3-D Designs in SketchUp

I am seriously addicted to making these designs for mini dioramas for action figures. I'm a teacher and the school year is winding down, well into the last three weeks. Grades have to be done by next Wednesday, students are just finishing up their last assignments, at least those who care.

Fortunately, I've got a classroom set of computers, so students can just play games when they've caught up all of their work. 

Me? I'm just monitoring them, keeping them from irritating each other (and me) too much. I'm also just messing around in SketchUp, just creating new designs. I find it a bit relaxing, just fiddling about and making new designs. Math skills are needed as well, so that's an added bonus.

This is one of my earlier designs. It's interesting, but a bit boring to me. The panels are cool enough, but there's too many of them.

This was more of an exercise in making doors. Non-functional doors, but still giving the appearance of a door.The wall panels are boring.

 

This is my basic template. I really didn't want to keep recreating a floor along with the walls, so I generally just stick with the basic floor panel. I think I've made a few adjustments and split the larger panels on the floor.

Making brick walls turned out to be fairly easy. They are close to being proportional in terms of cinder blocks. The dimensions on the model should be roughly 1/18th of an actual cinder block.

I added a door and door frame to this version of the brick walls. I've also added some cracks into the ground for some variety. I haven't printed either of the brick wall sets yet.

For this model, I wanted to add extra elements for a little more depth to the model. For the finished product, I printed three of the girders and they fit along the slots in the wall and the impressions in the floor. I've finally printed all of the pieces and am mostly satisfied how they printed. There are a couple of small tweaks that really need to be done to the walls. I am most proud of this design.

Lastly, for now, I've designed something that will have brackets and pipes going along the top edge of the large wall. Interesting design. I haven't tried printing anything yet, hopefully soon.

Now if only the printing didn't take so long...

3-D Printing for My Collection

Have I written about 3-D Printing before? Maybe, maybe not. I started getting involved with 3-D printing as a part of my job as an Engineering Teacher for middle school students. The county that I had previously worked in had a big enough budget in which they could afford to buy a MakerBot Replicator+ for my classroom.

It also helped that I had previously worked with the 3-D design software SketchUp. It's a free 3-D design software and fairly easy to use. That's not always the case for students though, because they usually want immediate gratification and don't want to take the time to learn the tools. I'm trying, really, I am.

One of the first things that crossed my mind, was what can I make and print for my action figure collection? I've printed a few odd ball things, but what has really struck my interest lately, is making what I call mini-dioramas, maybe even figure review environments.

They are meant to be basically small in size and designed to pose one or two figures on the base, primarily with the goal of reviewing the figure or figures.

This is one of my earliest attempts. It's a very small "stage" with just enough room for one figure. This is a two piece print, with the walls being one unit and the floor is a separate piece.

Next up, I tried for some different wall detailing. Nice ideas, but I wasn't really thrilled with the end result. Improving and the design aspect is what I find the most enjoyable part of the whole process.

Bigger and bolder for these next three sets. This particular one is Death Star inspired. I liked the work that was involved in this one, but I wasn't really satisfied with the end result. It looks okay, but not quite what I'm looking for. The smaller wall looks great to me, but I'm not really thrilled about everything on the bigger wall.  

It's a much bigger set and can easily hold a few figures. I printed this in three sections, all flat on the print bed. I've got an issue with curling on large flat jobs and there are some issues with the quality of this one.

A much more simple design, very basic, but I like it... mostly. I tried something a little different and rotated the pieces so that they would print vertically. As long as the detailing doesn't stick out too far, the printer handled the overhang of the details with no problems.

Another different design. I don't recall my exact inspiration for this design. It's definitely Star Wars-ish. This one was fun to design in SketchUp. It involved a lot of math and trial and error in the designs on the larger of the two walls.

Eventually, I'm going to paint these. I think a flat coat of a gray may work. I'm sure that there are ways to weather them a bit as well. Time will tell. Right now, I'm just enjoying the process of designing right now. Stay tuned for more 3-D printing updates!

Action Figures and 3-D Printing

3-D printing is pretty damn cool.

I have limited access to the use of a 3-D printer and I've recently tried to make some original designs for use with my various action figures. One of my most notable attempts was to create a small "stage" to use as an environment to just take simple photos of the figures.

I use Google SketchUp as the design tool to create the actual 3-D model that will eventually be printed. I decided to create a corner with a floor platform.

The design phase went pretty well; at least I thought so. In creating the various extrusions coming out from the wall just a little, I have discovered that I'm really not that creative and just need to "play" with SketchUp more.

I used white PLA filament and the original print turned out decent, but there were errors in the print. More on that later. The next option that I decided to try was to add color. I used a combination of permanent markers and acrylic paint (of dubious quality). Mistakes were made. Bad choices. Combined with the mediocre detailing, it looked like shit. So just spray paint the whole damn thing, right?

Not good. Not good at all. As the paint dried, it kind of shriveled and distorted the wall section and the floor panel. Ugh.

Oh, that's good! The paint bubbled up on the plastic! Wonderful...

Time to try again. 

For the next print, I tried a new color filament - Army Green!

 The color doesn't quite hold true for this picture. It's a bit too washed out.

Here are the two pieces glued together. There's a slight curve on the front edge due to the cooling of the material as it is extruded and layered. That's a design issue to consider. On the original print, I printed both pieces on separate print jobs. This time, I figured I would just load them together and print both together. Not a good choice. The closest edges had stringy filaments connecting them together as the print head went from one piece to the other.

The printer builds from the bottom up, laying down thin layers of material in tiny little layers. That's also a drawback to current 3-D technology because the tiny layers show up in the finished print. I'm thinking they could be sanded; maybe I'll try that on another print in the future.

In general, I'm pleased with what I created, but I'm not satisfied. This will work for now as I go back into the redesign stage. I really need to improve on my "geebly" skills for all the extra detailing. Plain walls are boring, but these look weak in their design. It's the learning curve, that's all.

Here's another shot of a design flaw with the extrusions that I pulled out of the wall in SketchUp. The printer wants to just build the bottom edge of the extrusion but it really doesn't have any surface to print it on. As you look at that square-ish shape with the circle pulled out of it, you can see the distorted bottom right corner. The printer just couldn't recreate the design. Additionally, along the bottom edge of each extruded shape, there were loose filaments as the printer lay down filament in an attempt to create the pulled out shapes. You following me? Play along...

So there's things I need to consider as I redesign new pieces similar to this. I won't paint this one and I won't reprint it. That's what is fun about this whole process. The math involved in creating the virtual 3-D objects as well as figuring out how to create the slots needed to assembled the pieces.

Another option may be to build them in individual walls and assemble them at the corner. If the model is flat on the printer bed surface with the detailing rising out, then the details may print cleaner. Lessons learned, I suppose.

For now, I'm back to the virtual studio to try again. Stay tuned for future 3-D printing updates!

I decided to take a bunch of pictures of various figures just to showcase how the environment can work as a background. Enjoy!

 Looks decent, but those crappy details... Ugh!

 No, Tartarus. You're too big.

 Goblins and Dwarves?

 Hulk like!

 Bombstrike is pleased!

 Clonetroopers!

 No, Al... You don't fit.

Stay tuned for more 3-D printing updates!