My First 3D Resin ‘Live’ Project Didn’t Go To Plan
Not Following My Own Advice!
I have a long held ‘rule’ which stems all the way back to my days as a professional graphic designer, and it’s this….
‘NEVER try out something new - whether that be a technique or tool or medium - on LIVE project.’
‘Trubbish’: This Pokémon was created when a mixture of domestic and industrial waste underwent a chemical reaction of some sort. Trubbish emits noxious, burp-like gases which, when inhaled, will render the victim bedridden for a week. This gas can also prove fatal when inhaled by young Pokémon and children.
Despite this wise warning I have inevitably been put in a position where I have had to work with an unfamiliar and untested technique on an important job - usually because a boss has seen something new and says ‘I want us to do something like that…NOW’. And this always ends, if not disastrously, at least causing me more headaches that it was worth…
Anyway, I have this new resin printer and all I’ve done so far with it is to put through some pre-prepared commercial models which were all set up in advance to print ‘out the box. I literally just loaded the file and pressed ‘print’, and they came out OK… But…
My daughter then asked me if I could print out a Pokémon model that she had found on Thingyverse as a rush job for her boyfriend’s birthday. How could I say no, and what could possibly go wrong?
All 3D Models Are Not Equal
As I said, so far I have only dealt with commercially purchased 3D model files, from reputable vendors who have a good reputation and have been reviewed positively. Unfortunately Thingyverse is the 3D model repository equivalent of WISH, in that you never quite get what you thought you were getting!
As anyone can upload a 3D model to Thingyverse there is very little control over the quality of that model or how much it has been tested and prepared for efficient printing...
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| Above: Off to a great start! The fisrt of the Trubbish models (Happy Trubbish) came out fine, and I must admit that at this point I was thinking that this project would be a breeze... Silly me, nothing I do is ever easy! |
The models my daughter pointed me to were just that - models, with no instructions for printing setup and were - crucially - not pre-supported. The ‘pre-supported’ bit is a bit of a clue as to just how much trouble a freely downloadable 3D file is going to be. You can manually add supports yourself in your slicer software (the app that prepares the model for printing), but for beginners this can be just one of the ‘dark arts’ which make up what YOU have to do to ensure that you get a successful 3D resin print…
Long story short - probably a bit late for that, but 😂 - there is quite a bit of homework involved in getting a ready to print out a 3D resin printed model… It is not - I am finding - the ‘shake and bake’ process that I was use to with my FDM Flashforce Adventurer 3 printer.
The Upshot Of All This - (A Minor) Disaster!
If the above all seemed a bit like foreshadowing, then I’m afraid that I did indeed find out just how inexperienced I am with managing ‘unsupported’ models for printing. In fact, the word unsupported not only describes the lack of any pre-prepared physical supports but only - usually - any lack of supporting information about recommended printing techniques from the original model maker…
And so… I had my first bug sucky printing fail. 😩
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| Above: Unfortunately, I was so dismayed by the frightful mess that came out the 3D printer tank that I could not bring myself to photograph it! (I wish I had now.) So this is Trubbish 2 after my sculpted repairs were made but with the affected areas tinted in red. These were just gapping holes when the model came off the printer! |
Quite what I had done wrong I do not yet know - though I am starting to get some feedback from acquaintances who are more experienced than I am, and I am sure that with the help of Google and YouTube I will get to the bottom of my issues with this particular print. But, suffice to say that the gooey malformed thing that I pulled out the tank was very disheartening.
Autopsy aside, the problem I had now is what to do now, after all I was on a bit of a deadline.
With limited time there was not going to be a prolonged investigation and research into how to rectify any mistakes that I had made and then have a second go at another print. Also, and here we hit another big difference between FDM (filament) 3D printing and resin printing, I now had to empty my resin tank and clean it in case there were any frozen bits of print floating about which would effect a second print.
The clock was ticking!!!
…So I went with Plan B - try and repair my broken model!
Return To Good Old Fashioned Modelling
While this was a complete pain in the ass at least I was on familiar modelling ground. I have a lot of experience with rectifying ‘f*** ups’, though not usually on this scale.
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| Above: Pieced together like a jigsaw and the missing gaps filled with Milliput (yellow) and superglue, here I install the final recovered bit from the left side. The rest of the 'arm' was completely destroyed and will have to be sculpted. |
In this case I would have to rebuild about 30% of the whole model, sculpting the missing or deformed parts using modelling clay - which would have to be a self-curing (air drying) clay. Luckily my go-to small scale sculpting medium is MILLIPUT, which is a two-party epoxy, sir-drying medium.
Frankenstein A Monster
All this was dome without telling my daughter that I had hit some problems, as I didn’t not want to stress her out. She was so excited about the idea of this gift for her bloke’s birthday that I did not have the heart to confess that there were some ‘hiccups’!
But, naturally, this put even more pressure on me, as Kayleigh was expecting to see a completed model when she came around to paint the thing (the following week)… Eek! 😳
So off I went - hell for leather - trying to rescue 'Trubbish v2' and hoping that she (Kayleigh) did not notice that the resultant Frankenstein-mon was ‘a bit wonky’.
The filling and sculpting went fairly well, in fact I will go as far as to say that I almost wished and thought it might have been simpler if I had sculpted the whole model myself in the first place. But having already completed the first of the two figures - ‘Happy Trash Monster’ - successfully as a 3D print I was sorta now forced to match the look of the second and disguise any home-made facet of the second.
But, luckily the cartoonish Pokémon was ideally suited to a sculpted repair. There was no fine or intricate detail work to do, and if there were any lumpy bits that could be explained away as just being part of the character of the model. (Fingers crossed.)
So, after a rushed sculpting session I was greatly relieved that - when the clay dried and I applied a coat of grey filler-primer paint - that the second model looked ‘OK’ (I won’t say perfect because it wasn’t).
And then…
The Gods Hate Me! Further Disasters…
Just when I thought that I had rescued the project and that my troubles were over, fate struck a second blow…
Obviously, part f the reason that the print had failed was - in part - to do with my fault curing of the resin as CRACKS started to appear in the 3D resin printed portion of the rescued model!!!
Now there is a reason that resin models crack - I remember glimpsing something about it somewhere - but now was not the time to go over why this was as I had already committed to repairing the model that I had! And - again - the clock was ticking (this was just something else that I would have to look into when I had more time).
So then, I had to fill and repair the cracks that were appearing in the model ONLY to have more cracks appear as the resin ‘dried out’ (or whatever it was doing)… I was at my wits end, would I ever get this model finished?
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| Above: Cracks filled and sanded a thick coat of filler-primer makes Trubble 2 look passable...If you half close your eyes! [Sorry, only had this one low-res shot.] |
Over the next could have days I had to repeat the process of filling any cracks that appeared in the model until whatever was causing the cracking subsided and the resin model settled down into a stabilised form. it I tell you, it was a very unnerving couple of days where I wondered whether I would have to admit to my daughter that I had cocked up and couldn’t deliver on her gift idea!
But what else could I do? I had committed to this repair solution and it was now too late to do anything else.
The End Result
OK, so finally, the cracks stopped - though it does worry me about the long-term stability of the model - and I was able to produces a fairly passable facsimile of the original design that didn’t look too odd. I just have to hope that the whole thing just doesn’t explode or disintegrate in a couple of week’s time!
It was a great relief when I showed my daughter the repaired figure together with the original - successful - 3D print. And, to my surprise she neither noticed any of my hasty half-assed repair work and was actually very pleased with the resultant model… PHEW!
What made all the stress of this near disaster bearable was - then - the next couple of painting sessions that we spent together finishing off the models. That part went without any hitches and as such doesn’t need documenting in detail. I happened to have the near exact colour paints that I needed to hand and the painting process was very simple and straight forward and Kayleigh seemed to enjoy herself even though she had no experience of painting models.
She was very chuffed that she had participated in the creation of her boyfriend’s birthday gift, and it just goes to show that making gifts is still a great idea even in this age of Amazon and 3D printers (LOL).
Obviously, I still have the niggling worry about the long-term stability of the repaired model, but I have kinda prepared the ground for any future repairs I might have to make by telling Kayleigh that this was - indeed - the first time I have resin 3D printed a job like this. Just in case any more pesky cracks appear, which I would then have to repair…
BUT, the important thing is that she was really happy with the apparent results AND we got to spend some quality Dad and Daughter time together painting!
Let’s just hope that I get to grips with the dark alchemy that is 3D resin printing in the future!
THE END?
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