3d Printing - Land Rover and Scatter

I own a two 3d printers as of this writing, and while I would say I am overall happy with them, I am fully prepared to say they aren't for everyone. For this update we will look at the output from my Photon Mono, a Resin printer from AnyCubic.

ChituBox is the "slicer" that came with my Printer. Seems to work well.

As you can see, the economies of the printer (as seen in this screenshot from my 11 year old Macbook Pro) are pretty good. That is easily a $15-25 model depending on where you get it from and in what material. 

One handy bit is the "slicer" application for printing lets me enter the price i paid for the bottle of resin, allowing it to calculate an APPROXIMATE cost... 

(The volume of resin used is precise by weight, but there's always going to be some lost to the fact it is thick and viscus, and sticks to the bottle, the vat, and the print itself, needing to be washed away between rents and as part of the post-processing... uh... process... . Call it a few cents here and there, but my experience two bottles into owning this printer is that I'm averaging about 1%-3% of the bottle in process inefficiencies. Though I can probably improve that.)

Not factored into that screenshot on cost: 

• Cost of Printer ($200ish) 
• STL Price (in this case free off Thingiverse) 
• 5 Hours of wear on the LCD (1000-2000ish hours for $40-50) 
• 1 set of disposable gloves ($0.50ish) 
• Plus the intangibles of sunk time (the hunting for the file, preparing it for print, and post print cleanup) versus "add to cart" and "Checkout".

Personally I enjoy the slicing process (the term for using the layout program to get your prints ready) and love "gadgets", so sunk time isn't really a big deal for me. But it's an easily forgotten part of the process, and for some of us, our hobby time is quite limited.

The prints posed next to an AirFix 1/48 Land Rover kit

I bought this Land Rover back sometime before 2016 It was an impulse buy from a scale modeling group i was in. It retails for about $20-25 as part of a two-rover kit, but i got it in THIS package. (I have traded away the Helicopter as I hate how fiddly Model Helicopter kits are)

Scale difference between a 1/50 print and a 1/48 model kit is negligible

Evil Doings are afoot in Narco-Land

Generally speaking, I am pleased. Detail is fantastic, scale was no surprise (I own a set of calipers) but the precision of the 3d model to the source material is to be commended. M_Bergman (the sculptor) is a fine asset to our community, and for files designed to be printed at 1:100 for Team Yankee/Flames of War, the fact that these look so good in 28mm scale is a true compliment.

I plan to print up a few examples of each of the variants i like to paint in British Pea-green, Arab-Desert tan, and United Nations "causing more trouble than they fix" white as the itch strikes me. Never know when the odd command car, VIP or mission objective will need them, plus special forces seem to love the things. That's going to end up being possibly as may as several dozen printed vehicles (Probably less), which I could NEVER afford at $15/each.

But instead of tying up that money and shelf space, I can keep the file on my machine and print what I want when i need it. (or lets be real, as an army strikes my fancy I'll Print what i "need", start a few up, finish some, and then move on to something else shiny, with yet another half-finished thing in my pile.)

But then that's Wargaming