3d printing experience

[Paul Payne]

Does anyone on the forum have hands on experience with 3d printing? Any advice on printers or materials welcome. Right now I am looking at printing egg crate grille material either as a block to be filed and sanded to final shape or as a finished shape. I do have many years experience of 3d modeling in the foundry industry, so building a model would not be a problem. Also, the extruding material should be compatible with super glue or epoxy and paint or Molotow pens for a chrome finish.

Any thoughts or info very welcome.

Here is a picture of the kind of grille I would like to print:

[bill lanfear]

There are basically 2 types used in our world of modeling...DLP (digital light processing) and FDM (fused deposition modeling).  FDM is old school with the object being built on a heated platform through an extruder using filament plastic.  The DLP is the better in my opinion for modeling detailed objects such as your grill.  DLP is where you use liquid resin and the machine dips a platform into the liquid and a LCD monitor projects a layer of which the UV light from the projection hardens the resin.  I have used both over the course of about 12 years.  They both have their merits but for what you are wanting, the DLP is the way to go.  Here is an item from my business "Rookie Resin" that was created using the DLP type printer.   You can see it has tremendous detail.  Hope this helps!   Bill

 

[blunc]

Scale-Master (Mark Jones) seems to do a lot of resin bath printing, I suggest messaging him directly in case he doesn't see this thread.

You should check out his work also, I believe he has definitely earned the screen name "Scale-Master".

[Paul Payne]

Guys, thanks for the info.