REALLY small (1/700 and 1/1000 scale) 3D figures

[frank2056]

Last year, as part of a project to test 3D printing, I made a series of 1/350, 1/700, 1/1000 and 1/2500 scale figures:

1/350, 1/700, 1/1000 and 1/2500 scale 3D printed figures - first try.

I learned a few lessons from that test:

- no need to have a high polygon count on figures below 1/350
- 1/2500 figures was at the limit of the printing technology used by Printapart, but the 1/350 to 1/1000 scale figures came out well
- The material used by Printapart is very, very fragile
- the design I had was next to impossible to mold effectively

I have plenty of 3D 1/350 and 1/400 figures, so I made a set of 1/700 and 1/1000 scale figures, which printed nicely. This time I used much lower polygon count figures, and attached them to the "casting block" by a thin fin on their backs, much like L'Arsenal does with their 1/350 scale figures:

1/700 and 1/1000 scale 3D printed figures - 2nd try

I still don't know if they'll cast. I'm thinking of using a two part mold using a really soft mold material, like the excellent Dow silicone rubber that's sold with Alumilite resin kits. The lower half would come up to the waists (except for the sideways figure with the arms extended) and the upper half would be from the waist up.

I used three programs to produce these figures. The first was AC3D, which is far more intuitive and easy to use than Rhino. The edited figures were exported as .obj files and opened in Rhino, where I scaled them and ran mesh checks.
Rhino's .stl (stereolithography) file generation is not very good and will sometimes declare unprintable objects as printable, so I checked the .stl files with miniMagics and used AC3D and Rhino to fix the inevitable problems until I had a file that MiniMagics was happy with. Then I uploaded the file to Printapart and was rewarded with a quick, error free print. The main project is bigger and smoother, but these small figures were a pretty good way to learn how to make error free, printable files.

Even unpainted, the 1/700 figures look better than 1/700 scale PE figures, which even when bulked up with paint, can look flat and unrealistic.

Frank

[Stefano Salesi]

3d figures in 1/700?????

Man, this is STUNNING!!!!!!!!!!!
I really hope that you can cast them...in that case be sure "someone" will ask you for a lot of them...specially the 1/700 ones....

so, three options for finding out who that someone can be.

1) Elvis
2) Donald Duck
3) Me

[Sauragnmon]

Damn... just looking at that site, I have to wonder what the absolute benefit could be reaped out of that... jesus, you could make any damn plane you wanted for a carrier... or perfectly render a gun turret in proper scale.... just... wow. Photo etch is one thing, but damn... the ability to build up parts rather than burning away excess brass, the material benefits... The raw connotations of that, that you could produce a figure, of a person, in 1/2500 scale, with some level of detail. Just... damn... that's too damn cool.

[frank2056]

Damn... just looking at that site, I have to wonder what the absolute benefit could be reaped out of that... jesus, you could make any damn plane you wanted for a carrier... or perfectly render a gun turret in proper scale.... just... wow. Photo etch is one thing, but damn... the ability to build up parts rather than burning away excess brass, the material benefits... The raw connotations of that, that you could produce a figure, of a person, in 1/2500 scale, with some level of detail. Just... damn... that's too damn cool.

There are some flies in the ointment - the material (at least with Printapart) is really fragile - I made several copies of the figure sets because I know I'll probably destroy at least on in the process of making a mold. Also, larger objects will have "steps" from the printer. You won't get a smooth hull, for instance, unless you're willing to pay for having the work done with a much higher resolution printer. Think of 3D printing as done with very, very tiny Lego bricks. So you either pay for the better print or you do a lot of putty-sand-repeat until you get the surface smoothness you need.
You also have to spend a lot (if not most) of the time making your drawing on a computer and then making it printable.

The 1/2500 scale figure was just a "stunt" and a test of how small these printers could go. Of the 10 figures that I had printed, 7 were complete and I lost 3. They're almost impossible to work with.

Frank

[Sauragnmon]

Yeah, that would be the side effect... ok so maybe you can't make a perfect hull on the first shot, and you'd have to build it in sections with the size of their printer, unless one were to buy a bigger printer and do it themselves, but that's getting ahead of things.

But still, the connotations of being able to, say, accurately reproduce a gun turret you wanted. Take photos, make an accurate 3" twin mount, for example. It's got its benefits, I dare say. And of course, to keep overhead cost down, you could actually have the part printed with a hollow center and a mounting pin instead, rather than resin-casting the whole block. You could assemble a group of people to work on the digital models, and once completely setup, you could have an online repository of information... Have all the obscure parts that you won't find, like the German 128mm flak gun emplacements... That would be really cool.