Vili's bizarre 3D printing adventures, part 1 - The granny gamer

Hello, everyone!

First time updating this blog since 2018! I know I totally forgot about it for the past two years, but many strange things happened during this period. Thankfully life is starting to feel normal again!
I will try to update my little blog more often with my 3D printed projects. :)

Last year one of my long time dreams came true and it was to have my own 3D printer. Already one year has passed and this still feels to me like rocket science, although I am doing a good progress on the learning part. The printer is Ultimaker 2+ and it's perfect for home usage.

I was looking for something that is already assembled and ready to use. My interests are more on the modelling part of the process and preparing the objects for printing. Tinkering with hardware isn't my type of thing and also I don't have that kind of patience. Who knows, instead of printer I might assemble a TV or a robot?

Ultimaker is just great and it is very easy to learn to work with it. The companion software for slicing Cura is very intuitive and you will need just a few minutes to get to know it.
Ever since the 3D printer arrived at home I finally started to print and experiment with different models and settings as well as colors. I printed a lot of things for my family and friends.

You can check my Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/vline_designs/?hl=bg.
I am uploading the finished projects here.

This is my Thingiverse account - https://www.thingiverse.com/vLine_Designs/designs.
Here you will find the 3D models. They are free to download and print on your printer!

Most of the time I was printing small charms, jewelries, keychains and coasters, but never bigger and complicated stuff. That was until the end of last September when I was contacted by my mentor Martin Punchev who is the founder of CGZEN Academy and also teaching 3D modelling with ZBrush. He asked me if I can help him print 3D figurines made by his students from the Character design course. I instantly accepted to work on the project and this is how the 3D printing adventure started!

Just want to mention that at CGZEN I successfully completed two courses - 3Ds Max for beginners and ZBrush essentials. If you are interested in 3D modelling, sculpting, drawing and want to learn how to do it, this is the right place for you! The mentors are industry professionals and explain the lessons very well and help the students when questions emerge during the studying. All of them are absolutely amazing people! :)

Now lets get back to the main subject, shall we? ;)

First things first when I receive an order I need to know the client's requirements:

• size
• color
• resolution
• files of the 3D model (if available, else I have to do the modelling too)
• any additional information that the client might have.

In the case of the current project they were the following:

• size - between 10-15 cm height
• color - silver
• resolution - parts with lots of details (body,head, etc.) should be printed with higher resolution.
• .fbx,.ztl files were provided with the models split into smaller parts for better and faster printing
• additional post-processing will be done by the client.

The first model I have received as a test subject was that of one very cool granny gamer done by the awesome Katrin Staneva.

Granny gamer by Katrin Staneva

Model analysis

Before doing anything connected with slicing, lets first analyze the model. The head of the granny has more details. This means that I will have to set a higher resolution for it. The other parts can use faster ones. Also there are a lot of hanging areas (overhangs) for which supports will be needed.

For such kind of figurines it will be better to split the model into parts and print each one independently. This will reduce the printing time and will make the post processing easier in the later stages. If I tried to print the model just like the picture above, the result could have been the following:

Look how the supports are getting in the way and ruin like 70% of the model. Plus I have to wait 6 hours and spend a lot of material... This is not going to happen!
And so I decided to stick to the previous plan - work with smaller parts. Luckily Martin did perfect job in preparing the models for printing. He made them easy to assemble and reduced the poly count while keeping the quality (this is can be achieved in ZBrush using the Decimation master option). For me was left the following - scale the model, export to STL, slice in Cura and print. From here on I will be explaining what kind of settings I used and what situations happened during the printing process.

The first thing that needs to be done is adjusting the scale of the figurine. This can be done in any 3D modelling program (3Ds Max, Maya, Blender and so on). In my case I used 3Ds Max. This is how the model looks like after importing the FBX:

First look after import

So tiny, right? No worries, lets just give it a very good scale value - 2500% will do the trick.

Scaling the object

The scaled model

There you are, granny! Usually when I do models for printing 3Ds Max and Cura are always opened so I can quickly do my tests. Lets see what is the current size of the object in Cura:

Scaled object opened in Ultimaker Cura

Z=154mm is absolutely fine and is in sync with the client's requirements for the size. Now it's time to export every part of the model as .stl and do the fun part - slicing!

The model separated in different parts.

Let's import the head and see what is going on there:

As you can see the red sectors are showing the overhangs. This means that these parts need to be supported. Here is a picture after adding the supports:

The hanging parts are being supported now. Below I will list the settings that I used:

• Layer height - 0.2mm
• Infill - 18%, Grid pattern
• Support - touching buildplate, Support overhang angle = 45, Support pattern - Grid, Support density - 5%, Support Z distance = 0.3mm
• Buildplate adhesion - Brim, Width = 8mm
• Nozzle type - 0.4mm
• Material - Silver Ultimaker PLA
• Time taken - 3 hours 37 mins.

The rest of the parts were pretty easy to print because there were less to none details. I am not going to go into detail about every part that I printed. I will be describing just the more interesting ones :).

Here are some photos after the printing:

Sadly I forgot to take pictures of the rest of the parts, but I will make sure to show the full finished piece later on :). Looking back in time I think I could have done this model even better, but I didn't have that knowledge. In this type of technology when you are on your own you learn from your mistakes. It's a trial and error every time. Behind every successful print there are few unsuccessful :D.

This has become a rather lengthy post, so I will stop right here. There are more figurines and stories to share (9 to be precise)! If you liked it so far, share in the comments your 3D printing adventures and thoughts! :)

Congrats, you made it this far! Take this Maneki-neko as a token of gratitude!

In the next post I will be talking about how I printed one Robo-cat, a beetle and a turtle!

Have a nice day!