[Charismatic]

Anyone with a good 3D Printer and got amazing painting skills (assuming 3D Printers do not color as well)? I would be interested to see if someone could print high detail/poly FS1 and FS2 miniature replicas of fighters and capital ships, and fully paint them realistically.; I would buy some. I assume there would be a 'legal' issue...unless done on the down-low.

Would anyone else like to have an Orion or Apollo on their desk?

[Scourge of Ages]

Oh yeah, this thing I meant to respond to...

Yes! I would! Can't decide which ship though, maybe an Athena

[0rph3u5]

I don't know if this is still going on:
https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=80988.0

[TechnoD11]

Alright, well it's clear there's a fair amount of interest in this so I guess I'll have another stab at it.
I'll post an update soon, gotta warm up the printer.

[Colonol Dekker]

I'm keen to see the results of this.

Let me know how much a ten inch long Raynor would be.

[Mito [PL]]

A ten inch long Raynor, in high quality and full color? My God, what kind of mad printer setup and mad skills have you got?

[Colonol Dekker]

Hey hey hey....   I'm willing to assemble it from sections and airbrush it myself

[TechnoD11]

Update #1:
After 4 hours of trying to get the Erebus into a printable STL file, I got the first of what would have been 2 prints started:


Unfortunately, I discovered that the power outlet I use for my printer happens to also be connected to the one of the outlets in my kitchen...that I plugged an electric griddle into and promptly tripped the breaker 

Good news is that, at 75microns with the carbon fiber PLA I use, the finish is looking quite good.
This print failure is a bit of a blessing in disguise though, as this print would have been ~6 inches long and as Dekker was looking for 10 inches (and I am inclined to agree), I can now restart and hopefully make a better finished product.

I won't have another opportunity to run the printer again until this weekend though, so don't expect another update until then.

[Mito [PL]]

Maybe you could print the turrets separately so that they would slot in and maybe even insert some kind of a tiny bearing for them to rotate? That would also allow you for higher turret quality.

Meybe even get some lenses and insert some LEDs where the beam cannons are .

[Colonol Dekker]

That's a bit overkill.   Just separate turrets and to scale is fine.  (I'm not placing any orders til I know costs of a piece to the UK though)   

[5thAce]

An Erebus and a Solaris would be a dream combo for me! 

[TechnoD11]

Just to clarify:
I'm going to try to run off a ~10 inch Erebus this weekend. I'll let you know how it goes. However...
Prepping a file for printing takes a long time. Aesaar made the Erebus rather detailed so working with the 500k+ triangle mesh either takes my computer a long time to process or just straight up crashes my machine (this includes scaling the mesh, converting to a solid in Autodesk Inventor, removing features from said solid to make a multi-part model, exporting those to STL, then importing those into my laptop which controls my printer, and finally cranking through the slicing process on the files).
So I will be making 1 Erebus (if I even can) for now and posting the results. If it comes out well, I'll consider making a few more to sell here (and I would need to sell them as this takes a substantial amount of time to make, and I could really use the money...college is expensive  ).

So yes. Don't get your hopes up yet.

[Colonol Dekker]

Dude you do whatever you need to bud.  We all appreciate your efforts.  Just to clarify, what programs are needed to convert a POF to an STL and prepare it?

If the raynors author can consent, I'll have a go at preparing it at my earliest.

[Charismatic]

This is very cool.
If we had a few people that had the same 3D printing ability and know how... maby a few guys could help with the prep work (this includes scaling the mesh, converting to a solid in Autodesk Inventor, removing features from said solid to make a multi-part model, exporting those to STL) and we could as a team pump out a few?

[TechnoD11]

Just to clarify, what programs are needed to convert a POF to an STL and prepare it?

It's a bit of a process: Start using PCS2 to open the model, save as a .dae file. Then use FreeCad to open said .dae file and then export it as an .stl file. From there, open the .stl file in Autodesk Inventor and use Inventor's convert mesh to solid feature. Once it's a solid, you can extrude-cut any features you don't want to print (or section the print up). Then export each part again into .stl format. Load this .stl into the print software (Repetier-Host for my printer), orient the print, slice with your slicer of choice, and print.


And for the print status, I made some headway on an 11 inch version today. So far, promising! (will need a bit of touch up though):

[mikhael]

Not gonna lie, this made me dust off my forum credentials to comment. The linked thread with the 3d printed Sathanas made me drool too.

[TechnoD11]

More progress pictures:









Parts will need a little bit of clean up with sandpaper/belt sander/dremel. More to come.

[Mito [PL]]

Mmmm. I'm definitely excited to see the end result!

[Charismatic]

This is progressing along nicely, and I am very appreciative your giving this a shot.

[Buckshee Rounds]

Looks great! How about a Ravana next?