3D Printed Medieval Castle Walls B: Proof of Concept Video
Just finished-up my 3D Printed Medieval Castle Walls B: Proof of Concept Video which you can watch below – the actual model will be officially launched in a few days… the 3D animation is still rendering and because I’ve used transparent glass for some of it, taking longer than normal but it’s worth it… looks awesome!
This project was a lot of fun to design and print – I’m very happy with the results and as explained in the video – the Cubify software that made it possible even with my flaw which I didn’t see until after I 3D printed it and was in the final stages of getting the 3D animations ready.
You’ll notice some fuzzies in the top, not sure why this happens around the end of the 3D printing process – maybe the great travel distance causes some filament to harden but it’s very easily removed – it has the same consistency as spider’s webs.
If you look on the turret on the left, you’ll see the blue peaking through the doorway, that’s because I have the walkway going all the way through each turret – a major feature of this project I absolutely wanted to see if I could achieve using extrusion 3D printing WITHOUT SUPPORTS. You also see the depth I’ve added to the walls and inlays in the turrets themselves… there was a lot of testing involved and big assumptions made and the results speak for themselves – AWESOME!
As mentioned in the video, this is “B” of my three-step design process, the first was rather simple, I wanted to see how the archways performed and wall construction with small caps.
This print proved all my assumptions were accurate which gave me the confidence to add a whole new level of quality and detail to the print. It is quite a major design leap between the two and I’m hoping to have an equally as large one with the third and final one.
As mentioned earlier, it takes a while and a lot of failure to get to this point, like any new machine, you have to learn how to create optimal designs for it, what can and cannot be done and with each and every design choice, know the ramifications of them in the real world when making them in the virtual one. Although I really wished this was NOT THE CASE, there is no way to skip this learning curve and you can’t cram this stuff in a weekend either (though my book will help you a lot). You got to play as hard and often as you can!
Interestingly, these two prints are essentially the same dimensions with the turrets making it slightly taller – I’ll do a wrap-up of the design evolution of this project once I got a working third version but so far – Cube has performed admirably and predictably. Of course, I’ll make all these prints available so you too can print the STL on your own 3D printer on CNCKing.com.
Won’t be much longer… and if you are wondering where the idea for this came about? Look no further than my original CNC laser cut design – his platform is too small for such a large object but you can see some heavy influences throughout this model and the A and B versions of my 3D printed Medieval Castle Walls project.