Or why I stopped worrying and learned to love tolerate the polymer printer!
Donation!
Many Thanks to Tom Clague
('Tomholio' around the Internet)
Many years ago, although it seems like yesterday, I just don't know where it goes? And, it goes there quicker every year, but many years ago, 2007/2008, on the HäT forum, which was a very different beast then, it has since been heavily bot-edited by 'H' for perfectly understandable reasons, no criticism, and moved home/platform a couple of times, and is now a more corporate or pro-brand site, but many years ago we used to have a lot of fun on there, sometimes it would degenerate into silliness, other times the less humorous' would take offence, often about something which wasn't actually aimed at them, but there you go, all humour requires a certain level of grey-cells, some more than others, but many years ago, the Brit's, Antipodeans and some of the Canucks/Yanks would have some real fun . . . but we also had some more serious discussions, and many years ago, we had a thread on 3D Printing!
Straight out of the printer.
At that time, the first commercial machines were just becoming something a semi-affluent Western hobbyist, within the 10%, globally, could look at affording, and a lot of potential was held by the nascent technology, or series of technologies, as there are various methods employed in Deposition-Modelling, or Rapid Prototyping (which includes CAD/CAM and CNC)*, as 3D printing is known to those at the cutting-edge of the Industry.
*Computer-aided design, computer-aided manufacture, computer numerical control['ed machining].
I was quite hopeful at the time, but also pointed out that it might end the toy soldier industry as we then knew it, however, and thankfully, time has shown I was wrong on that one, and despite many friends, acquaintances and fellow-Blogger's having 3D machines of their own, or using the bespoke print-on-demand sellers around the place, most of the then new names in the hobby are still going, including HäT Indusrie!
The other criticism I had, or shared with others in that conversation (long since deleted by the forum-police 'bots), was that it would cheapen the concept of figure collecting, by making anything and everything available to anybody (who could afford it) in any scale, at any time, and that has come true!
Is there a doctor in the house?
Anyone, with the necessary skills, software, or scanner, or a useful mate so equipped, can scan any figure ever made, or design any figure you can dream of, in your wildest imagination, manipulate the file in an infinite number of ways, and print the results in increments of any scale from a couple of millimetres to whatever size you floor, drive or yard can sustain, without damage!
Airfix knock-off, and with naked girlfriend!
And that printing can be via simple filament feed, liquid or powder sintering, or deposition of layers, or that was the situation when we were having that conversation, with the new, affordable 'home PC' machines mostly being the filament type, now known as
Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), it's probably still the commonest form of home printing. And is also the technology in the rather very disappointing pen I looked at, here.
He used to drive the Millennium Falcon, you know?
But not in these threads!
HO/OO (left), 25mm (right)
Increasingly sintering is becoming affordable for the home printing enthusiast, and you can 'sinter' powder or liquid polymer, and metal (now called fusion), they alll have their own jargon!
Vat Polymerisation (
VP, for liquids) or
Powder Bed Fusion (
PBF, for powders!), with
VP broken down into
Stereolithography (SLA, usually using lasers) and Digital Light Processing (DLP), with fusion further divided into
Selective Laser Sintering (SLS - for plastics), and Selective Laser Melting (SLM) or Electron Beam Melting (EBM) for metals, these can be called Directed Energy Deposition too, althogh technically that's a sub-type with at least six systems!
HO/OO Turkey - incredible levels of detail.
Other systems are
Material Jetting (deposited droplets of photo-polymer material, are then cured by UV light
, we looked at a simple version of it, here),
Binder Jetting (A print head deposits a liquid binding agent onto a bed of powder material, layer-by-layer, to hold the powder together, developed many years ago by the movie industry for scenic backgrounds, I believe?), and
Sheet Lamination, where, thin sheets of material are bonded together and cut to form layers/shapes.
♪♪♫ She wants to break free!
She wants to break free from your lies
You're so self-satisfied
She don't neehee'eed you
She's got to break freehee'ee!
God knows!
God knows She wants to break free! ♫♪♫
And all the above, is only simplified, for modellers and wargamers! There are more than ten forms of Vat Polymerisation, eight types of Powder Bed Fusion . . .
µSLA anyone?That's
Microscopic Stereolithography, to you, Sir!
Anatomically correct nudes above,
Brazilian Turkish surgeon's 'skills' on display below!
And if you can afford a metal fusion printer, you can make yourself an indestructible copy of the Hong Kong/Laramie jungle superhero The Phantom, in a material designed to withstand the strains of motor-racing engines, aerospace components, or satellite thrusters! While meat (pork, beef and fish), replacement skin (also meat!) and concrete are all being successfully 3D printed.
The names are Bond, Roger and Shaun!
But, another criticism, at the hobby end, a lot of the stuff is manufactured from low-grade polymers, deliberately biodegradable polymers, or polymers with unknown long-term properties! And, a secondary aim of this post, is to explain why I don't really post 3D printing, won't often, and chose not too, back at the start of the blog, really.
Aping around, monkeying about!!
It's not snobbery or superciliousness, but that the infinite parameters, of scale, pose and subject, along with the possibility that your downloaded figure, posted from South Korea might disintegrate in six months, along with my lack of knowledge of the subject despite following it pretty closely, and - while I was doing 3D CAD - with some interest, just means I'd rather concentrate on existing vintage, and modern new production.
"Sonta-haa! Sonta-haa!"
There are two people who do post a fair bit now, Shaun, over at
Fantasy Toy Soldiers, has posted some exquisite figurines in the larger scales, which would be a joy to paint, and Russ over at
Plastic Toy Soldiers has started posting the odd 'Combat' 3D prints. It's not that I won't post 3D printed figures, I will, from time to time, I have one or two, I think, but I'm not going to collect them, there aren't enough hours left in the universe to get them all!
♫♫♪ "We're only passenger, we wanna' get off" ♫♪♪♫
And, just in case you didn't get my attempts at humorous captions, here's what Tom said about this lovely little parcel from Down Under, with grateful thanks to him for this donation, and thanks to Adrian for receiving the parcel, while I'm stuck in Limbo! Tom posts some of his 3D prints on his blog;
". . . a bit of background: Often the 3D printers i've bought from will include a number of duplicates - ostensibly just to make use of the resin pool they load the printer with . . . in this bag, we have an assortment designed and printed from various places around the world.
Sontarans Designer Wayne Peters has a number of excellent free Doctor Who files on cults3d.com. I downloaded these boys, and had an Australian printer make me a 1/76 set - she kindly included these larger prints.
Movie stars in pink Ebay is awash with sellers from China who have a cornucopia of 1/64 scale figures - to go with Hot Wheels type cars. Along I came, and asked if they could print in 1/76 scale. This caused enormous confusion, and led to them sending figures of all shapes and sizes.
Doctor Who piracies Warning: the Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy in your possession are wanted men, on the run from the law! These are indeed piracies of larger scale game pieces. I won't incriminate my source - instead, I'll quickly distract you with...
Curvy ladies from Turkey, surprise surprise, what do middle-aged men want? Curvy ladies! Designer Phnix3d from Turkey obliges, with thousands of sculpts. His novelty is that he provides both a dressed and nude version of each pose. Model rail companies have done nudies before [I know, I have several of the 'naughty' Noch sets! Ed.] , but never to this quality (or ballooning imagination). The flipside is, he does a handful of male figures, who, dwarfed by their lady friends, frankly look a bit lost and embarrassed. The prints themselves have come all the way from the USA, where printer 'DoubleG Diecast' has these, and hundreds of other figures listed.
Planet of the apes, 2001; DoubleG also has these movie characters. As with the pink Chinese prints, I suspect the designs are scale downs from larger multi-part designs (copyright & intellectual property are not well respected concepts in the 3D printing world).
'Man who wants to break free', from Vietnam My model village could do with a good hoovering,Ii'll be setting Freddie loose once I've painted him.
. . . I've found it fascinating to keep an eye on 3d printing, asit'ss evolved from fairly naff filament types to incredible high-resolution resin machines now. Absent from this bag, I shared you the link to Smart Models UK previously; his are perhaps my favourite 3d printed model rail range, which he sells in neat little sets (alas with no duplicates), recommend . . .
2001 - The future was many years ago!
As a
post scriptum, and given what I said about plastics, these came halfway-round the world in a jiffy bag, are all less than 30mm, and the only damage was a couple of bits of Sontaran, which will need glueing, along with Doctor the 7th's umbrella, Freddie's hoover and the wings of the flying Cat'sect. But Clint's cheroot and Connery's gun, survived whatever the international post can throw at a small parcel!
