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3D Printing: My First Winterdale Building


A few months ago I backed the Lost Islands Kickstarter by Printable Scenery. It allowed me to pick up the STL files to print the "Port of Winterdale" set of buildings, and as an "add on" I received a discount on the earlier set of Winterdale buildings for the rest of the town.

The lighthouse: One of the several cool buildings in the Port of Winterdale set of 3d printable files.

After finishing my brutal fall production cycle at work, I finally had some hobby time again. I hadn't had much chance to print anything since last summer's pieces for my "Beyond the Black River" adaptation that I prepared and ran at Historicon last July, so I was excited to turn my attention to the files I had received in this Kickstarter. I chose the War Cottage (below) from their first Winterdale set because it was a more substantial printing project than anything I had tried up to this point (15 separate pieces), and because I knew I would get a laugh out of my wife when she asked what I was working on ("war" and "cottage" are two words a nongamer would never expect to appear together).


Promo images from Printable Scenery's website.

Another promo shot from their site.

It took quite a number of days to get it all printed because I'm not comfortable leaving the printer run when I'm not at home (I've now heard too many anecdotes of printers catching fire). Yesterday morning, though, I started the final and largest piece, the stone tower section, and about 14 hours later, it was finally finished. Most pieces printed more quickly, averaging say five or six hours, and some pieces, like the doors and floors, printed in an hour or less.

I still need to glue the two halves of the roof together and the floors in place for each level, leaving me to then decide how to help the stacked levels "stick" together (you could easily just glue it all together, but I'm probably going to drill some small holes and use 3mm rare earth magnets...I want to be able to remove the various floors and use the inside spaces as a play area).

The various pieces making up the Winterdale War Cottage.


Front


Back

Side


I grabbed the nearest 28mm miniatures and placed them around to show the scale.

Note: Gigi the cat sold separately.





Roof off reveals playable interior.








Final Thoughts and Parting Shots

All in all, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. I only experienced one fairly minor glitch in printing any of these pieces, and it's so hard to notice that I won't even bother pointing it out. I'm very much looking forward to choosing another one of these substantial buildings and trying to get it printed over the next couple of weeks (I seem to average about a piece a day except on weekends when I can get a couple done). It also doesn't hurt that the owner of the company Printable Scenery, Matt Barker, seemed like an exceedingly pleasant guy when I got to chat with him in the dealer's area of NOVA Open (recap) last August (if he had been a jerk, it probably would have tainted my enthusiasm for their product).

My friend and fellow Scrum Club member John over at 1,000 Foot General is pretty convinced that in the next couple of years there's going to be a tidal shift in what we wargamers will be printing rather than buying. That doesn't sound too far off the mark to me. There are some drawbacks, one being alluded to above: the amount of time it takes to print something. And FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) printers currently can't match the fine detail of traditionally produced 28mm figures (metal casting and/or plastic-injected molds). My impression is that today's resin printers can, however, already produce acceptable results and levels of detail, but they have other drawbacks: they can't print pieces anywhere near the size of an FDM printer, they're more expensive, and they're slower. I'm confident that both kinds of printers will only get better in these areas in the coming years.

For now, though, the Qidi X-Pro my wife gave me for my birthday earlier this year has been a great way for me to produce some cool pieces for my games that I would have either had to buy or craft. And with time as precious as it is for me these days, I'm happy to spend my crafting time painting 3D printed pieces rather than having to scratch build them.

Color me a convert to 3D printing!

~~~~~
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Comments

  1. caveadsum1471October 17, 2018 at 5:02 PM

    Nicely detailed piece! I guess it is the way things will go,once we start to get a more general roll out of this technology. I do like the interiors as well!
    Best Iain

    ReplyDelete
  2. Joe ProcopioOctober 17, 2018 at 7:36 PM

    Yes, the technology is barely consumer friendly at this point, but Qidi, the company that makes the printer I bought, really does go the extra step to provide excellent customer support. That said, I think it will be a little while longer before putting these printers together and calibrating them isn't somewhat intimidating for the average person (I know I went into it with some trepidation, and it took a bit more online research after buying it to get things calibrated to produce good results than I typically like with any $800 purchase I make). But if you're willing to put in the little bit of extra work required for being an "earlier adopter," you can produce some really neat pieces for your table!

    ReplyDelete

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