3D printer arriving soon (again)!

Order update!
Finally a breakthrough! I have to admit I feel a bit weary of the waiting and especially weary of receiving emails indicating over and over again my printer is soon done, but still have to wait some more. Delays were expected but it really starts to grow tiresome when you know that it was supposed to be here.

However about a week ago, I received an email with confirmation that my printer has been dispatched and on it's way. I've been following the tracking information closely and happy to discover that at this time being, the printer have arrived here in Norway and is currently located at the Custom Clearance sort facility. It's almost finally here, and that makes me both happy and a bit worried at the same time. Everything going through Custom clearance here in Norway means I have to pay additional 24% of the value of the item in just tax, which is massive considering how much the printer costs... Sigh.
But after a such a long wait, I'm more than blissful to know that my printer should be here within a week.

Remember I wrote about Solidoodle having 5 months lead time on their products? And if it weren't for that long lead time, I might as well went for that one instead. Guess what. I recently spoke with a guy who ordered from Solidoodle in early January, and he already received his just after a single month! Solidoodle have really been improving their work power to balance out the high demand and decrease the lead time. Well, the joke is on me then. I thought I would receive my printer within 60 days. And by now it's less than a week to we hit March, which hits the 90 days mark; three months instead of two.

Anyways, it is soon here now. I've been spending most of my time since the last blog entry with setting up a dedicated work space for both 3d printing and a general workbench with tools which will become handy for my later plans. More about what tools will prove useful will come later.

In the meanwhile, check out this cool student work of someone printing out their digital character, and assembling it like it was a build kit before finishing it off with some paint!
http://www.evl.uic.edu/sjames/pumpkin3D/

Also check out this easy and cheap Acetone bath trick to smooth out parts printed in ABS.

http://blog.reprap.org/2013/02/vapor-treating-abs-rp-parts.html

-WJ

LINKS: Overview of 3D Printers and a first look at unboxing a M2

Engadget.com - 3D printer guide
Engadget.com made a nice compilation of most of the popular and well established consumer range 3D printers available at the moment. Check it out now before it becomes outdated! Note this is only an overview of features and pricing and not a review of any sort.

Theregister.co.uk - Ten 3D printers for this years 3D modeller
If you want to take a look at the new and upcoming brands and models, check out this small list for what's in store for 2013. If you haven't heard about Formlabs Form 1 before, you should definitely look it up!

3ders.org - 3D printers

Printed by Chris Polis @ ByteMuse

Or head to 3ders.org you want to see a list of almost all 3D printers out there, both industrial and consumer types. They do a great job of updating the list with the new models and pricing! Well almost, I see the M2 is still priced at $ 1,299 from the last year.

Bytemuse.com - 3 days with a 3D printer
Speaking of M2, Chris Polis, a guy whom ordered the Makergear M2 a few weeks earlier than I did, received his the other day and made a very informative post with pictures of the unboxing process. In additional to the well written post, he also shares his expectations and impressions. The picture to right featuring his first print. I'm quite impressed with the print quality for being straight-out-of-the-box print! To me it looks almost perfect and impressive with the walls being able to be this thin! He also shares some good and useful tips when it comes to 3D printing, regardless of which model. I will definitely keep an eye on his blog from now on.

I for certain can't wait on my turn to unbox my printer when it arrives. Like him, I will do a lot of test runs and benchmark my printer. While doing so learn the software and hardware of the printer. When I feel confident enough I can finally start on printing the Corvo Attano mask. The only downside about my situation is I won't be able to start cramming my printer right away due to family matters. I'm going away for most of February and first half of  March, which really sucks. Well, we'll see... I might consider bringing it along though!

Order update

I received an email from Makergear as well today. This time they emailed me, and me not pestering them for an update. :'D

"Hi Wirat, I wanted to send you a quick update on the status of your Fully Assembled M2.Though I am sorry that we're running a bit behind schedule, I'm very glad to be able to tell you that your M2 is in assembly. We expect to have it done, tested, and ready to ship either later this week or early next week.We really appreciate both your purchase and your patience and we'll be sending over your shipping info as soon as it is available. Thanks very much,"

First of all, my hat off for their hard work to pull it through so far. It's hard to keep up with the demand and face the reality that they are going to be running behind schedule, and still maintain good service and support to everyone who have ordered. They have been most helpful in my email exchanges with them and they deserve the credit for doing so. Not everyone has a well reputation of customer service in the 3D printer market.

Well, to sum up my order, I estimate I will receive it by the end of February if everything go as planned with the assembling and shipping.

-WJ

Project Corvo: 04 - The in-game model

I haven't worked so much with the 3D model of the Corvo Attano mask since the last update, but I did stumble on an interesting find a while ago: The real in-game mesh with textures and everything from the video game.

Screenshot of my viewport.

As a fan of games and a guy who's been making fan arts in 3D ever since I learned it. I found this quite joyful to stumble on the real thing from the game. However I was also a bit worried if this model would render my work up to this point necessary, that this original 3D model was just as good for printing as my model, except its original, thus better. What if my model was all wrong and inaccurate? It would make my model obsolete! Slightly concerned I imported the original model into my scene to compare, and behold:

To left: Original in-game model without textures. To right: My current model

My model looked nothing like the original model! And in a good way as you see, because an in-game model follow a different way of rules even though they come from the same software package. The relevant difference in this case is the polygon count. My model as a much denser polygon count which allows my model to contain more details, where the low poly in-game model is restricted by a certain poly count and use textures to make up for that (Which is lovely btw, I couldn't texture like this even if my life depended on it). However my 3D printer does not use textures and relies solely on the shape of the model, so my model is yet again safe from harm!

I even reduced the poly count on my model in this render to make it more viewable.

Having the in-game model would probably be useful in the start, but at this point there wasn't much use for it, except at one point were I had some issues figuring how some certain parts of the inside of the mask looks like. A quick inspection of the in-game model I solved that problem easily! Beside that, you might notice the overall shape is a little bit different from each other. My model is slightly rounder and does not have the long dragged out face. That's because my model is based on the Technical Magic Effects version of the mask, which is slightly wider and wearable. I don't think you would be able to wear it otherwise...

Follow this link if you wish to check out and grab the model of the in-game mask yourself:
http://mrgameboy2013.deviantart.com/art/Dishonored-Corvo-s-mask-HD-331889984
I think I saw some other in-game models from Dishonored there as well. Such as his awesome sword. This will definitely help me in creating a printable model of his sword if I should ever get that far. But the mask first!
Should some guys from Bethesda stumble in here (Hi btw! I love how you guys involve in the community!), please don't sue me! I'm just a humble fan!

Other than that, I contacted Makergear again about an update for my printer. Good news! My printer is in the next batch coming up for assembling and testing before they are going to ship it out. In other words I suspect only 3 more weeks till I've received my printer.
But I said the same three weeks ago, didn't I?

Also, if you have the time, make sure you check out this Siegey who printed Mario in 3D and painted it!
It looks a little rough and the printed layers are visible even after sanding it. I already have plans on printing my favorite game figures as well one day, but I'll be sure I sand it so no layers are visible!

- WJ

Choosing a 3D Printer

It has been a slow January, so let's take a step back and look at how I ended up with my 3D printer. 

Order update

I've received word about the progress of my order, and without it being an unexpected surprise; my 3d printer is currently delayed! Dammit! 1st of December was the date I placed my order and the estimated build time would be from 4-6 weeks plus 1-2 weeks shipping according to their website back then. Which meant it should be arriving around the end of Januray.
Well... 3d printing have exploded the past year and it's going to keep growing from what I've seen, so it isn't really a big surprise a delay would happen due to demand. And it happens more or less at every manufactures of 3D printers out there. One of the more popular beginner entry models have a 5 month waiting time! Yes, I'm looking at you Solidoodle... ಠ_ಠ

From the mail I received, the new estimated date for my printer is set to arrive mid-late February instead. Not too bad, only a few weeks of delay. The problem is it's just in perfect time when I am also the most busy due to family matters. Realistically speaking, I won't really be able to sit down and learn and crunch out my long waited prints until March or so. That puts me a bit off to be honest.

Choosing a 3D Printer

Disclaimer: Following is just a personal opinion based on my own research, and I have not physically 3d printed with either one of these. There are far too many factors affecting a good quality consumer 3d printer, which cannot be determined based on reading alone. Also one should choose a 3D printer based on your needs.

Let's take a step back a bit while we are waiting. I haven't mentioned which printer I am getting yet. There is a TON of  3D printing systems out there, and new models and brands pops up every month or so. Before I ordered a 3D printer, I decided to spend some sweet time reading and finding one I believe I would be happy with. I had some strong criteria for what  I wanted.

• Print quality - Hard to find out which models offer the better print quality due to it as alot to do with your printer settings i.e. its a software thing. So two completely different quality could come from two different persons with the same printer, depending on who has the best calibrated settings.
• Supported material - I want to work with ABS, but I don't know how much of a fume it's going to produce so I want it to be able to print PLA as well. Fortunately most printers supports both.
• Pre-assembled - Major of consumer printers today are DIY-kits. I want to spend more time printing than building a printer. And I trust the guys who build printers for a living to assemble my printer rather my own.
• Price - The better the quality, the larger the printer, and pre-assembled means more expensive. Because I'm not on unlimited in money, this also played a large factor on what I would get.
• Order time - This is strangely a factor because of the massive demand for 3D printers nowdays. The time from you place your order to the printer arrives can vary by a few weeks to MONTHS. Depending on from which model you order from.
• Build volume -  A lot of good possible choices had to be cut off because they simply didn't come with a large enough print volume as I wanted.  

My scope went from the expensive ones such as Makerbots Replicator 2, to the DIY-kit Ultimaker based in the Netherlands, to Type A Machines which showed great results, down to a more relatively cheaper range such as Solidoodle and Lulzbot AO-101. All of them valid contenders with promising results. But due to various reasons and personal preference, I finally decided to placed my hard earned coin to one then-less-know manufacturer: Makergear's M2.

Front cover of the Makezine

After the feature about the M2 in Makezine.com, (an informative magazine about making things,) they've also exploded in growth and demand. So much that Makergear recently increased their base price of their 3d printers. I was lucky to grab one of their printers before the jump. So what did Makergear's M2 printer offer which was more suited for me? All printers promises great results and solid build quality, and there is few dissimilar stats between them. Many of them use the same printer software and prints the same material. Not much of a difference to be honest, so why Makergear M2?

Makergear M2

Well to be honest M2 wasn't my first choice, but a 3D printer is expensive, like really really expensive. I settled for the M2 due to affordability; it was slightly cheaper than some of the others (before the price jump), and in my eyes suited my requirements on the spesifications. It features a large 8x10x8 (20x25x20cm) build volume. Supports both type of filaments, and is offered as a pre-assembled machine.
No apparent drawbacks as I could see, other than the recent increased ordering time.

Type A Machines

This was one of the printers which really caught my attention. Also a relatively cheap and large build volume printer with a solid performance and quality, one of the best I've seen. Despite the whole thing is built in a plywood chassis. The major game changer why I didn't end up with this printer was their ridiculously high shipping price, about six times higher than any other printer! Just got word that they have been working on the shipping price down to a more reasonable level. Too late for me though. It was a tough one to drop this one. But in the end I think the plywood build wouldn't survive the temperature and sometimes humidity in my room.

Makerbot Replicator 2

One of the first and most well known printer I looked at was Makerbot Replicator 2. It's without doubt one of the coolest looking printer out there, with the closed chassis and blue lights. Looks like a computer rig. I would have ended up with this one but it was just too pricey for me. Being one of the most expensive consumer printers out there. From what I've seen it also delivered somewhat mixed prints from other users which gave me a mixed feeling about this one. There is also this closed-source shit storm about it if that matters. I've heard a large report of bad customer service, but those reports are usually only half of the whole story. A good plus about Replicator 2 is it's friendly easy-to-use with its built in interface panel.

Solidoodle

From the cheaper mid-range printers, Solidoodle is a popular brand. In fact so popular that their expected delivery time at the time I'm writing this is up to 5 months! Out of question man! I'm already under severe stress and misery from my current 2 week delay! However from my research, they perform pretty well for the price you pay. Not a bad choice for someone like me who wish to get into 3D printing.

Lulzbot AO-101

Just before I stumbled on the M2, I was tempted to send my paycheck to the Lulzbot AO-101. Also a well known manufacturer of 3D printers. It was also the printer with the shortest delivery time of them all, and when you buy it, you also receive a ton of extra stuff as well as printing filament for a year! Too bad the printing volume turned out to be one of the lowest printing height in comparison with the others, and too low for my needs.

......

Hungry for more reviews, I decided to grab a copy of Makezine which had this large review section of all the most popular printers out there. That's when I first heard about the Makergear M2. It didn't win any top award prices but it just seemed to perform good in all areas. And without any initial drawbacks, combined with tired of waiting and reading reviews, I contacted Makergear and placed my order. And that's how it came to me waiting eagerly for my 3D printer at the time being.

A small upside about the whole delay situation. Makergear also along with the price increase, expanded their finish options after I placed my order. When I contacted them for an update, I also asked if I could get their new finish on my printer as well. They said no problem (because my printer was still far away from finished). So now from polished stainless steel, I'm going to get a black matte edition of the printer. It looks so much better!

Left: Stainless steel edition of M2 -  Right: Black matte edition of M2.  Images by Makergear

My current next step while I'm waiting is to clear out my wardrobe/storage room and set it up a small workshop there instead. I actually don't have a table to put my printer or any of my tools. For my past projects I used my floor and bed as a work area, can you believe that?

Oh 14th February, y u so far away...

-WJ

Project Corvo: 03 - More parts, more adjustments, more renders

I've lost count on how many hours spent on modelling the mask so far, or to be correct: Adjusting the parts. Modeling a shape is usually quick, easy and looks good in the end. But modelling a certain specific part, and without exact blue prints, takes a lot more time! Trying to get all the parts as accurate as possible down to every tiny detail and then need to position and remodel them again so they all fit together is a less fun task.
Anyways enjoy the pictures, I took some liberty to make them in high-res render for your viewing pleasure!

In this update, I've added most of the interior parts of the mask and aligned them well together with the skull. The skull itself still needs some realignments to the parts as well so it all can fit together after it has been printed. I've been pondering about how to actually print it as I'm pretty one big print of the whole ting wont work. That means the next step would be to separate the model into parts, then print it and glue them together after, like a model build kit you had when you were a kid. I pray that the printer software allow me to print intersected objects because that is how I've modeled to save time!

Also this might be the last update for a while because of Christmas coming right around the corner, you know, family time etc. So happy holidays to all of you and see you again to the next year! It's going to be a year of printing for sure!

Aaaaalso, should anyone be interested to contact me, you could do so by email to my gmail: mogcaiz(a)gmail.com

-WJ

Happy holidays and a happy new year!

EDIT:  Bonus Holiday Render!

Project Corvo: 02 - Corvo parts

Small progress update of the 3D model.
Most of the exterior surface of the mask is finished. But I'm going to do a quick overhaul and make sure I got every tiny detail covered once I'm done with all the small mechanical parts of the mask.

I started doing the eye pieces today. I'm really thankful for TME for posting pictures of their mask on Facebook. Especially of how the mask looks like from the inside. Otherwise I would have to rely on in-game screenshots, not the best reference considering they are all in low poly in-game models. But thanks to good high resolution pictures I've managed to nail a lot of small parts down to their accurate detail!

According to a guy who answered an important question to me: Intersected 3D objects shouldn't be a problem to print. We will see if that is true, and if that is, then I'm going to be very happy as that mean I can save a lot of time on how I model my bits and pieces.

- W

PLA. vs ABS - Whats the difference?

Note: I'm updating this post whenever I learn something new about the filaments!

During my conquest for finding the right 3D printer for me, I found myself frequently confronted at a crossroad of choosing which printer should I go for. There is a lot of factors like reliability, quality, speed, cost, service and availability to think about. One factor which usually is not so much mentioned is what kind of material filament it supports.

Most printers supports the two most popular materials: ABS (Acrylonitrile butadienestyrene) and PLA (Polylactic acid), but some printers only supports only of them, and they both recommend it as the preferred material for delivering the best quality prints. So what's the difference, and which one should I choose?

Prior to buying a printer I decided to look up the differences and asked around what the differences were and why it could be a factor when deciding a printer. Here is what I managed to gather.

PLA

• Bio-degradable, made of renewable resources. Less harm to the environment.
• Softens at 50C, melts at 160C, and bonds well at 180-190C.
• Insoluble in water, but it takes time can be speed up at higher temperatures, around 90c or so.
• Less prone to bending, and more likely to break instead when put under stress.
• Smells like cotton candy when heated for printing.
• Mild bottom warping which can be reduced with a heated printing bed.
• Sometimes harder to stick on the bed during the first few layers of print.
• Require a bit more manual work to clean and maintain a printer nozzle after some use.
• Sensitive to humidity, must be stored in a dry location.

ABS

• Made of the same plastic material as you will find in LEGO.
• Softens at 90C, melts at 180C and bonds strongly to itself at around 230C.
• Insoluble in acetone, can speed up with boiling.
• Bends rather than breaks, a lot sturdier than PLA when under stress.
• Releases unpleasant non-toxic fume during print.
• Very subject to bottom warping, curling and splits unless you have a heated bed and chamber.
• Easier to clean a nozzle and printer bed with acetone.

I remind you again that these are only gathered from forums, second hand words from others with 3D printers out there. I have no way of confirming until I have my own printer and cramming out the details. But I think it brings out some valid things one should know about when working with a 3D printer.

Why I should choose or not choose PLA?

When it comes down to practical use and easiness to work with, I believe PLA is a clear favorite. There is a less chance for prints to fail due to bottom warping and splits. And it of course smells nice. My bedroom is next door to where I will put my printer (bad idea, I know) and I won't be bothered by the fume ABS would produce. The downside with PLA is it's sensitivity to humidity. If stored somewhere with a humidity is a problem (like the laundry room next door), it would render your whole exposed spool of PLA useless for printing after a while. But that should be in theory an easy fix: Don't store it where it is exposed. A second downside to PLA, which is the strongest counter argument in my case is the ability to do post processing on my prints. Mainly speaking sanding and painting. I've no idea how oil or water based or any other stronger chemicals would affect PLA. I'm a bit concerned it could melt my prints. And the same goes for sanding, due to the lower melting point of PLA (50c). Heat could be generated by the friction of sanding, and maybe make the plastic melt to a sticky substance and thus ruining the print.

Why I should choose or not choose ABS?

Bottom warping in the lower right corner

ABS plastic can withstand sanding and higher temperatures. It might be harder to paint on, but a simple primer should fix that. This makes ABS a very tempting choice. The smelly fume could always be fixed with a proper ventilation, but here is where the problem comes in. Despite ABS having a higher melting point, it is also more affected by temperature side effects. Mainly speaking expanding and contracting as the temperature rise or cools down. This is one of the main reasons why many ABS prints lose their adhesion to the printer platform and starts curving, also called bottom warping. And should you be lucky to not be affected by it, there is also a chance of splitting in taller prints. Some say it could be fixed in the software settings by adjusting the correct temperature, printing speed, layer thickness etc. And some say its unavoidable unless you have closed heated chamber to contain the heat until your whole print is done. 

Conclusion 

These are issues I hope I'm lucky enough to avoid. If I don't I will work it out and see what can be done to fix them. I hope I can stick with PLA if it proves to be sanding and painting worthy, or ABS if it doesn't warp too much. We will see when I have my printer.

More reading about differences between PLA and ABS:

• http://www.protoparadigm.com/blog/2013/01/the-difference-between-abs-and-pla-for-3d-printing/ 

-WJ