#ohi tutorial

Queadlunn- So, we ended up getting a 3d printer (CR-10, purchased on Amazon with Prime because we have no chill) and for the past few days we’ve been learning a lot!

So, like with any complex tool, this thing has a lot of things to figure out. Later on we’ll be doing a more in-depth writeup of building a prop using the printer, this is us getting used to it, really.

After we ordered the printer I began to look through Thingiverse for something interesting and large to print as our first big job and I wound up finding this sword design that someone had built from Dark Souls III. It had a good mix of large parts and very thin parts and would be a good practice project.

After some 35 hours of printing, a few failed prints and some reworks I’m starting to understand how you need to handle the parts within the slicing software that you process the 3d models with so the printer can understand them (I’ve been using Cura for this):

Infill, shell thickness and print orientation all matter if you need the print to be strong. The first set of blade parts I printed out looked fine but were very fragile. It’s taken me 3 more prints till I’m happy with how they feel.

Print time. This is one of the major drawbacks to 3d printers. To print the large guard part for the sword took about 6 hours on it’s own, and the rest all have taken quite some time too.

Failure. This is also something you have to be prepared for. I had a set of blade parts fail within the last 15% of the print job because the parts became un-stuck from the print bed. Luckily I decided to redesign how I printed them anyway...

Cost. The printer is expensive. Filament isn’t to expensive but failed prints can eat up a lot of material. Electricity costs can also easily become a factor as well.

3d printers are wonderful tools and I’m very happy to now own one but they still take a lot of work to make something that doesn’t look like a 3d printed part; you still need to putty, epoxy, surface, paint and finish and that’s just the default.

Queadlunn- Got our first big, multi-part 3d print finished! The Irithyll Rapier from the Dark Souls series.

Link to previous post. Here‘s the model I used.

Aside from how fragile the hilt section is (not an issue with the model, it’s how I printed it) this turned out pretty fantastically nice!

All of the parts were epoxied together (or JB-welded in a couple cases) and then I used CA glue to act as a filler and for surfacing. I then used a bit of Bondo on where the blade section blends into the guard. Paint started with Spray-truck bed liner (for a cast-iron look), followed by some hammered bronze spraypaint. Rub-n-Buff was used on the blade edge and on the pommel spike. Aging with dark gray and brown was done and it was all finished off by drybrushing the whole thing with Tamiya titanium silver and finally sealed with a mix of Future and Tamiya Flat Base to cut down the shine.

The blade would up slightly curved due to how I printed it but it’s not too bad. I’m really happy with how this one turned out and having the printer opens up a lot of options for us.