Playing with figures!

[dreinecke]

So, I took delivery of my new Creality Ender3 and promptly traveled for weeks on end. However, I've done some playing and am having fun with people!

My biggest complaint has always been the lack of decent people. The Rev/Mono original figures are my favorite, but after casting and painting a bunch of them and even doing some re-posing, I wanted more realistic folks. Besides, they all look like 1960's movie stars...me? Eh - not so much.

So, after building the printer, getting a new PLA+ spool I took the plunge: I downloaded a ton of real people scans to use.





Now, back up just a minute: I had previously downloaded about 10 characters and had friends that print run them for me prior to getting my printer. They looked like this - note mine is on the right:



After much reading/video watching, I have landed on some settings that seem to work pretty darn well. I use Cura to slice and 3D Builder to smooth.

No, the faces are not perfect, but the scans of the 1:1 humans are pretty low resolution. But (WARNING: TECHNICAL GEEK STUFF FOLLOWS!) with a 4mm nozzle, I can print at 0.1mm and it looks good enough to me. Why? Well, for starters, I'm not a wargamer where people are constantly handling figures. Mine are never seen at closer than 12".

Note the guy on the right has been primed with one coat of Duplicolor Primer/Filler:




The 1st group I printed - all WITHOUT any supports (just to see if it would work - it did with a few more "zits" on them:


What I like is that these are real people from all walks of life and all shapes! The guy with the beard and hat doing the thumbs up reminds me of Charlie Daniels. I keep giggling when I see him.

Just for effect, I decided to put them in a crowd:


My comment about distance is spot on - up close, one of my R/M figures looks terrible painted. From a distance in the next pic it looks much better.





So there you have it. Right now I've got another batch of 15 totally different ones going. It will take 24 hours at the resolution I'm doing them at, but it is fun. Actually, it is memorizing to watch this thing go!

[indidragracer]

Very nice work there Sir, glad to see You found an alternative to casting resin. Good for You. :banana-dance:

[btaylor]

Awesome stuff here David! Any chance of making a run of 1/25 in the future?



Bob

[ccobra]

Wow, those look good. I may have to swallow the ABS and change over to the PLA. Are you using just the High Detail radio button on the CURA or are you manually changing the settings? Where did you download the people from?

[-Nimrod-]

Great prints there David,
The Creality Ender 3 is one nice for the price little printer with high resolution (0.05mm layer) printing, I have read.
It looks identical to my Wombot but I paid 1k, 2 years ago, I might grab an Ender 3 now cos I'm printing a lot more nowadays.
A must see is a youtuber called "3D Printed Tabletop" he has a great video showing how he gets almost resin quality printing in PLA from the Ender 3 with Cura.
Funny how a couple of settings affect a print so much, for me it was the Hot Tip Temp and Printing Speed.

keep the great prints coming!!!!

Cheers
NiMROD

[dreinecke]

Thomas - Thanks! I miss my resins, but this will keep me busy over the winter I hope.

Bob - possibly - focusing on my 1/32 track needs at the momemnt and weighing if it is feasible to sell these.

CCobra - The first picture of the Police Officer was stock-out of the box settings on both Cura and the printer. The group of people is after I'd researched more and changed a bunch of settings. I'm tracking those if you'd like to have the config. It is setup for the Ender3, so your mileage may vary.

Nimrod - The tech is getting way cheaper and there are a bunch of models to play with. The limiting factor for me is still pushing pixels around in a program and making it look like something. I can modify a little if the model exists, but I'm not very good. I think that is still the limiting factor for most hobbyists.

I've followed "3D Printed Tabletop" and Fat-Dragon and that's how I landed on the Ender3 as well as the settings. The 3D community is unbelievably good. I remarked to another slot car friend that HRW is about as close to that as I've seen in the slot car place - everybody helps everybody.

Part of my settings is to start at 205/60 and drop to 195/50 after the first few layers. I'm having zero adhesion issues to the mat and haven't had to resort to tape or glue or glass. Getting the bed leveled is not too difficult in my opinion and really is the key to adhesion. I've also followed the above two gents' recommendations on speed and am using those.

[Junior]

Great thread, I am interested in this technology but didn't know how to get started. This gets me motivated.
Tom

[Half Fast Slotter]

Dave
Outstanding work. Right before I left Colorful Colorado for sunny Arizona I picked up some purchased figures at your house. You were nice enough to also give me a few from your “leper colony”with missing arms or feet. Since my Coyote Lakes Raceway is set in circa 1970 the Monogram era figures are perfect. I just say the management happily hired lots of wounded Vietnam Nam and WWII veterans.

I would love to purchase some of your new stock or even to help provide some learning curve/startup funds in exchange for some figures.

Heck, i’ve Even proven I hire the disabled figures so a few warts are not a big deal.
Great job and very happy you’ve found another channel for your energy.
Jeff

[Half Fast Slotter]

Oh yeah,
Not sure if your leveling issue relates to the mechanical adjustments of the equipment or determining what is level, but there are a couple of great, free apps that provide a circular level that works great. The circular level shows all axes at once as opposed to a mechanical level that only shows the bubble on one plane at a time and you need to rotate it around to every axis.
Jeff

[downtowndeco]

I'm got some versions of these from a guy who printed some pretty low res copies. I love the 3D scanned figures because they just look more REAL than 95% of the hand sculpted stuff. These look like real people, vs the typical mannequin with wooden legs type of slot car figures that are out there. The body shapes, the poses, the way the clothing hangs. Now, the way that these would really fly would be if someone could do a couple different super high res prints, and then, had someone use those to make tooling for plastic injection molded copies. All of this hand casting (resin or metal) or even using a 3D printer is just so time consuming. In any case, very nice work, I love it.

[Broman62]

Totally awesomeness Dave...from afar they look factory made...beautiful!!! :auto-layrubber: :auto-layrubber:

[waaytoomuchintothis]

Another thing you are good at!

By the way, I didn't see Charlie Daniels when I saw that figure... I saw me! I was wondering if the following sentences were going to be a list of HRW oldtimers you had modelled. If you can spare a Charlie Daniels, I'd like to put a "me" on my track and see who notices.

[Vintage 1/24]

"ccobra" asked about the 3d models, I may have missed it - but are these 3d scanned people available online, are they costly?

[dreinecke]

Tom - just dive on in! Really, there is enough available to print that will keep you busy without knowing how to push pixels.

Jeff - Good to hear from you and hope AZ is fabulous. I'll let you know if I decide to sell at some point.

Randy - The realism is the issue for me as well. While bad figures can fill in crowds, they really do take the wind out of my sales. As for production the way you've mentioned - not for me as this works out pretty well for my needs in the end. You nailed in on the time consuming part though - 30 hours to print 15 figures with supports. Without is much faster, but I'm still playing with what does/doesn't work.

Broman - If I squint, they look even better ;)

Rob - the one in the hat with the thumbs up or the other big guy?

Vintage - they are files I downloaded off Thingverse and other sites for FREE.

[PetesLightKits]

Very good output. So good I just bought one of these printers. Let the 3D printing fun begin! :D

Peter