Hmm, yeah snap together pieces are tough. I found that on the whale I needed to do quite a bit of sanding to get the pieces to fit together, and I’m not sure that the accuracy would be what you need for lego type pieces. Also, I’ll mention that my experience with high end 3d systems machines, is that they are more accurate, but still not perfect. I used to work at a stop motion house and created hundreds of faces that needed to have magnets fit into them and all snap and register to the back part of the head. Even on those we could not get the tolerances to work right away. We would have to do several iterations before we could get consistent prints fitting together with other pieces, and then we always had to print at the same angle to get them to stay working. So for example, once we had one face working, we had to orient all other faces for that character the same way on the printer to ensure that all of our tolerances would still work. If we did print them at a different angle all of a sudden they would not connect as well with neighboring pieces. And in addition, sometimes we would have to scale something 1-2% more in one axis for a peg to get it to fit. Basically we would find a way to compensate for the inaccuracy in printer. It was time consuming to start out, with many iterations needed. And then the rest of the parts would go fairly well because we had figured it out. I think with the form1 that it might be possible to go through those iterations as well, but I haven’t tried it. I’m focusing on using it for more one off things and concept at the moment.
Maybe you can find someone near you with a form1 that can print them for you as a test to see if you get what you need!
We have considered outsourcing our pieces to be more mass produced but at the moment are focusing on the hand made aspect of it. My partner in Rawrz toys does molding and casting for a living, and I do 3d modeling, so it’s works out well, and we are able to do the whole process ourselves. Having an injection mold made and outsourced can be very expensive as a start up cost. As Rawrz grows we will have to re-evaluate that if we can’t keep up with production.
We have a large 5inch whale that we want to do as a vinyl toy, and that we would have to outsource because we don’t have the equipment to do it. (we have a prototype of the large one that you can sort of see in the pictures of our table setup. It’s blue and on the top of the middle shelves.)
We’ve been in full swing casting our gators. This toy was our first toy that we got the chance to use the form1 print and take it to the finished toy. We’ve been casting these fun gummy colored ones!
Our toys are fairly small so we’ve been working on a few larger versions to have displayed on our table when we are at conventions! Here are some pics of the prints we’ve been working on. We’ve gotten them all sanded up, and almost done painting! I’ll post a few pics of the finished ones next week.
If you live in the LA area, Wondercon is the weekend of April 18-20. Rawrz Toys has a table in the artist alley section at AA-275. We’ll have our form1 with us, along with bunches of toys. We also keep some raw prints, molds, and castings around on our table to show the process. I’d love to say hi to other form1 users! http://www.comic-con.org/wca
Had a fun time down at Wondercon last weekend. Here’s a few pics from the show. We have the form1 on our table, along with different stages of the process. Families were very interested in the printer, and I had a few printed pieces out that they could pick up and play with. The Dr Who style ones are sporting form1 printed accessories. (the ears, eyestalk, and head light)
wow ! Can you share some info on the topology of the tentacles?
are they hollow with inner support etc? I am having a hard time printing part with a solid 1/4" x 1/4" mid section.
Hey! They are all hollow and have several drain/air holes in them. The wall thickness is 3.7 mm.
I printed most of the pieces with internal support, but did one without. I used internal supports because I felt there was an ‘iffy’ area that might not be well supported. In the cross section image I circled the questionable section in red. That larger flat area came on rather quickly, so I felt that it would be a potentially fragile section without any support. The one I printed with no internal supports made nice gradual changes on each layer. (like the rest of the model is on that image)
Ann, do you have any pictures of your octopus before sanding (already cleaned)
I am interested to see what kind if surface imperfections you are getting from your machine. I am new to the technology and reading the sentences below that you wrote are really and eye opener. My models have some imperfections and I just want to have a real point of reference.
There is a lot of post process cleaning and sanding required to get a really perfect finish. So it depends on what level you are looking for. Our toys are so round and smooth that they really need a good clean finish. I would like to note that previously we were printing our prototypes on a $100k 3d systems machine, and they also required a lot sanding. The resolution was better then the form1 (but for $97k more I would expect that!) but still required a lot of cleanup. Just some food for thought!
These are the only two images I have of the octopus unsanded. The upper leg section I printed so that the supports ran up the non-sucker side of the leg, and the lower piece I printed the supports on the sucker side. I just wanted to see which gave easier results and was easiest to clean. I ended up liking the supports on the non-sucker side, as it was easier to sand a more even surface. (at least for me)
Keep in mind these pics are using the lowest resolution of the printer. I have quite a few 5 inch versions of the animals that I’ve been printing. I’ll try to take some pics of those too.
Currently we are using the form1 for many of our accessories, and to do all our prototypes, and print some larger one-off prints. The master that we end up molding we usually send off to be printed on a 3d systems machine (i think it’s a 3500projet). However, we are taking that on a case by case basis, wherever we feel it appropriate we will use the form1 print as the master. The alligator is a perfect example of one that the form1 was used as a master. The form1 could certainly be used to create the master for all of the toys, but we weigh the amount of time it would take to get it ready to be perfect master against cost. In our case, prints from both machines need a lot of sanding and cleanup. Prints from the form1 do take longer to cleanup due to the style of supports, fit of pieces together, etc. Hope that makes sense!
Oh, and if you scroll up in the thread the large octopus, giraffe, and seahorse you see in the pics posted april 14th are unsanded! They are at the lowest resolution.
Thanks,
it seems like you are getting some nice surface finish on those parts pre-sanding. I think the key is in those exit holes ?
I need to run some more prints, I get some little funny texturing here and there and some bubbles on flat areas…
your prints and some others on this forum make me want to print something big. How long did one of those sections take?
I think the exit holes do help. I find that sometimes if I don’t have one it will blow out a small section of the model. And if there is a blow out that creates slight bobs of semi cured resin which can cause print surface issues.
For me the main thing that helped keep the surface of my prints clean was making sure my resin is as clean as possible. In between each print I take time to look over the resin in the tray and fish out any little blobs that might be remaining. Also, as the tray gets older, if it starts to get a heavily fogged area, that area will start to experience some loss of detail orresults. If I am printing the same piece over and over, I am sure to move it around the tray a bit to make sure that I’m spreading out the wear on my tank.
To clean my resin tray I stand in an area with really good light, and tip the tray so all of the resin tilts to one side. (don’t spill!) I then tilt the tray the other direction and watch the resin slide across to the other side. Any little partially cured resin will move at a different rate through the resin, and give a slight shadow look as it moves. I keep doing the tilt, fishing out the blobs with the tweezer things.
Mold3d did a nice tutorial on cleaning resin. I haven’t used the paint filter yet, but plan to get some! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpCrigqRWH8
If you are getting bubbles on flat areas, be sure that the flat areas are not straight vertical or horizontal in preform. You’ll get the best results if you rotate it off axis a bit.
I do sometimes get slight imperfections, but they are usually fairly easy to fix with a little sanding and modeling filler. Also, the side that has all the supports always looks the most messed up as you would expect. You can see some of those marks on the top of the octo head. They sand fairly easily, but the surface is more uneven in that area.
Thanks for the video link, although I wouldn’t pour the resin back into a bottle with clean resin.
regarding orientation, I have been printing since I last poster and I realized that at least for me I get much cleaner results when I only tilt objects in one direction or axis.
I’ve tried the clear, and it seemed good too. I just prefer how the forms are easier to read on the grey.
I did try a few prints with the white, but had a high failure rate. I was trying to print something more complicated (lots of potential pockets for air to get trapped, etc) so I suspect that might have been the main issue. I’ve been meaning to go back and print some models that I know print cleanly in the white. I see quite a few nice looking prints in white, so it was probably not the resin that had issues, but the model I was printing.
Also, I did upgrade to the form1+ so that’s been great! I’ve been in crunch at work since I got the upgrade, and haven’t had as much time to play with it as I want. It looks like things are calming down, so I hope to get more printing time in soon! I have printed some more of those larger characters on the form1+ and they took about half the time and look great. Pretty amazing!
