The cosplayer in me is jealous, but the engineer in me is pissed. How tf do you have the time and resources to print a solid suit of armor? How many spools do you think this took?
Same. A lot of those shapes look simple enough where it wouldn't even be difficult to make with foam. While 3D printing is cool, new and exciting, i frequently ask.... why?
>>8990275
>>where do you get the time and resources?
Desperate betas that throw money at you thinking you will fuck them or one rich beta that will print it for you.
>>8990275
> the time and resources
>"geekfablab (oh and I, I guess)"
> Patreon, probably
>>8990460
3D printing can work because you can set it up to do work while you're doing something else. Since the prints take so long.
You can effectively work on multiple cosplay's or "work on it" while you're at work or something.by just having your printer run.
Current 3D printing is good for rapid prototyping or making a one off small thing, like a replacement part.
It's not good for making everything like some people try and make it do. Traditional methods are better for cosplay.
>have a professional prop/cosplay friend that will print me whatever for free and paint it
Feels good. I still pay him though
>>8990275
>>8990465
To answer your How and Why:
Bindismalls worked for Lulzbot, which sells 3D printers. Geekfablab is her business where she creates and sells 3D printed stuff. She was hired to make and model this costume for the game company.
If your background and business is heavy on 3D printing... why the hell not!
>>8990275
She works for a 3D printer company you dumbass
>>8990465
> implying 3d printing is expensive
>>8990537
I use 3d printing for cosplay so it's a lot of this really.
In my case I work a full time job with weird hours so it's easier to design pieces, start printing in the morning, go to work and the come home to a complete piece
>>8990635
>waste is okay if you work for the company
>taking the "rapid" out of "rapid prototyping"
>>8990683
What's wasteful about it? Obviously you can make armor any number of ways, why is it a waste to 3D print it?
>>8990537
Yeah but if you set it and forget it like you're Ron Popeil you run the risk of it erroring out at a crucial moment and suddenly you have a modern art piece instead of your armor. Or maybe that's just my friend's machine.
It's for lazy people that can afford it.
A lot of 3D models are on the internet, and more are being added, so you don't even have to make them.
>>8990692
higher cost of materials I would imagine.
>>8990683
>>8990733
If you have the money and honestly the cost of the materials to print outweighs the cost of traditional methods, do it. If you have the money and don't give a fuck about the costs, do it. Stay jelly anon.
>>8990730
Even if you get a model off the internet it is still a lot of post processing to clean up the parts and smooth them for painting. If you've never dealt with 3d printed parts it can be a pain in the ass. The only printers that can possibly make parts that don't need post processing cost $50,000+. For the $500-1,000 printers that most cosplayers can afford will require several steps of sanding at the least.
I'm guessing since she worked for lulzbot she used a taz 5 with a ~12x11x10 build volume. The big pieces probably had to be split up there were probably dozens of individual prints to that costume >>8990275 I'm betting the big pieces were 12+hr prints. I'm guessing there were around 30 prints minimum maybe up to 50. Although she could also have several printers dedicated to it so it could have been printed in a week or 2 and be sanding and painting each piece as it came off the printer
>>8990700
>suddenly you have a modern art piece instead of your armor.
That usually only happens if you have poor bed adhesion or you run out of filament. If you use the right bed coating and have it level properly its very rare to have a part pop off. It can also happen occasionally with printers that need to stream the data from a computer. If it looses a few commands it will jump around and start spraying plastic into thin air. The self contained ones with SD cards almost never loose a command
As for cost 10 rolls of Hatchbox filament would cost about $250. I would think you could print all of that armor with 10 rolls but I've never tried to print anything that huge. There is also cheaper material but Hatchbox is nice and reliable
You can do some seriously impressive shit with 3D printing, but it takes forever and a ton of work. This guy's an old friend of mine and made this armor at home with his own printer. (Which, to be fair, is a pretty crazy one.) He said he could do about one piece a day IIRC, just set it printing when he got home from work and it'd be done around the time he went to bed.
>>8990683
>waste is okay if it makes the company look good
this is the basis of all advertising
>>8991271
So...sanding something down is wasteful? I sure as hope you sell all your furniture. You're wasting trees. And don't use toilet paper. Or that genetically modified cotton that was grown to make your clothes. That car you may or may not drive has wheels that have been formed then shaved off to create grooves for traction.
Calm the fuck down anon.
>>8991260
Wow, that looks like a figure. Might be worth it if its that nice and if it lasts long enough.
>>8990585
So.....rich beta
How would costume contests treat 3D printed costumes? Are there any guidelines in place already?
Cuz I mean, it's takes a lot less effort to press "start" than to actually handcraft it. But I do suppose making the 3d models takes work...
>>8993718
You also have to paint it and put any additional shit on it yourself.
>>8993718
3D printed pieces require the same amount of finishing as worbla or EVA. The texture is like a vinyl record and usually can't be painted straight from the machine. Also did you model the pieces yourself or download it from somewhere? Show screenshots of your process because that's still work. Generally with contests though they want to see a lot of different crafts like sewing, props and wigs. Armor only costumes can be cool but from a judging standpoint will lose out to something equally well made with variety.
>>8993812
>>8993794
I see. I've never actually done 3D printing, so that's news to me.
Hmm, can't say I agree with the necessity for variety. I would really rather see great skill in one area than jack of all trades with lower quality. Otherwise, you'd get fiascos where an amazing craftsman gets jewed out of a prize to an overall lower quality contestant. "But hey, more variety right?"
>>8993830
Or you get the other fiasco kind where one piece of LED is working with everything else being poorly constructed cause "hey, it lights up so gimmie my prize!"
>>8992455
3d printing is not expensive
you're just salty for some reason
>>8990683
>Marketing =?= Waste
Uhhhuh, how's that Econ class working out for you Anon?
This is how most average 3D prints come out unless you've become really good at setting up the perfect heat and adhesion settings. Even without the bulges and gaps that texture still needs to be taken care of. Also the size a lot of the "hobby" machines can handle usually only go up to a cubic foot. If you're making anything bigger than that you have to model it in pieces.
>>8999245
Big Hero 6 is probably the only series where you could probably wear your armor straight from the printer if you get an extremely good run. If you look closely you can see the 3D printed ridge texture because it was all made in Hiro's 3D printer and the studio did their research.
>>8993718
I judged a contest last year for craftsmanship where an entrant had used a 3D printer for Samus armor. I have a small amount of experience with 3D printing props and armor myself, so I knew the work that had to go into it (sanding, smoothing, etc before painting) and judged it the same way I judge armor from worbla or another thermoplastic.
How neat is it? Can I tell what it is from far away? Is the surface noticeably uneven, how is the paint job? How much time did they spend smoothing/evening it out before painting, etc. Up close you could see the shortcuts the person took, where they didn't bother to fill in the ridges or smooth them out because you couldn't really see it from far away. It just made it look sloppy overall to me, and they didn't win anything.
>>8999245
what the hell kind of printer makes prints like the middle and left ones?
i use a lulzbot mini and never have i ever gotten anything close to that (yet)
i printed a charmander about 2 months ago and it came out a lot like the right one on the first try and it was even set at its lowest quality option.
>>8999762
lulzbots are pretty high end consumer printers. I'm sure they go through a lot of testing and it looks like they have their own customized version of Cura with settings specific for it.
A lot of cheap low-end printers are not so lucky. Usually the best they get is community suggested settings. You can also get less than great hardware which results in pic related. Terrible surface finish and shifting due to hardware issues. Supposedly this was from a Davinci but mine prints much surface finish then this and I've never had shifting this bad (it does happen occasionally with complex parts)
>>8990275
Filament is about $20 a roll and it can go a long way. If she used 10 or even 20 rolls, that's only $200-400 in materials for a sponsored cosplay.
>>8999247
It's a carbon fiber texture
>>9002907
Since it's SciFi it can be a mix of both but here you can see part of Baymax's original armor has a bunch of "stilts" under it which is very common in 3D printing for supporting shapes which don't have a solid, balanced platform.
>>8990537
Actually its all about skill and time investment vs money.
Sure traditional methods are probably cheaper and faster. But you can 3d print with minimal knowledge while you are doing something else.
>>8993812
Doesent that heavily depend on type of printer? Like extruder vs those that use laser to harden resin or whateve is in the liquid.
>>9008027
Laser resin printers have very tiny build areas usually only about 4"x4". Also the resin is ridiculously expensive about 2-3x the cost of the filament . They are mainly for small detailed parts like jewelry and small action figures.
Also the resin is generally very brittle unless you buy even more expensive "Tough" resins.
3D printing is really nice for joints. Its also really nice because even shit quality plastic will have a lot of nice solid feel once the internal structure is a weird mesh to reinforce it.
As far as I understand, the biggest bitch about 3D printing is that you still need the joints to work, they still need to go somewhere, and you still need to sandpaper everything.
>>8993718
Technology is currently at a stage where the 3D printed materials are not huge. They need to be assembled. And they are... very unsmooth.
So you have to spend a lot of time sandpapering it, then assembling, then doing the normal stuff.
