The joy of 3d printing!

 At Christmas my wife gave me a Creality 3 Pro filament printer.  I loved it so much that I purchased an Anycubic Photon a couple of months ago.  I have been fiddling a lot with them this summer and have been very pleased with what I am getting.

I printed my first few sci-fi buildings because I needed an alleyway for a Star Wars RPG battle.  I printed some sci-fi dumpsters, and some crates for cover.  

Here is a selection of buildings.  The first one is from 

The following buildings are from Corvus Games Terrain Link to Corvus Games(I think they actually made the prior building also, but not sure about that)

This is from their MidRim City range.  They are fairly inexpensive.  You can buy a small set of STLs for about the price of an individual building from many makers.  I have scaled them down to 15mm.  

They are created in stories, but they don't have floors on them, so you either have to make some kind of floor, or glue the stories together as I have done.

From my resin printer I have done some micro armor.  I have micro armor Star Wars and historicals.  Here is a GHQ Abrams tank next to a printed one for comparison.  The printed one is on the left.  The quality is amazing!  The sculpting from GHQ is a tad bit more detailed, but for micro armor, both look amazing!

Completed Turbolaser Turrets

I have painted up the turbolaser turrets that I printed.  I kept a simple paint scheme and did a quick job, but they came out ok.  You can see the print lines a bit, but they aren't too pronounced.  You can see them in the photo better than in life size, because these are zoomed in.

I am quite happy with the results and will be doing more printing soon!  I have included some of my 6mm stormtroopers so you can see the scale.  The side door is a little small, so these could probably be scaled up a bit, but then the guns would be bigger than I want.

Star Wars 6mm Clone Wars Droids

My Star Wars 6mm quest continues.

I found a person that does Star Wars on Shapeways.  He has a pretty good number of items available right now, all scaled to 6mm.

I prefer the Rebellion era myself, but he has a lot of different items for Clone Wars era.  I decided to buy some to test.  I bought some Battle Droids from Shapeways.  I bought in the smooth, detailed plastic.  I have ordered in the cheaper materials before, but it was a bit grainy.  I think the smooth, detailed looks better.

I am pretty impressed with the details of the droids.  It is hard to do these in 6mm because they have some small parts.  He did a good job of catching enough detail to see them, without making them brittle.

One of my favorite things about them is that there is a lot of variants.  There are several infantry variants, then there are command variants.  Those include guys with binoculars, ones with light repeating blasters (or sniper rifles if you prefer), and rocket launchers.

The only negative complaint that I have is that the sprue that connects them is a little thick and challenging to cut.  I ended up breaking a few of the miniatures when I tried to cut them apart.

Next, I found out that he made some tanks and sold them on eBay.  He printed these himself.  They come in multi parts and require assembly.  It is a little challenging to assemble.  For instance, the turret is three pieces.  There is an upper part and lower part of the hull, then there is the gun.  The body has two parts, the front and the back.  (I should have fixed the joint on this, but didn't realize it was that bad until I painted it).  The two side guns are each two parts and are small.  If you use magnifying glasses they are much easier to assemble.

One of the challenges with assembling them is that they are printed in a translucent resin, and they are pretty small, so it is hard to match up the joints.  Once I started using magnifying glasses it went much better.

More 6mm Star Wars

Wow, two posts in one month!  Almost a new record for me!

I have a few more toys painted up.

Rebel tanks.

These are rebel T1-B tanks.  I bought them from Shapeways Link Here
These are good models well detailed.  I mounted them on small washers to make it look like they were "hovering" just off of the ground.  I like how they turned out.

Next up is an E-Web Heavy blaster.  I designed it and printed it on Shapeways.  I think that the barrel is too long, and you can't see the details at the end.  I may revise it and then put several on a sprue to print more.  The Stormtrooper firing the gun is a gunner from Darkest Star Miniatures Grav Raft.  He fits perfect, so that part I got right.

It is hard to get a good picture of something that small!

I have also included some more of my AT-PTs painted up.  I like these figs.  They have great detail and are the perfect scale!

6mm Star Wars Update

Long time no post...  Sometimes life gets busy...

I have been quietly working on some of my Star Wars projects as well as ACW.  More on those later.

For now I wanted to do some updates on my 6mm Star wars project.

Rebel Fleet Troopers

My fleet troopers are from Darkest Star Miniatures.  They are the Federation Low Tech troopers
Darkest Star Federation

Rebel Ground Troops

My ground troops are from Ground Zero Games.  They are from their Dirtside Range, the FSE Legionnaires.  GZG FSE Legionnaires

Vehicles and weapons

My weapons and vehicles come from a variety of sources.  

AT-ST - I'm not satisfied with this one.  It is a Micro Machines toy.  It is too big, so I will probably look at one that is from Shapeways

The Golan DF9 and the Atgar FD gun and the AT-PT are all pretty good looking miniatures.  They are from Shapeways.  They are in a store from Hardware Studios Link.  I also have a few other items from him that haven't been painted up yet.

Golan Anti Personnel Turret

Atgar Anti Vehicle Gun

AT-PT 

Smaller Scales for Star Wars

First I want to point out that my camera died, so I am stuck taking pictures with my phone till I get a new one!

Current Offerings

I like doing battles in Star Wars, but currently the options are small.

There are the old West End Game Miniatures in 25mm (true 25mm).  Good miniatures!
Link to some pictures of them

There are the old Wizards of The Coast Star Wars Miniatures coming in at 28mm.  OK miniatures, but a lot of choice, though not a lot of variations for each type.

There are the Fantasy Flight Star Wars Imperial Assault ones which hit about 30mm. They are good, but expensive to get in any numbers, and there is only one pose of the regular troops.
Link to Star Wars: Imperial Assault

Now there is a new game coming from Fantasy Flight called Legion, and the figures look great.  From what I can tell though, they are even a bit bigger.  Some people say they come in at 32mm.
Link to Star Wars: Legion


Those are all good options, but they work best when used at a skirmish scale, or even large skirmish.  It isn't very conducive to having large vehicles on the table (unless you have a very large table!)  I will stick with them for skirmish, but I'm looking for something different for larger battles.

There are also the Micro Machines figures.  They run about 20mm, and are a good option.  I just don't think they look all that great.

15mm Offerings.

First off, no one officially makes Star Wars in 15mm.  However, you can get some proxies, and some of the models work pretty well.  There are also 3D models you can have done from Shapeways or other locations.

Troops

The troops that I am looking at using are from Ground Zero Games.  Their figures look awesome!

I'm using the Islamic Federation for the Rebels.  The helmet is close to the movies.

https://shop.groundzerogames.co.uk/15mm-stargrunt/infantry/islamic-federation-if.html

Here are the first ones that I have painted up.  (Again, please excuse the poor quality pictures!)

Now for Stormtroopers.  There are two different places that have made 15mm Stormtroopers.  I have some from both of them.  If you want to know who makes them, let me know and I will send the lings.

This first group are the ones still in production.  They are good miniatures.  My painting skills don't do them justice.  They are the same height as the GZG figures, but the GZG figures are bulkier.  However, I'm not sure that it is very noticeable.  

This next guy is even better.  Originally produced by Highlander Studios as a charity fund raiser.  I don't think they are in production any longer.  They fit even better with the GZG figures!

For vehicles.  The old Micro Machines Action Fleet items work pretty well.  The AT-AT is a bit small, but looks good beside the figures.

6mm Offerings

For 6mm things change a bit.  6mm is a great scale for large scale battles like Hoth.  The Fantasy Flight X-Wing ships come in at 1/220 or so in scale, so they are only a bit larger (6mm is 1/285 or 1/300).  There are a lot of places that make some good vehicles on Shapeways.  Also, there are a lot of 3D vehicles that you can download and convert to Shapeways, or print yourself.

There are a few things already available though.

The Titanium AT-AT by Hasboro is pretty close to 6mm.  Next to it is a Micro Machines AT-ST.  It looks like it is just a little on the large size, but works pretty well.  For comparison, I have some 6mm WWII figs that are there.  I think they look pretty good.  I might keep looking for a new AT-ST though.

I have ordered some minis from Darkest Star Games, and will post them up when I get a chance.  I think there are some ones that will be good proxies for Rebel troops and even Stormtroopers.

http://www.darkeststargames.com/6mm-dark-star-sci-fi-range--federation.html

The Federation Marines look good for Stormtroopers, though you will have to do a little painting magic to make them look right.

The Federation Mid Tech look perfect for Rebel Troopers!