D&D Earth Elemental

D&D Earth Elemental

https://www.shapeways.com/product/J6HR4BQKY/earth-elemental?optionId=56475882&li=user-profile

137min/7.37m/$0.56

mz4250's elemental series are all pretty awesome.  I had a bit of trouble printing this one.  I thought it was a pretty solid design with supports in but I got a few fails.  I thought it would stick well to a new sheet face.  Nope.

 So I added some glue.  Nope.

 So I added tape and glue. Nope.

Turns out all I needed was a raft!
Great figure.  Put those rafts in!

D&D Stone Golem

Stone Golem

https://www.shapeways.com/product/HLS6AQPAD/stone-golem?optionId=56476116&li=user-profile

52min/2.01m/$0.15

Another straight up awesome mini by mz4250.  This one I printed without a raft at normal size.  I think I will print it scaled up a bit to represent a tougher golem but this did well and I made 3 of them (but 1 at a time.)

OpenForge Rowboats (fail and fix)

OpenForge Rowboats for D&D

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:646788

Rowboat and 2 oars:

100min/6.49m/$0.49

I tried to make one set of medium sized rowboats with oars.  I didn't use a raft and naturally it came undone even on blue tape with glue.

So I added a raft, and it came out quite fine.

But I wanted a boat so that more characters could fit on it.  I uploaded the design into Tinkercad and then just scaled it to be bigger.  It was quite easy.  The limits of my Finder are 14cm x 14cm for the base so I made this reasonably big.

Realizing I would need a giant raft and I was worried that such a large flat print would lift and get ruined, I decided to re-orient the part so I could use supports instead of the huge raft.

It turned out really well even though some supports got screwed up!  Check out the dangling filament!

 And finally the true test is adding figures.  This one fits a party of 7.  Scaling is good stuff!

Bear Warrior - 28mm - Custom Supports

Bear Warrior of the Ironwood - scaled to 166.66% (28mm)
161min/10.44m/$0.79
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1077487

I realized I printed the last Bear Warrior too small for D&D.  I needed to scale it 166.66% for it to be 28mm.  Dutchmogul actually mentions this on a couple of his files.

So I scaled it up using FlashPrint's scale function and when I printed it, halfway through I got this mess below.

The support for the arm didn't hold.  It actually fell over.  I felt his could have been several things, but since my 18mm one didn't do this, I thought I'd try it again.

Looking at the mess, it's clear that when scaled up the support isn't holding from the weight.  It's ok at 18mm but when you get bigger, there's more material to hold and some things don't scale up well.

FlashPrint's support function is pretty good.  You can select two types of supports (but can't mix them).  Treelike will allow you to make angles and branches.  Linear just goes straight up.  I have only done treelike because I felt linear uses too much support material.  You can select either one from Supports Options.

You can start by clicking on the big A for Auto Supports.  Most of the time this works totally fine but since my right arm support wasn't working, I decided to add a bunch.

Here's what the autosupports look like.  You can see the big angle at the left in green that keeps falling off on my model.

 Adding supports is easy. Just click Add and then click the spot on the base you want to start and hold down the mouse button to extend it.  The support will be RED if it is not valid or GREEN if it works.

I went nuts and took no chances.  The last support is red just to show how you can extend it.

 With my new supports in, I now created the g code and the approximate time is 2 hours and 41 minutes which is longer because of the crazy supports I added.  This time to also not take chances, I added a raft.  I rarely add rafts because they sometimes stick too well to the base of things.

Result:  SUCCESS!
The axe hand came out really well and my supports worked great!

Minor Error:  I missed the support at the back of the model.  But despite this the model came out fine.

Everything chipped off fine.  Even the raft came off the base quite easily!

And here's the final process with my two mistakes and the good one!  So far 3D printing has been a very enjoyable learning process, but one where learning from your mistakes is highly rewarded!

D&D Werewolf - 6 pack

Werewolves - 6 pack

193min/6.58m/$0.50

https://www.shapeways.com/product/BQ976VSUT/werewolf-for-printing?optionId=57336051&li=user-profile

This is another beautiful model from mz4250's D&D set on Shapeways.  I decided to print 6 at a time because 1 werewolf just won't cut it against a whole party.

FlashPrint quoted this at 193min (3hrs, 13min) but you can see that it actually took 3hrs and 35min.  I'm starting to add 10% to the actual just so I'm closer to what it would really take but I'll still put up quotes from FlashPrint.

The werewolves came out great except one thing...

The left hands were mangled up about 50% of the time due to the support not working out.  I think I can fix this by putting custom supports in FlashPrint which I'll show next time I print this.

D&D Gnolls

D&D Gnolls - 6 pack
373min/13.84m/$1.06
https://www.shapeways.com/product/UBL429H6S/gnoll

mz4250's D&D collection has lots of great stuff and this gnoll is a really nice model.

I let it print for like 6 hours overnight and woke up to this:

It's a fine pack of Gnolls but there's one thing to note.  The spear is so thin that it will most definitely snap off with the support material.  I'm going to have to find a way to replace the spears completely because they will be a casualty of getting rid of supports in this case.

Other than that, it is a good solid model.

D&D Minotaurs

Asterion, the Minotaur - 3 pack
339min/16.93m/$1.28
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:583949

Another D&D usable mini from Dutchmogul, but this time I thought it'd be cool to have 3.
I usually run this kind of stuff before bed and have something nice to wake up to.

A 5.5hr run is usually longer than quoted, so this was one of my longest prints so far.

The figures came out very well.  Nice and solid, plus I had enlarged them somewhat so they would be tougher and more menacing.  I think these are about 180% increased in size.

I had to use supports and they worked pretty well except you can see the middle guy's support just got messed up a bit.  I don't think it actually mattered and this makes me wonder about how well FlashPrint's support program is.  I think I can start trying to add my own soon just to see if I can fix a few to save some time and filament.

D&D Wolf Pack

D&D Wolf (6-pack)
151min/6.2m/$0.47
https://www.shapeways.com/product/RJCAAAXW7/wolf?optionId=59691068&li=user-profile

Printing from mz4250's amazing set of free prints again.
I decided to do a whole pack and set it to autoshut off at night.
It worked well but as soon as I tried to lift one off the plate, I broke his legs off!

OOPS!  One down right? Nope, I broke a lot more just trying to take off their supports.  The feet of these wolves are VERY thinly attached to the base.  I eventually just accepted that I will either snap all the legs or at least just the first two.  It's ok though, these can be glued back on.  It's a great model, just know that you're going to snap legs!

Bear Warrior

Bear Warrior
49min/2.52m/$0.19
https://pinshape.com/items/13621-3d-printed-bear-warrior-of-the-ironwood-18mm-scale

Dutchmogul did this awesome Bear Warrior that will make a great boss in D&D or even player character.  Printing it was a good test of supports as you can see the axe and arm have to be totall supported.  They snapped off fairly easily but you have to take care around the axe as it is fairly thin!

This sculpt is simply awesome.  Here he is about to take on 6 of the swordsmen!

Fantasy Warriors Swordsman - 28mm

Fantasy Warriors Swordsman - 28mm
6-pack
185min/8.87m/$0.67

https://pinshape.com/items/17064-3d-printed-fantasy-warriors-18mm-scale

This is just the swordsman from the 3 pack that is on the link.
I used supports because the overhangs were a lot and I left this one overnight so I took a chance and did 6 of them on one run.

It came out great!  I love the white and the detail is definitely acceptable.

D&D Winter Wolf

D&D Winter Wolf
55min/2.92m/$0.22
https://www.shapeways.com/product/JL3B9H6A6/winter-wolf?optionId=59691069&li=user-profile

It made big news that master design MZ4250 unleashed his entire library of D&D miniatures for FREE on Shapeways.  This is the first of those designs I've printed.

The Winter Wolf needs supports, and this was a bit of a risk because sometimes the supports meld too well with the body and I can't get them off.

Here is it is fresh off the printer with supports:

It took a bit of time to clean off the supports because I didn't want to chop a leg off:

 I think it just needs a light painting and it's actually a great print to play with!

Starfall War Mage

Starfall War Mage
29min/1.67m/$0.13
https://pinshape.com/items/19901-3d-printed-starfall-war-mage-18mm-scale

Another awesome Dutchmogul design was printed in halves.  With the glue stick, it stuck too well to the plate and a piece of the staff broke off on the second half.  Put together it looks alright, but definitely lost a lot of detail from the original.  You can't make out details on the chest and barely some on the face. Still an ok print though.

Fantasy Warriors

Fantasy Warriors (18mm scale)
x 166.66 to scale to 28mm

Swordsman
29min/1.43m/$0.11

Spearman
36min/1.70m/$0.13

https://pinshape.com/items/17064-3d-printed-fantasy-warriors-18mm-scale

Another fine product brought to you by Dutchmogul.  This time some more D&D type figures.  An archer, a spearman with shield and a sword guy are in this pack.  I printed out the sword guy and the spearman this time.  Both prints were done on blue tape.

 Two quick prints in the morning, so I had time to prime them and they look quite sharp!  A lot of detail came out on the shields which they have in common.