In the beginning.

Hokey dokey, here we go. This blog is hopefully going to be an online record of my tentative first steps in to the world of home 3D Printing.

And already it looks as though I may have backed the wrong horse. Doh ! More on that in a bit.

So I work in the film industry as a maker and over the last few years have had my eye on the emergence of home 3Dprinters. It's got the potential to be a game changer in our Industry and as a result i'm also having to get to grips/learn various 3D modelling and sculpting programs. Coming up to forty  and going back to school. Not literally. Fuck that.

Any way 3D printing has this year taken off massively in the UK and it seems like everything is being printed  ( SLA / SLS  not FDM ) at the moment even if it's not the correct procedure for the required results. It's  like every one is caught up in the hype of what these machines are capable of with out realising that they are basically for prototyping. It doesn't help that art directors don't actually under stand how things are made so when someone shows them this amazing machine that can just print things overnight they are blown away. They are not talking to the guys who make this stuff and know that it won't work for moulding purposes etc they just think its a finished article.

I remember working on Ridley Scotts Prometheus a few years ago and having to make the morphine stab rig that Noomi Rapace uses in the MediPod scene. Now when I was prototyping that I could have done with a 3Dprinter.

Anyway so many designs are coming down to us now as 3D files I thought about getting a benchtop 3Dprinter that I could use to print certain parts for various jobs (  not the whole thing as that normally is not the best way .)

One of my friends  has had a Ultimaker for a couple of months now and although at times he has been tearing his hair out,  he now has it running pretty sweet. Something that would take at least two weeks for me to make ( And i'm fast ) his machine printed in 50 hours and that was with two failures.

That's when I decided to take the plunge and went for it. I'd been vaguely following the reprap and FDM scene for a while and was going to go for a Replicator two but found a cubify cube BNIB for half the asking price and one evening ( while having a couple of beers, again, Doh ) bought it.

I am now the proud owner of the cube and it should arrive on tuesday.

Back to the Doh !

I really cant find anything on the web that sings the praises of the bloody thing. I cant find any photo's of prints that are anything but ropey. Still it's done now so come tuesday we'll see.

Bring it !