3D Printer

3D printers have become a new fad among wargamers.    I had been put off by the cost & the degree of difficulty in mastering the art of using them.  But the price has dropped dramatically & a visit to Nick's place to see what he was doing with his, & knowing I had him as a mentor in the learning curve got me enthused.   It took a week to arrive from Sydney.  I took the box up to Nick's place to assemble it so I had his help & his assembled machine as an example to follow.  I was glad  I did.  It would have driven me to the edge of insanity to put it together just from the instructions.

There is a plethora of ready made files of models on the web, either free or not expensive.  The Thingiverse being the best source I know of.  These have to be converted to a file that suits your printer by a program.  I'm using Cura, a free download.  This too takes bit of learning to use, but there are you-tube videos to help.  This program also allows you to scale the model.  The Thingiverse AFVs are nominally 1:100 so you scale them up about 180% for 28mm.

Then there is the learning to use the thing.  They are cantankerous beasts & many things can go wrong.  You have to make sure the bed is level & the right height every time as it can drift off.   The nozzle can clog & the feed get stuck, so you need some spare parts & figure how to put them in.  You need to learn the techniques to make sure the model sticks to the base throughout the process, & to provide it with support under overhangs.  

The process is slow.  A 28mm AFV will take about 5 hours.  But the feed is cheap - about A$25 for a 1 Kg roll which will make about 25 models.

Here are my first efforts:

The pontoon bridge parts were easy ones to start with.
The Horsch on the right is as printed, the one on the left is Warlords resin & painted.
The vineyard row has been spray painted.

This is the Horsch on the bed as finished.  The infills under the model support it during construction & snap off pretty clean. The raft under provides a firm seating on the bed.