Thursday, August 20, 2020

First Resin Miniature!

After a couple failed efforts to get the miniature to stick to the buildplate rather than the FEP (see already using the lingo) & some assistance chats with Jarrett Lee I finally got the first figure printed in resin.

One of the figure files sets consisted of some wraiths from Archvillian Games

 

Wraiths image

Here it is on the Chitubox software, with all the supports. I get that supports are a very big deal with resin printing & lots of conversations/posts I've seen discuss them.

Following some advice about an easy method to remove the structures After I washed the miniature, I placed it briefly in a bowl of hot water & they just kind of peeled off. Great idea!

So the print done, the supports removed. I haven't finished the cleanup of the little nubs left over from the supports, but overall looking good. Hmm, one thing I noticed immediately was that the base was warped. This could be something due to the angle I used, it wasn't calculated in any way, just went with how it came in to Chitubox, added the supports & sliced away.

Here you can see some of the nubs from the supports. As well you can see how the base warped.


 

So looking at the image that Archvillian Games used & looking at this grey, unprimed figure, I was beginning to wonder about the details..amy I using the wrong resin? Were my settings off? 

I went down & just did a black wash of the figure, as my curiosity was piqued.

 Yep, the detail is there, just hard to see with the bare figure. I will likely print this figure again with some tweaks to the settings

 

 Also need to learn why the base printed warped. So the adventure continues...

Monday, August 17, 2020

Down the Resin Rabbithole

It's been awhile since I've posted. This isn't to say I haven't been busy. In fact I have been painting those Aztec Dungeon tiles I had got in the kickstarter. It's a 2 stage process with first the green, & then brown paint..so I've been using my lunch hours to work on them. As I had already posted about them, I didn't want to add a bunch of posts of pretty much the same thing.

However, also during that time, I went & ordered an Elegoo Mars Pro Resin printer. As I've barely scratched the knowledge surface on the Anycubic Mega-S, this may seem a bit premature. The reason is that many of the kickstarters I've supported for 3d print files came with both figures & terrain. So with the terrain covered, & being stuck at home for this pandemic, I thought it was an opportunity.

First things first, I had to rearrange the basement layout to accommodate this new workspace.

My first attempt at printing the test pieces didn't go so well...so I hit the pause button. Waited a week for the ultrasonic cleaner to arrive.

Yesterday I tried again.


So this time it worked, though not perfectly. What caused the split in the one on the left? No idea. I also wanted to avoid using the harsh cleaners so after watching some Youtube, & then a recent facebook post about using Awesome from the dollar store...I went & bought a couple bottles. I don't have as much concern about disposing of this vs white spirits. I've also ordered a couple bottles of the water cleaning resin & will likely stick with that once the current starter bottles are finished.

Next will be my first attempt at one of the miniatures using supports. Lot's to learn!