Robo3d printing quality

Hello everyone, i am Francesco and i make sculptures as an hobby, i would like to replicate my works with 3d, so i started looking around for cheap quality solutions for a newbie like me.

Is it possibile to obtain a result like this http://www.3dnatives.com/wp-content/uploads/article_bobbleshop_orange2.jpg from this machine?

I know those subjects in the photo are made with powder 3d, but i don't have so much money to invest, and i would like to experiment at start, so after a long research i came to the conclusion which robo3d printer is the best under $1000 product.

So in your experience i would like to know is is it possible to reproduce human figures (20x10x10cm) with high detail after polishing, sanding, painting and understanding very well how to calibrate everything.

Thanks for your advice
Francesco

 

Yes, the Robo 3D is perfectly capable of very fine detail, if it's well-calibrated and you know what you're doing using it. I mainly use mine for human figures and, well, for example...

This little dollie was printed on a Robo 3D R1 ancient Kickstarter version (so still using the drawer rails on a wooden platform + HPB + borosilicate glass taped on). Only mod to it I've done is install an E3D hot end, and print a new bracket so the part cooling fan can still be used with the E3D. You can quite clearly see the lines of my fingerprints and creases on my fingers, but the only place the layer lines are obvious is on the legs. This picture didn't capture it super well, but there are toenails on those tiny little toes, each one perfectly visible in person despite being only about half a millimeter in size. The only pieces that have been sanded are the chest piece and (partially) the face. Sanding PLA plastic is pretty easy and can be done with a dremel if you are very careful. Also doable by hand though it is really tough in areas of fine detail.

Ignore the yellow bit, that's just a clip to keep the elastic in place until I can come up with a more permanent solution (she's strung with elastic so she's fully poseable).

I should probably mention that while I can print this way pretty reliably, it seems to be relatively non-typical, and not everyone is getting quality like this from their Robo. I certainly didn't have it looking this nice out of the box.

 

Thanks for your reply, your work looks awesome! I agree with that we have to tweak a lot of settings and it's impossibile to have these results out of the box, but we can't go over the limits of the machine, so it's nice to see we can obtain those kind of pieces!

How much time and filament is needed to print a 20x10x10 sample filled at 20%?
Because i would like to sell my sculpture not more than $50, is is realistic?
I read that price is usually near $0.045 per cm3

For sanding the object i was thinking not to use acetone but a table sander like this
http://www.factoryplotter.com/images/cabina-sabbiatura-90.jpg

 

Well I just stuck a 20x10x10 cube test, filled at 20%, layer height of 0.1mm, and sliced it at a high print speed... Simplify3D (the slicing program I use - expensive but highly recommended) estimates that it will take 63 hours to print and cost approximately $25 in materials. But that's a cube, not a sculpture, and I'm guessing 20x10x10 is not meant to be a cube but the maximum dimensions of your human figures. I would guess around 18-20 hours print time and considerably less in materials.

I'd strongly recommend starting off in PLA plastic - it's cheap, it's relatively easy to print with, and it can be easily sanded. Acetone doesn't work on it but there is a solvent that does (methyl ethyl ketone). I'm not familiar with that piece of equipment - is it just a box to help contain the dust?

I've found PLA dust is pretty "heavy" and doesn't tend to blow around as much as other sanding dust - I use a mask and wipe things down when I'm done sanding, and that seems to be enough. I would find a piece of glass in the way really annoying when sanding - really strong, bright lighting from the right angle helps a lot, as you have to sort of turn it around and around until you can see where the layer lines are (they pick up the light and are shiny, so when you see a little glimmer of shine, you know you have to sand that bit more). I've even stopped using the light with magnifier that I have, simply because having the magnifying glass between me and the part makes it harder to see where to sand, even magnified.

 

Thanks for your advice!

So $25 material, but i have to add electricy costs, 20hours is more or less $2,5
Then i have to sand and paint the product... hoping i will do everything right $50 is too cheap... guess i'll be forced to rise price to $80/$90

Do you think stereolitography is much better than work made with this machine? Or we can get really close to it with right workouts?

Table sander is used with a gun which spray metal or stone little particles to polish surface

Thanks
Francesco

 

The main difference I can see with the FDM printing like the Robo does and the SLA type is the ease of printing incredibly complex, delicate shapes. It's a lot harder to do well on an FDM printer. You can make really fine arching twisty spire things on an SLA printer that are a giant pain in the ass on an FDM. Undersides on an FDM printer are also a real pain, because intense overhangs require support and the filament sags a bit with gravity, and then you have a really rough bit you have to sand and it may have tiny gaps that you have to fill before you can paint, and so on - I run into this a lot with printing figures, the underside of the chin gets really blobby, a nose may be a little bumpy on the underside of it, anything bowl-shaped like the back of the head or underside of a breast tends to get a little bumpy too... A lot of it is what slicer you're using and your settings - what had been a huge issue is now only a minor annoyance and easily sanded off since I switched to using Simplify 3D. And you can also do stuff like cutting your model in several pieces and fusing/gluing them after, so that everything prints in "optimal" orientation for surface detail.

I've handled both FDM printed stuff and really nice SLA printed stuff and in terms of just fine detail and niceness/ease of post-processing for an ultra-smooth paintable/moldable surface, they're about equal for my purposes. If someone was making, say, Warhammer miniatures where you need insane tiny detail and cannot really sand after, they would probably want to go for SLA printing with one of the really high-detail and crazy expensive materials, but they might actually be relatively affordable at that tiny scale.

If you can show me some of what you're wanting to make, I can probably give you a better idea of what kind of challenges you'll face in printing those pieces well.

Interesting about the sanding gun - seems like it would work, as long as the process doesn't generate a lot of heat on the surface of the piece. The issue with any kind of mechical-assisted sanding is heat from friction. As soon as the piece gets too hot, it starts to melt, and instead of sanding a nice hard surface, suddenly it turns to the consistency of toothpaste and the surface in that spot is ruined. For the smallest of my pieces I'm sanding almost entirely by hand. You planning on painting your pieces though, so you may be able to get away with printing at a very low layer height (0.1mm or smaller - for prints like that doll I do 0.05mm or 0.08mm), and then just filling the ridges caused by the layer lines instead of sanding them off. There's spray primers and fillers for automotive use that stick to PLA really well.

 

Thanks for your detailed reply

I make sculptures like these:
http://arteperte.wordpress.com/sculture-←☺/scultura-semi-caricaturale-←☺/

I would like to scan 1 of my wood sculpture in a scaled 50 pieces serie for selling them in my little shop.

Sanding with gun, is made with an areography gun filled with tiny metal parts to polish any surface, so no particular hot is generated, i use it for wood.

 

WOW ............Very impressive work. My uncle was a sculptor.

 

Wow, those are very detailed! Very cool - and probably pretty tricky to print. You'll definitely want to split some of those into pieces and print separately to get good quality - looks like a lot of your figures are separate pieces and can be printed separately already, but you'll likely do a lot of cutting off of arms/legs/etc. to print separately.

I think you may find the transition to 3D scan disappointing, though - things tend to lose a lot of detail and need significant cleanup and fixing. Not sure what your plans were for getting it scanned but if you take a look on Thingiverse, there's a ton of scanned stuff and the results range from pretty good to absolutely awful, with most falling into sort of... I wouldn't waste the filament to print it again sort of mediocre.

 

Thank you all for your suggestions, when i'll buy my robo3d i'll give you updates about the results! Success or failure, i think 3d printing is the way to go

 

fiorsubacquei ........................ good luck and I hope you have success.

 

Thank you!

 

You might look into Mudbox or Zbrush - they're software that allow you to sculpt on the computer, manipulating polygons as if they were made of clay. They work best with a tablet rather than mouse, though you can use a mouse if it's all you've got. They are pretty pricey, and with a fairly high learning curve, but might be worth taking a look at. I think they'd help a lot with cleanup of your 3D scans (as you'll probably have to add back in a lot of detail - stuff like the crease for a mouth might end up sort of "filled in" on the scan), or even making original 3D sculptures without scanning.

 

One idea is to add the support when modelling instead of relying on the software to automatically add it.


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