Tobold's Blog
Saturday, May 12, 2018
 
Zortrax M200 Plus print examples

I am getting the hang of my new 3D printer. So I'm posting the photos I promised. First is a comparison: The darker green wererat on the left is with the new printer, compared to the neon green on the right with the old printer. So, yes, for my miniatures the new printer is working fine, and better than the old one.
Next is an example of something my old printer frequently refused to do: Print half a dozen miniatures at the same time. The new one did these 6 bandits in one go without problems. I assume it has to do with the ABS printing hotter, so it still sticks to the previous layer even that layer has been printed a while ago.
The other advantage of ABS is that you can treat it with acetone vapors, which makes the surface glossy and hides imperfections. As an example the 3DBenchy model printed twice identically, with the right one being treated with acetone vapors for 1 hour. Note that for miniatures you better just use 15 minutes, after 1 hour fine parts like arms or swords tend to melt.
Finally I used a model of a bard with a lot of detail to see how it comes out. This is with 15 minutes acetone treatment. Looking closely you can still see the layers and imperfections. But remember that this is just 3 cm tall, so for this size this is as good as it gets. You can see the lute, the rapier, and even the jester's hat is printing out fine.

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Comments:
They look very impressive!
 
The acetone trick seems a bit too aggressive on small models. Even if the boat looks more shiny and polished you can clearly see how it "lost" some details (example: ring borders around the holes). In all honesty it seems to me that 3D printing is still sitting in the stone age, meaning that you get extremely raw and unpolished models at a very high price (materials, printer, time). I still don't understand why you prefer these raw models compared to the cool/detailed 2D printed stuff.
 
@Rugus: That's an easy one to answer: Imagine you replace in a game of Monopoly the low resolution 3D game pieces (like the shoe) by 2D tokens with high-resolution photo-realistic images. All that achieves is that from the typical distance and angle the players have to the game pieces on the table they are now harder to distinguish from each other.

In a battle in D&D, all the information the players need (that is "which game pieces are the kobolds, and which ones are the orcs") are easier to convey with low resolution 3D pieces than with high-resolution 2D pieces (which would all have the same size and shape).
 
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But you're not forced to have same-size or same-shape for paper made figurines. You can go creative and do whatever you want. Let's say you print these simple yet cool heroes http://goo.gl/QCiDAo. You simply need to cut out the white stuff and you're left with good-looking and stylish characters. Plus you can choose/change the sizes at will when you print them.

This hunter&wolf is sick too http://goo.gl/21RnMF. Here's a cool example of different sizes http://goo.gl/ktMQAq and this last example seems a lot more convincing and visually "immersive" than any 3D printed model http://goo.gl/xCVjf3.

Of course if you print them in black and white then you need to color them but isn't a lot more immersive/awesome if you get 10 bandits each own with a different colorization, for example?
 
You’re last example is basically cheating by arranging all the 2D miniatures exactly in the perfect angle for the photo shot. That scene would look a lot less immersive at a 90 degree angle from there.
 
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