"Slice and Dice" - The Digital Side of 3D Printing

 Welcome back to The Art of Caesura!

I'm sending loads of positive vibes your way, especially if you need them today!

We're currently in the middle of our coverage of 3D resin printing. In an attempt to keep these posts relatively "evergreen" I have, until now, tried to avoid speaking at length about specific technologies (I haven't done a post on my specific printer, for example), but rather we have explored concepts pertinent to 3D printing, and my "shopping list" last week of everything required for 3D printing is quite generalizable. 

Today, however, is a little different. I am going to be writing about what goes into 3D printing before you even turn on the printer: slicing!

There are many "slicing" programs available, the only one that I have ever used is Chitubox, because this is the one that came with my printer. It does pretty much everything I need it to do, but, rather than making this post a Chitubox Tutorial, I am going to speak more broadly about what this whole side of the hobby is about. 

What is a Slicer? 

Wait...before we get into that we first have to look at the files of 3D models that we will be printing. These 3D model files are saved as STLs (STereoLithography or Standard Tessellation Language).

So, where do we get these STL files? Loads of places! This is actually one of the more fun aspects of 3D printing. It's like pouring through the Warhammer catalogues of olde. 

Some of the sites I use are: 

MyMiniFactory

    Where two of the artists I would specifically recommend are: 

• 3DArtGuy
• Bulkamancer (honestly, the only good ones are in the Patreon)

Cults3D

Yeggi

But these are only the larger sites, and much of the joy will come from finding an artist you really like and either joining their Patreon or finding other specific places they post their stuff. 

For example, Westfalia Miniatures, make a bunch of Trench Crusade stuff which is rad. Likewise, Bestiarum make incredible stuff as do Creature Caster (based in British Columbia, Canada - where I'm from!).

The list goes on and on and as I say, the shear sense of possibility is one of the exciting aspects of 3D printing. You can pretty much type in any fandom you're interested in and add STL and you are sure to find something. 

Okay, so you have your STL, now what? 

Now we get back to your Slicing Program (slicer). Slicing files, as you shall soon see, is a fun mini-game unto itself! The first time you use your slicer you input the model of your 3D printer and then it will display a virtual representation of your build plate - which will be the exact dimensions of your real (physical) build plate.

You then upload STLs and you will see them pop into this virtual space. This is where the fun part comes in. Because of how the 3D printer works, the print time is more related to the height of the thing you're printing rather than how many things you are printing - because the rate-limiting step is the number of layers - and tall things have more layers. So printing a whole build plate of 32mm miniatures (you could maybe fit 30 models on there) wouldn't take any longer than printing one 32mm miniature, and with time being my most limited commodity, I am incentivised to print as many models at once as possible.

This is just an example of a build plate that I threw some models on to demonstrate, in reality I would fill it much more densely

This is where that mini-game component comes in, to maximize efficiency you have something of a Tetris game on your hands of rotating and manipulating the models in this virtual space so that you can fit as many on the build plate as possible. 

But there are some other restrictions: 

• You can't have any pieces that would print unconnected to any other part of a model (islands)
• You can't have any bits overhanging other models
• You want the back or underside of the model to be facing the build-plate as that's the side that the supports will attach to, and they can sometimes leave a mark on the mini.
• You can't have any hollow miniatures without drainage holes (they will trap uncured resin inside them which can cause future (major) problems. 

It's honestly more fun than hard - a nice little challenge to cram as much stuff on as possible within the parameters above. 

Some models will come pre-supported (with the support lattice which will hold the model off the build plate already prepared by the artist), others, you have to support yourself - but the program has an "auto-support" function, which hasn't failed me yet. 

So once you have your build plate populated, then you "slice" it. The software slices up the 3D models into slices which are the height of your pre-set calibrations (I slice at 20 microns, for amazing detail, but longer print-time). You then save this sliced file onto a USB - many machines (including mine) have wifi, but mine is out in the garage.  

And that's it. The printer basically does the rest for you!

As always, I hope that was helpful. Thank you for tuning in, I'll see you next Friday on The Art of Caesura!

Reading: Enter Ghost - Isabella Hammad

Watching: Severance (Season 2)

Next Week:

Workflow...