Tuesday, 8 September 2015
Playing with a CNC Milling Machine
I do not have enough knowledge of 3D design to have designed this job, I downloaded it from Thingiverse.
I have run the file several time, either in styrofoam or Model board.
The first one was done in styrofoam and cut quite quickly (under 2 hours). The detail is low, but it will make a good weathered stone statue.
After the foam model I wanted to up the quality so I decided to use model board (a dense polyurethane foam board). I also used a very small pointed cutter and set the layer height to .3mm.
The job took eight and a half hours, but the detail is far more impressive. This video, taken at several points during the cut, shows how slow the process was...
This if the finished piece.
Next I plan to try a hard wood version with a small ball nose cutter...
Tuesday, 1 September 2015
Some time to think, planning future projects... Frostgrave!
On top of that, in my day job we have just moved to a new building, which has meant creating a whole new model making workshop and also taking on a new guy to help me out... The move is more or less complete, however we are still waiting for all the new workshop machinery, which will hopefully arrive in the next couple of weeks.
Stepping back from the sculpting work gave me a chance to consider where I want to concentrate my sculpting. I have decided that I am going to restrict myself to personal projects that I have been planning for some time and not take on any sculpting commissions for a while (although I am still taking on commercial model making work). I have a couple of ideas that I have been working on and it is about time I took them in to 3D. I can't reveal what these projects are at the moment as I want to get several pieces sculpted before I do the big reveal, consequently I doubt that I will be doing many sculpting articles for a while, so the focus of this blog will be on my model making, for a bit.
On a personal level, once my gaming pals and I have finished our Star Trek: Attack Wing campaign, we are planning to start playing Frostgrave (from Osprey Publishing) and this has inspired me to start a new terrain building project. I have gone through the rulebook and listed all the terrain needed for the scenarios. This is the starting point for the project as I want to make terrain that can be used for these, but will also be useful for more generic games too.
As a terrain heavy game that will have wizards and their followers fighting through the ruins of a long dead city, it means anyone running the game is going to need a fair bit of terrain. I hope to be able to show that this is not too daunting a task, and that you can put together a lot of reasonably good looking terrain quite quickly and without spending a fortune!
I have started the project by cutting a series of boards that will be used for the bases for the terrain pieces. I cut and sanded a number of 20cm x 20cm pieces and also several 20cm x 40cm pieces. Each base will hold an individual ruin and once they are all brought together they should give the feel of a ruined city. Also by using this modular system it should be possible to generate different tables every time we play!
In my next post I will look at the first ruin I am building, A wizards tower!
Wednesday, 16 October 2013
Laser Cut 1:20 Scale Terraced House
It was a fairly simple model (I didn't want to attract attention away from the students additions to it) and was built using traditional workshop machines, table saw, band saw, scroll saw, belt sander etc.
The model has been used each year as the basis for a student project, and with a few minor repairs has survived very well.
This year we decided to give the students a second model, so that they had some choice to work with. This gave me an opportunity to build a second house and utilize the laser cutter (I didn't have it when I built the first one). This meant I could add a little more detail, without much extra work. Hence the window frames and brickwork.
This is the result:-
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
What can I do with a 3D Printer?
The two Up! Plus 3D printers arrived in the workshop last week and now that I have had a chance to play around with them I am reasonably pleased and I think they will be very useful (once I get the hang of designing 3D stuff on the computer).
As with the 5 Axis Milling Machine, I have initially started by finding files only to practice with. A great resource for 3D files can be found at Thingiverse.com. I have printed several files from there over the last week, and generally they have given very good results.
The 3D printers we have bought are not high end machines, they are called the “Model T” of the 3D printing world, by their manufacturuer. However, compared to the 3D printer that I used around 10 years ago, they come out very favourably (at least, the print quality is very similar, and that was a much more expensive machine). These machines are certainly not of a high enough quality to produce 28mm miniatures, with anything like the level of detail that would be expected of production figures. However, I can see a use for building larger creatures (or figures), and using them as a starting point ready for detailing and finishing. Also they will be ideal for producing equipment, vehicles and possibly architectural pieces (which is after-all what we actually bought them for).
In this photo the tree frog is about a quarter built. This was the first model I ran, and it was interesting to see that it could cope with quite a good overhand where the legs ran up to join the body, without adding any support material.
As we are got these machines for architectural model making it seems appropriate to try out a building. The ground floor turned out exceptionally well, as did the roof.
However the first floor warped a little (a common problem with ABS 3D printers apparently). I hadn’t fully read the manual, and I don’t think I had pre-heated the bed of the machine enough, so hopefully I can avoid too much of this happening in future!
The building is quite small, the doorway on the photo is about 15mm high. So suitable for 10mm gaming, or it may be be possible to get away with 15mm…
Finally I have produced this mobile phone stand.
Not elegant, but a nice little test of the mechanical properties of the ABS and the 3D printed form.
Oh and as for the tree frog, my sons painted a couple of them up over the weekend!
Wednesday, 21 November 2012
Playing around with the 5 Axis Milling Machine!
I have not had much time recently to experiment with the new equipment that is coming into the workshop. However, I did manage to run a couple of quick samples through the new milling machine.
The software that runs the miller works with .stl files and these are fairly standard in the 3d modelling and rapid prototyping field. So as well as getting the hang of the machines I have been trying to find the time to learn to use some 3D modelling software. I am using Rhino for the primary work but I am also looking at some of the open source and freeware alternatives that are out there, namely Blender, Sculptris and SketchUp.
Ideally I would like to use SketchUp as it seems the simplest to pick up. However the free version is limited in the formats that you can save (or export) the files in. I do have a pro licence for SketchUp, but I am not sure how far down that road I am going to go. It may turn out to be better to persist with the more advanced software as once I know what I am doing with it it should be quicker to use.
Sculptris is somewhat different to the other software I am using in that it is an organic sculpting tool (something of a younger cousin of Z-Brush, which I can’t justify buying at the moment). Sculptris will come into it’s own with the figure sculpting side of things and I think that combining it with the 5 Axis milling machine and the 3D printers it should prove to be a very interesting tool to develop designs on.
As for my first attempts at running a file on the milling machine, the installation came with several sample models, which the engineer ran through with me. Once I had played around with those I wanted to try something for myself. As I am not far enough down the road of learning to create 3D files just yet I hunted round and found a 3D model of a treasure chest online that seemed like a good test piece!
The file was in an .obj format so first I took it into Rhino and converted it to an.stl file.
Then I transferred it to the software that drives the milling machine and set up the job. While I am still learning to use the machine I have decided to stick to cutting styrofoam. It cuts easily and will not damage the machine if i inadvertently crash the cutter into the material.
The first attempt confirmed my decision to use styrofoam, as the depth of the cut meant that the collet that holds the cutter did crash into the foam. Fortunately as I was using the foam, gave way under the tool and caused no harm.
As you can see the result is not exactly fantastic, but as a first attempt I learned a lot and found it very useful. I used a 6mm end mill on this one, which proved to be to large for a lot of the detail.
You can see the rough lip at either end of the chest where the collet crashed into the foam. Also, the shallow angle of the slopping lid of the chest led to some fairly heavy stepping.
For the second attempt I reduced the size of the end mill, down to a 3mm cutter and reduced the overlap of the tool passing over the surface. This meant that the job took a good bit longer to run, but produced a much finer finish. I also spent more time working out the cut path so that it didn’t crash into the material this time.
Clearly still not perfect, but a vast improvement on the first attempt!
I still have a long way to go with this, and I definitely need to spend more time learning to use the actual design software. Still the initial playing around is fairly positive and I am getting more and more enthusiastic about my new toys!
A couple of days after posting this article the Fabbaloo 3D Prinitng blog posted this article about creating printable models using SketchUp. I haven’t had a chance to fully digest it, but this will be a big help when I get far enough on to actually start designing for 3D print.
Wednesday, 9 May 2012
Carronade 2012 Wargames Show
This time of year is the busiest for me. The students I work with are approaching their final assessments and the workshop is very chaotic. We are all stretched to the limit and as such I find it difficult to do much hobby work in my spare time (this is why I haven’t posted to the blog for a while). So it makes a great break to get away to a decent wargames show for the day.
Carronade (in Falkirk) has been the highlight of the Wargaming year in Scotland for the past two or three years (at least as far as I am concerned – I haven’t managed to get to Claymore for three or four years so I can’t comment on the new venue for that show).
Last year I went to Carronade with a friend, Mike, who has since moved down to Durham. So this year I gave Jeff a lift down and we were also accompanied by my 7 year old son, who was really looking forward to having a try of one of the games!
I spent the first hour selling off a few things on one of the rentable Bring and Buy tables. This worked out really well as I ended up covering all of my spending for the day (including the petrol to get me down to Falkirk and back).
Anyway I suppose I should really get on to the Eye Candy…
Firstly, here are a selection of the wargames tables that were on display. I will identify the ones I can, but didn’t get a chance to speak to everyone so some will have to remain nameless…
54mm American War of Independence
Card Stock Mordheim 02 Card Stock Mordheim
Card Stock Mordheim. I am not a great fan of card terrain systems (as a professional model maker they somehow seem like cheating), however this table did look excellent!
I am not quite sure what this table was trying to achieve, it was split in two, with half being a WW2 game and the other half being a fantasy or sci-fi game…
WW2 Desert War
Epic W40K
A very nice Malifaux table.
A rather good Vietnam display. I have always been attracted to the Phantom, since my father and I built a 1/32 scale kit when I was a boy.
This was a great looking Pirate table, divided into several islands, each with a different piratical feel.
Pirate Game 03 Pirate Game 04 Setting The East Ablaze 02
I was quite taken by the look of this Setting the East Ablaze game. The games is aimed at the period between the World Wars and mainly further east, this table was se in Egypt however and look great fun. I may well have to pick these rules and get some of Copplestone’s Back of Beyond figures to go with them.
The Urban War Demo Table, reminds me, I have some of these building sets… really must put them together!
A Very British Civil War, put on by The Gentlemen’s Wargames Palour
Warhammer Lizardmen against Ogres
Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Lizardmen against Ogres!
Empire of the Dead, the new Steampunk rules from West Wind.
World War 2, probably Arnhem.
I didn’t get much time to look at the Painting competition, but this airship model did catch my eye.
Now moving right along, here are a few of the newer items from the various traders.
Four A Miniatures Drop Troopers
I am very impressed with Four A Miniatures, they are consistently adding interesting miniatures to their range. They seem to have an eclectic taste, jumping from fantasy to near future Sci-Fi quite at random, but all the miniatures have a very appealing style. I bought their new barbarian figure, and was sorely tempted by both their snow troopers and these brand new drop troopers (excuse the poor photography). What impressed me even more was that the proprietor actually remembered me from last year…
Next up we have a selection of Scheltrum Miniatures new releases. They have been expanding their Shattered Empires: German November Revolution range a lot recently and these new vehicles have got some real character.
These historical armoured cars will surely have uses for everyone from Back of Beyond fans, to VBCW and even Steampunk gamers.
Anyone who has read this blog before will know that I am a fan of the Critical Mass Games range of 15mm Sci-Fi miniatures. I participated I one of their demo games at Carronade last year and since built up sizable ARC Fleet and Praesentia armies.
After meeting Craig last year I work with CMG to design a series of laser cut game counter for their game. As I don’t have manufacturing facilities I wasn’t able to do the actual production counters for them (just some prototype samples) and the project has languished on the back burner for a good while. I was pleased to here, while I was at Carronade this year, that they have finally sourced a manufacturer for their counter. As such I was glad to see some of the prototypes in use on their demo table this year.
CMG 01 CMG 02 CMG 03 CMG 05 CMG 06 CMG 07 CMG 08 CMG 09
I had placed a small pre-order with CMG for their latest Mercenary figures as well as the new Alien Jungle Tree Trunks as well. These seem suitable for use as simple alien plants, with no further work (beyond painting), or also as trunks that you can add our own foliage to the top of. The handy thing for me is, that they are big enough that they will suit both 15mm and also my 28mm Pulp Sci-Fi collection!
While on the subject of my purchases, here is what I came home with.
My Purchases at Carronade 2012
My main purchase was the 7TV rules and it’s two expansions from Crooked Dice, the Summer Special and On Location. I am a big fan of the 60’s and 70’s TV, as I am sure anyone who grew up in that time is. So these rules really scratch an itch that I didn’t even know I had. As reference material I already have DVD sets of Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds (notionally they are for my sons) and The Champions, The Saint and Callan, so ideal feeding ground for scenario ideas…
The Bring And Buy was also fruitful on the buying as well as selling front. My gaming buddies and I have regularly played the Ticket To Ride board game, which belongs to one of the other guys. I have considered getting it or one of the other games in the series on and off for several years. So when Jeff pointed out the Ticket To Ride card game for £5 it seemed to good an opportunity to miss. I also picked up 3 (unread) W40k novels, all of which I had previously been meaning to buy, and 2 W40k audiobooks for £2 each. Absolute bargain!
Finally, after purchasing the 7TV rules I was inspired to pick up some scenic items from Ainsty Castings that would be useful for the Pulp TV genre. Utility buggies and a laser table (well I do run a laser cutter all day at work). Conveniently these will be suitable for both “Hip” 60’s style scenarios and also for my Pulp Sci-Fi figures…
On the social side of things it was a good show, with both traders and visitors being in a friendly and most sociable demeanor. I chatted with lots of people, caught up with some people I have not seen for a while and put faces to a few people I have encountered on online forums.
The only disappointment was that my son and I didn’t get to take part in any participation games. There seemed to be a severe lack of them this year. Oh well, we’re hoping that either Skelp or Targe can satisfy that for us…
So that wraps up Carronade for this year.