This is such a useful idea. And I dig the glow in the dark aspect (and blue?!).

All of these things are rad.

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Thanks, guys. Yeah I went with the gitd blue for the stand because I wanted to test the plastic out and the stand, so figured it was a good way to kill two birds with one stone. Now I'm trying to figure out what else to print with the gitd plastic.

I'll revive this thread rather than start a new one. I've bought a 3D printer myself now. As everyone knows, I do the D&J Toys stuff by hand, usually with a bandsaw. I've been trying to come up with ways to speed up production and make stuff to enhance what I do. The main step I will be taking is buying a CNC machine. But I also wanted a 3D printer to create little bits and pieces for added items. Such as an example, I am doing my own version of a JUMP Launch platform. The original thought was to just put it out as is and you can hang the jet pack on it as the old one was made. Now I can make a jet pack different than the JUMP and it can be used for either item.

What I have been doing is testing the range of the printer. I've been making stuff each night since I got it to see what I can do. It seems pretty well able to do just about anything. There's still the limitations that you see lines in the image it prints. It builds everything layer by layer and these home versions of printers just do not have the resolution the 30 thousand and up printers have. BUT what they can do isn't amazing. The lines are so fine that you can easily either seal it or lightly sand it. As cutomizers, it's not that big of a deal.

Here's a few items I have done so far. None of these have been sanded at all yet. What you see is straight from the printer.



Again, here you can see some choppy areas on the Battlestar Galactica ship. This thing is only 4" long, so it's a lot of small detail. There were lots of really thin areas on the model. It's an easy fix, but the file really needed to have been fixed up on a 3D program.



He-Man swords shrunk down to GIJoe scale! I've been wanting to make some 4" He-Man and Skeletor figures for a while, but haven't had time to sculpt the details myself. This is going to speed that project up!



I wanted to see how it would do with a ring. I just grabbed the Green Lantern one at random. It did pretty good, but I should have flipped it for it to print. By having it face down, a lot of the support structure that gets printed ended up making the emblem a little choppy. An easy fix with sanding, but still I'll know better next time.

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I did a Lego Darth Vader here. All the parts came out great, but it's going to require a little sanding to make the parts connect. It printed things a little thicker so they don't snap together right from printing.



Here we have a GIJoe scale head. It's hard to see the detail being white plastic, but it did every last design. I'll be painting it after some sanding to show how it work. I have to drill out the neck because I don't know how to modify it on a 3D program yet.



Same thing here, but I misjudged the size. It's a little big. Still it came out nice!

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Now for the mess ups. I had tried an R2D2 Lego figure that totally messed up. This was due to not having the support frame set right. For small objects you have to have the support so it will stay standing. It's hot plastic laying down and can easily warp if it doesn't have enough plastic around it to help it stand.



I saw a shopping cart online that I thought was a neat idea to test, but it didn't work. It was one of those old wire ones and it made all the details too small. As I was pulling the support frame off, it was falling apart. I'll just mark this as a failure and maybe find a better cart to try!



This was working great, until it didn't print the screen. I don't know what happened, but the rest of it worked. It even framed up the screen. I guess I could use it as is and it'll have interchangeable screens. It's not a total failure! It does need some cleaning up though.



Finally back to the successful prints! This 3D Cobra design is great. Again due to the white plastic, it's a little hard to fully see, but every last detail is there. I'm half considering making some logos for my car like this!

I'll be making more stuff and eventually it'll become part of my abilities with D&J Toys to offer stuff. It's really fun to work with however and I'm sure I will do a lot of customizing with it too.

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Exciting to think about the possibilities. Like a matt trakker computer briefcase from the cartoon. Or heads that we don't have.

Are you able to print original designs too?

Nice. Which printer did you get? Are you using ABS or PLA? If ABS, look into some of the various acetone finishing techniques out there.

As far as the question about unique designs, yes they can be done. The real limit is the technical prowess of the designer in using CAD.

Yeah the only limit is if it's too thin and collapses like the shopping cart, or lack of imagination. You can build anything in a 3D file and so long as you can open it in your print program, the printer will print it. You can build any head in a 3D program and print it.

I got the UP! printer. They had a good deal going so I jumped on it. So far I'm happy with it. I have a few issues with the USB dropping the printer in it's print program, but I can unplug and replug to get it to see it again. It's some sort of glitch in the program.

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I haven't had much to say, but I have loved every moment of this thread.

Can't wait till my peachy arrives.

- R

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This is damn interesting and Please continue with new projects you print out.

Hopefully have one myself later in the year. Was going to have one for Father`s Day, however I now need a New PC :/ So that first lol

I have recently just bought (waiting to arrive) a few 1/18th scale Heads from Shapeway. So am curious as hell as how they look.

Have bought plenty of 1:1 scale Prop replica & 1/6th scale 3D printed but not much in 1/18th. So as said curious to see 1/18th up close.

Painted samples!

There are some lines still from the print, but it's not bad. You mostly see them in photo more than in person. My attempt here was to do light sanding and see if paint filled the lines the rest of the way. I got mixed results.



As we see with the horse, it's cleaner. You can still really magnify it and find lines, but even factory figures have imperfections up close.



Here I totally didn't sand the Megaman helmet at all. I was actually afraid to touch it as tiny as it was able to print. Also I thought it looked kind of cool to leave them for this.

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This one came out nice. The lines that I missed from sanding covered great with the gold. You really can't see anything off here. The printer even printed the brush mohawk with a lot of detail. It fits just about any smaller head figure.



This was just for fun. I haven't tried to paint his yet since I'm experimenting with creating joints and having articulation. It came out ok. I still have a little patch work I want to do before I paint. The torso joint isn't tight and the joint comes apart too easy. I'll fix that with glue.



The end result looks neat, but he's sort of a mess. The arms cracked when I pushed the hands in place. It needed some heavier sanding to get them smaller than they printed. The torso didn't print hollow for some reason and I had to drill out the connectors for the waist and arms. It came together but it didn't just work right off the printer.

Over all the 3D printer isn't totally taking anything away from mass production yet. It's a great tool for having in addition to customizing. There's lots you can do with this, but it's going to still require work to get something really great.

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