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Printed Armies - CnC 3D Printing


Kalle Bowo

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Here's another photo of the GDI Guardtowers + Mammoth, just to give you an impression of how tiny all the stuff gets. It still baffles me that the Ultimaker can print those delicate details.

 

gdi-defense.jpg

 

 

Hah! Those towers don't only look good. They look logical too. Those ladders, perfect.

 

Thanks a lot! And guess what, the whole thing is printed in 3 different parts - the base, the cabin and the roof - and glued together afterwards. Handling those overhangs is really tricky and cutting the model in printable pieces is for me mostly the right choice. Many people tend to work a lot with support structures, but then you need to cut them away carefully and sand those parts again and in the end you're wasting also material.

 

What are the average costs of 1 model?

 

You can't really say that there's an average cost. A month ago I started to calculate the whole thing through since people keep asking me exactly that question. And the price is more or less directly linked to the printing time. Longer printing times equal more material that is used and result in a higher electricity bill. Smaller models like that small Guard Tower or the Mammoth only take around more or less an hour to print and would cost something like 3 to 4 Euro. A medium sized building such as the Barracks or Hand of Nod would be around 20 Euro, but it also uses 10-20 x more material and takes 3 hours longer to print. But nothing is decided yet about the exact prizes.

 

By the way, before I got my own printer, I ordered the same 3D model (which somehow happened to be the Hand of Nod) printed with different printers from different websites. I wanted to find out which printer had the best quality to suit my demand. And it turned out that - of course depending on the quality - the average price was around the same that I'm using right now. I got the cheapest HON for 15€ and the most expensive one for 30€. Needless to say that the cheapest one also was the ugliest in terms of details and quality. Photo below (not the best quality actually)

 

20160210_200426b.jpg

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