Of Displays and Disappointment

Now that I have the display cases, I must make haste with improvements. Since some part of the inspiration for this was the finding of a second-hand FDM 3D printer, I am going to be attempting to print my way to a beautiful backdrop scenery and some accessories to give depth. I lack the basic skills that I’m sure they teach school kids these days every day, specifically, 3D modelling software is an enigma. So I had little hope of designing my own at this point.  I decided on printed tiles for the base and set out across the interweb, attempting to find something that could work on my slightly outdated printer. Some failed attempts later, I happened across the work of the Artist Almost Painted, who had done the hard part for me and produced a lovely range of tiles and walls that were already Dark Angels themed and Scifi/Grimdark compatible. Many thanks to them. With some scaling, Cura, TinkerCad and much failure, I printed the first batch.

The tiles came out amazing. I was happy with the first pass and just printed another immediately. It also passed, and I just threw them in to eyeball it, and I was happy with the layout coming together. They are printed with the DA ensignia raised, so I am not worried about the detail getting lost. It should hold up once painted. The middle was another tile designed by Almost Painted that I butchered with Cura, to scale in between the DA two, and it looked passable on the first print as well. PLA+ at 220°C has been treating me well as a newcomer to FDM printing.

Next, I tried some of their wall designs; however, they came scaled at 75mm, and I didn’t notice, printed two before I realised from my perspective that the walls looked underscaled for the scale of the large tiles.

So I decided to take a look at the scale, watch more YouTube tutorials on Cura, and print some in accordance with the proportions of the tiles I had already made. More walls it was, these all changed in colour to white, but the filament remains by the same supplier and is still PLA+, no change to settings. I printed two more wall tiles correctly but poorly scaled, and then another for the middle.  I was pretty pleased with these, and after putting them in alongside the floor tiles, I love the look so far. The misprinted walls inspired me, instead of scraping them, I kept going up the back of the display case to the next level and now, perhaps potentially to the top. With those in place, it has started to creep ever upwards.