TempestNWK

Mim, posted a short summary on the previous page a while ago. theres a single big problem though to summarize it : the W3D (or converted) files are in no shape or form "ready for use" by 3D printing software. hence you want to learn how to use your modeling software of choice (i picked blender cause i already had a wee bit of knowledge there) out the top of my head, concerning the ageing process / naming convention: e.g.: SPW23 (Progen Wings variant 2, age 3) S - Ship P - race P / T / J W - ship-part H = Hull / P = Profession / W = Wingtype 2 - variant (1-3) in case of SPP prefix you'd get : 1 / 2 / 3 ; trader/warrior/explorer 3 - age (1-3) some bits are harder to find, such as the Sentinel solar sail type thingies, there doesnt seem to be a variable for profession solely. (sentinel sails would be SPP33)

Mim, mine was around 30 EUR to get printed (i don't own a printing machine) Alurra here could prolly make an actual estimate of raw material costs. but yeah, as zackman mentioned, models are still protected by copyright laws, so private use is prolly the only thing you can get away with. i've been spotting "fake" warhammer 40k models being sold here & there though, not sure if that means companies aren't actively tracking & trying to sue ppl for copyright infringement. (my guess is they are.) will be resuming my own work (sanding /primer / filler ) at a later point, summer heat is kinda killing my motivation atm. :)

Beta > Sunset like most here i guess. got drawn in by a co-worker that was in the Beta. Galileo - Guardians of Destiny (also current) Partisan - JE later on with Dutch Alliance Sjaak - TE played together with Aodbigjoe/GeneralPhreaker?/Snake? to name a few remember being dragged along trips with Snake doing all sorts of weird out-of-the-box stuff. Vrix shenenigans in ROC, getting Militia groups to fight eachother in DT and spawning Scooters etc. in the last months before sunset joined a single guild where a very large group of players gathered (Reborn/Scorned i can't really recall) oh and the guy in market selling stuff with the truck ascii art, wish i remembered the name.. last seconds on Galileo were in an ascendant Voltoi raid with a boatload of people.

picked up some of that cyanoacrilate super glue you mentioned Alurra: "Loctite Super Glue 3 Precision" fixated the parts with some rubberbands/clamps and let it sit for a while (there wasn't any immediate adhesion like w. normal plastics) it seems to be fairly sturdy now. also picked up a cheap plastic 7mm stick/cylinder type thingy which fit nicely. tbc

gathered all the bits for the Tradesman i think (hull2/wing3 seemed the "easiest" combo). some unidentified parts named "hinge" though (foreground) will need to drive my coworker's TT at some point and take some screenshots. also, blender's built-in shaders look pretty awesome on the imported W3D's, if only ...

looking good ! don't know if that's a final glued down construction, but the arm segments are slightly out of place there. see att. i still need weapons for it, so i might reorder 2 new ones, doesn't seem to be diffucult to figure out now i know what to expect. in hindsight it was a bit too optimistic thinking the beams would print 100% accurate when the blender geometry leaves basicly no room for errors. also think a trip to the local hardware-store might be worth it, there should be some kind of wooden rods which could do the job instead. don't know about you, but seeing a mocked up model in real life just brought a stupid grin to my face

yeah, the spikey bits at the end of the wings are quite flimsy. (the geometry analizer didn't raise any flags though concering wall thickness < 2mm could probably get away bending the "canon" look with a bit of creative freedom/tinkering, but i tried not to break any geometry while cleaning it. some of the terran hulls look a lot more sensible, will have look at those shortly i think never even mentioned the manufacterer btw, this was forwarded to a local manufacturer in my country via 3dhubs.com, prices seemed reasonable enough. manufacturer did mention using PVA as additional support material, although that tended to drive the price up. the guy is kinda suspect now though, lol, as you easily pointed out several flaws in his printing technique/setup. happy with what i got though, i have a few contacts in the automotive refinish industry which are looking for helpfull products which can be used with PLA (plastic primer/fillers etc) some products contain ethyl compounds though (akin to nail polish remover) which are a big no-no as those should dissolve PLA i'm told.

Thanks for your input Dragonfly, seeing your [CDEV] tags i am a bit worried though, to distract you from other potential projects, ahem i've attached them below, reading up on fusion 360 i'm assuming you won't need me to convert the .blend to something else since it can import STL fine? these are basicly the w3d files i tried to clean up (intersecting faces mostly, and non-sensical edges in the wing section) modified with Booleans to "difference" 2 parts into something kind of mechanically workable. dissolved edges to make quads (3d printers dont seem to care?) removed double vertices (assuming these were overlapping because of the different LOD meshes were stacked on top of each other?) STL 200%.7z

got my parts. https://imgur.com/a/6y6Eg9w rough patches in the PLA is where support material was affixed. is see some sanding + primer / filler work to be done in the future. pretty impressed with the surface details on some bits, others are problematic. the "beams" (which fit in blender) wont fit at the moment, maybe the 0.2mm process just wasn't accurate enough. wondering if i should have just left them connected, its pretty hard to judge the capabilities of the printer. (this was all done by an ultimaker S5, which should be pretty high end i'm told. might just replace them altogether with something from the local hardware store.

aight, it's off to the printing shop. est delivery 6-7 days scaled up the STL's to twice the size, basicly ~15cm's from nose to tail-end. to be continued..

and the .blend for those who want to mess around with it. (7-zipped, was 883Kb) testassembly.7z

some testing putting the thing together, and thinking about how to assemble it in RL. think i'll leave the arms as is (hexagonal) and leave them in the fixed position instead of making them actual cylinders. still missing the engines i found out... will need to dig through the mixfiles again. also need to invent something for the weapon mount. maybe stick a cilinder straight through the end of the arm, dunno. most separate parts should now be "manifold" PLA is also much cheaper, might even be affordable scaling it up a bit.

some parts clean up nicely with some repairwork

i've attached a .blend if someone want to fiddle with it. - stripped the low poly LOD parts - stripped the textures untitled.blend

forgot how much fun blender was. good news for the arm section ( i think) they're already made into separate bits. most 3d parts seem to have problems though, the hull for example, has overlapping faces, vertices etc which need to be cleaned up before its considerd to be "printable" for a 3D shoppe. to be continued... back to blender tutorials..