3d Printing and the Future of Piracy

Haus

Haus

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Soygen said:
This is about all it's good for, visuals. The ones with any kind of ferrous material that oxidizes can look pretty cool, but it doesn't do anything for strength and needs a hardened nozzle. Would destroy copper ones.
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Oh yeah, visually I get it. I saw someone who did a print of the Planet Express ship from Futurama in a copper infused filament, then put in it, I believe, a mild vinegar soak to cause oxidation and got a fantastic green patina on it.

For me, it's that more of what I print now are for functional uses rather than decorative ones (aside from my wife wanting some articulated print in place dragons recently).
 
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Big Phoenix

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Spaghetti detection my ass.

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Soygen

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You need to get the optional al dente sensor.
 
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Bandwagon

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I'm back bitches. My daughter got interested in 3d printing so I bought my coworkers creality k1. Man, these things work a lot better than they did 12 years ago
 
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Hekotat

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Bandwagon said:
I'm back bitches. My daughter got interested in 3d printing so I bought my coworkers creality k1. Man, these things work a lot better than they did 12 years ago
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I've been eyeballing that Prusa Core One but unsure about getting it, mainly due to filament pricing. Looks like the price for some Carbon Fiber spools has tripled since I last had a printer.
 
Tarrant

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I've been debating getting into 3d printing to make minis for my campaigns and my friends.

I was thinking of getting a Bamby Lab A1 Combo with AMS, is this good for it? Or should I look into resin printing?
 
Soygen

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Tarrant said:
I've been debating getting into 3d printing to make minis for my campaigns and my friends.

I was thinking of getting a Bamby Lab A1 Combo with AMS, is this good for it? Or should I look into resin printing?
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If you want the best looking minis and paint them, resin is the way to go. It's much more messy and annoying than fdm printing, though. If you aren't obsessed with how detailed the models are, I've seen some decent miniatures from fdm. This youtube channel has a lot of content on doing minis with fdm(as well as resin)

www.youtube.com

Once in a Six Side

Welcome to my channel of 3D Printing and Tabletop Gaming curiosities! We have a lot of fun here trying out new hardware, building cool models and projects, helping others get the most out of their 3D printers for their hobbies, and just being as creative as possible with this exciting and often...
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Hekotat

Hekotat

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Soygen said:
If you want the best looking minis and paint them, resin is the way to go. It's much more messy and annoying than fdm printing, though. If you aren't obsessed with how detailed the models are, I've seen some decent miniatures from fdm. This youtube channel has a lot of content on doing minis with fdm(as well as resin)

www.youtube.com

Once in a Six Side

Welcome to my channel of 3D Printing and Tabletop Gaming curiosities! We have a lot of fun here trying out new hardware, building cool models and projects, helping others get the most out of their 3D printers for their hobbies, and just being as creative as possible with this exciting and often...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
Click to expand...

The problem with Resin is you need good ventilation, it is very toxic. If you have a kickass workspace that you can setup a venthood then you're good to go, otherwise it's not worth the risk.

FDM printers will take tons of calibrating to get a good print and your knowledge with mechanics, tuning and the software will take a lot of time. It took me 60 days to get my first print that I was happy with and I wouldn't have made it as far as I did without a lot of CNC tuning knowledge beforehand. WIth that being said, it's been about 8 years now since that has occured and I've seen some of these new printers doing phenomenal prints from what appears to be a machine straight out of the box. How true that is, I don't know but I wouldn't skimp on printer cost, you really get what you pay for here.

I was tempted to get a new one for Christmas but it looks like filament costs are bout 4x what they were in 2021 and that pretty much stopped me from picking one up. I could easily waste a single spool just trying to dial in my printer every few months when it would require tuning again.

It really comes down to how much patience, free time and money you have as well as the quality of prints you're looking to make.
 
Soygen

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Yeah, protecting your skin/lungs with resin is a given, but even once you have that covered the cleaning / post print curing / etc is all added hassle compared to fdm. It's definitely not good for you and if you're using your printer in your house(ie: not in garage or an outside workshop), I would avoid resin altogether.

That said, the Bambu A1 is probably the most beginner friendly / setup and print printer there is currently. I have one of their first printers, the P1P, and it was lightyears ahead of my Creality and Voron, as far as printing out of the box. The A1 is supposedly even better in that regard.
 
Haus

Haus

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OK, from the reality of me having both a resin printer (OG Photon), and FDM (Currently Ender5 Pro). And doing a lot of printing over time for 28mm tabletop gaming.

I print scenery, larger mobs, and such on the FDM and can get good enough with the Ender for that (Usually leveraging tree supports, slow print speeds, and spray painting the finished products with "scratch filler" auto body primer afterwards. For instance, I printed an entire goblin camp for a Pathfinder campaign once, and a caravan of wagons/horses. All printed in PLA. Debating picking up one of those sexy new Bambu x1s with my next "toy purchase budget"
FDM Printed Red Dragon :
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I print 28mm tabletop miniatures for characters/mobs with the resin printer. (Usually designed on HeroForge then downloaded). I will say resin printing is far more of a "science project" than FDM printing. But it's gorgeous and honestly I can't see layer lines or tell it was "3d printed" rather than injection molded in plastic. Only real drawback was fragility, and that's been solved over time with "ABS Like" resins. Now the process downsides, I don't have any huge active venting setup, but I have a venting fan in a room adjacent to my workshop (former owner's dark room) and use that. You get a little scent through that room, the workshop, and the game room when I'm resin printing. It involves a lot of liquid chemicals, which involves mess. The resin you have to be careful about getting on your bare skin, and super careful about it if you have animals around. And you will go through enough Isopropyl Alcohol you're going to want to be buying it in gallon jugs. But the resolution , IMHO, makes it all worth the work. Not only for TTRPG stuff, but also when I'm printing items I plan on sand casting for my metalworking hobby it makes a world of difference in how clean and ready to roll the 3d printer masters are.
Resin Printed 28mm humanoids:
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That second one I printed in Transparent Resin to get the "crystal ball" looking right.

Interesting side topic, apparently NY state is passing a law to "force" all 3d printer manufacturers to somehow build technology to prevent the printing of "ghost guns". I am wondering what the hell they think they're going to be able to do to tell that a given 3d printed part might be part of a gun or not.... heh
 
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