Sunday, January 9, 2022

Improving a Resin Print Building

Hello There. After being sent home ill from work yesterday and spending time in A & E I now unexpectedly find myself laid up at home feeling like I have been repeatedly trampled over by a rugby scrum.

I have been tested for covid and am awaiting the results but while this feels like 'flu' I do not have the symptoms of covid.

I am finding it difficult to get motivated to do much more that lay on the sofa, or in bed, at the moment. I remembered that I have started this project and have taken some photographs but not posted them.

A wargaming friend of mine  has obtained many printed for me and I have started doing them up. I have treated them the same as laser cut MDF buildings


I do not have much knowledge of 3D printing but I found the first building full of potential. The construction of the walls and floors are made of many layers of material in a fine mesh. to add further strength to the building i smeared filler to the inside of the walls to fill this mesh. I also used a Dremel to remove the protruding ridges around the windows. I used a lower speed on the Dremel as the resin tended to melt. I still had to remove the final shards of resin with a sharp craft knife. The level surface on the inside of the building will allow me to glue clear acetate to the inside to make windows.

The roof is not flush with the top storey as there is a 'web' of resin between both sides of the roof. This will be trimmed back later.

The four parts all fit together and have pegs and holes in each corner to allow removal and replacement  of each part. I do not intend to place figures inside so will all eventually be glued together.

I have removed the external timber planking from the first storey and replaced that with plasticard scored with 40 grit sandpaper then a size 11 blade. I then glued them in place with superglue and filled in the plaster areas with Delux Materials 'Perfect Plastic Putty' which I sourced from a model railway shop.

As you can see on the end of the gable end I tried milliputt to represent the plaster work but was not happy with the result. The Delux filler was much easier to work with and did not need premixing.



I hope to use these building to represent German or Austrian dwellings so will avoid the British Tudor version of simply black timbers and white plaster. They can be used for the 1809 campaign I am painting figures for.

I hope to base the buildings on modular village bases, similar to the system used by Timecast models. Here they have a latex base with walls and hedges on and recesses to drop their buildings into. As these bases are the same size you can make many different permutations of village.  

1 comment:

  1. Lovely job. How far 3D printing has come in the last few years!

    ReplyDelete