On the left, the new wolf head on the old soldier body. On the right, on a new archer body. Nailed the overhangs on this one, it prints without any slop, and I think it looks great. I really enjoy playing with distinct looks for each of the heads. The bear is almost spherical, the deer is aloof and antlered, …
Disolvable supports on a home 3D printer may be possible
A 3D printing coworker with a Rigidbot got a hold of some of the fancy support material used in high end FDM 3D printers. What this stuff is we don’t know, but we know it dissolves in lye and ABS sticks to it in a 90 degree heated chamber. But will it work on a home 3D printer? I gave …
Lords of Waterdeep minis
I have been working on this set for a long time. It’s actually been mostly done for a while but until I switched to Simplify3D I couldn’t produce the necessary detail. But now I can. Know what’s tough? Making detailed minis that print at only 1″ tall on FFF printers is tough. At that size the details have to be …
Wood Wars Stag head
I was going for deer but I feel like I landed somewhere closer to elk with maybe a little buffalo. I’m still pretty happy with it. It’s got style, it’s got chunky details that print well, it’s good. The antlers print separately and snap in. We’ll, not so much snap in as get glued and forced in. I may have …
Blender skin modifier part 2
This weeks video continues the lessons of the last video that will culminate in a custom 3D printed mini in Blender. Additionally I announce the first Super Transparent Attempt to Boost Joe’s Online Effect contest which unfortunately shortens to STAB JOE. The way you STAB JOE is simple: Like and follow Joe’s 3D Workbench on Facebook. Like and leave a comment on …
Why FFF 3D printing can’t do transparent
I’ve made a discovery recently. A coworker was playing with “transparent” ABS filament and I decided to get some myself and see just what it was capable of. And while the filament itself is clearly (heh) transparent, prints always turned out milky. I decided to investigate why. The first thing I printed was a filament holder to hold the spool …
Wood Wars bear soldier update
Work on Wood Wars progresses with the first modular pawn. The bear/soldier combination took exactly as long as I feared it would to make, which is to say a lot longer than I hoped. The first iteration of the pose (above) pushed overhangs way too much, so I had to switch the staff to one hand and add a shield. …
Can wood art be recreated with 3D printing?
I was inspired by a kickstarter for woodcut art by artist Gabriel Schama where he made coordinated patterns in 1/8 wood that were then layered to great effect. The process looked a little to me like the layers of a 3D print, so I decided to see if 3D printing could recreated the effect. I started with modeling the shape, only …
Harry Potter Crests for my Son’s School
Last year my eldest son’s grade did some Harry Potter themed instruction and I made a wand for him. This year my second son is in the same grade and his idea was to print a Gryffindor crest for his group. I decided to make crests for all the houses to be fair. Fortunately there are excellent crests already made …
Modeling for 3D Printing with the Blender skin modifier
This week I had a video all lined up. A real boring lecture about the idiosyncrasies of the orientation of “Z” in 3D space and how that causes imported models to be laying down sometimes. But unfortunately I shot it in 720p since everyone was complaining about the resolution of my bench lectures and the result lagged and stuttered worse …