3d Printed Space Hulk Terrain (stl files from Printable Scenery)
Solving Print Capacity Issues with terrain making
I’ve been considering for a while what the best way to solve the print capacity issues are for terrain printing the Finder on it’s own would probably have to run, 24/7, constantly monitored and fed with stc (opps, I mean stl) files to get close to the desired timeline.
It’s not just this project, during the last one (fantasy terrain board buildings), the rate of producing components using a single printer was a significant project constraint – essentially I’m finding 2-3 months is too long to print the components for a board, and I have generally lost interest by the time the parts are ready.
I’ve had a look at commercial options, but they seem geared towards rapid prototyping rather than low-cost wargames terrain production. I tried the insta-quotes on a few of the more popular on-line printing websites I founds that most didn’t offer options like Infill or scaling on the site, and most could not handle the upload of stls greater than 50MB easily.
The best quote I could obtain was £50 is at 100% scale, so that would be £70 at 140% which isn’t really cost effective. (though I’d Imagine these would be at a higher resolution than I can do.)
I looked at adding an extra finder, but new ones weren’t cost effective compared with other models and second hand ones on ebay had an asking price too close to the recently discounted new price.
So the decision I made was to add a Flashforge Adventurer 3 (@ £340), with a view to running both and essentially double the rate that I can produce the parts without killing myself keeping them running.
This should allow me to build the terrain density that I want at the notice I want.
To ramp up production, have you considered making one really good quality print (best print settings, a little sanding/filing to remove ridge marks etc) and then creating a silicone mould of the piece?
Sure, it’s not as easy as 3d printing a load of parts, but if you were to use something like whitestone/dental plaster, it’d be relatively cheap and you could crank out a whole board in a few days….? (even resin would work, if you wanted to keep it “plastic-based”)