use dry brushing to bring out the bumps from the gun covers. I only get a little success that way. |
epengr | 20 Apr 2017 2:39 p.m. PST |
Waco Joe, I've just added open port versions of all the models on thingiverse if you're still working on printing and ships. |
Waco Joe | 22 Apr 2017 3:31 p.m. PST |
Cool, I will go by and download them. thanks for your effort on this project. |