So far I haven't seen any built-from-scratch 3D printed Transformers of a quality comparable to toys made by Takara and/or third parties. I have a few questions: Do any exist? Have I just not looked hard enough? What challenges prevent people from 3D printing TFs from scratch? What, if anything, can be done to overcome these challenges? I'm tinkering with Blender to design a custom from scratch with the idea that I'd have it printed in pieces by Shapeways and then paint/assemble it. I'm new to 3d modelling so I haven't gotten too far into the project (I'm mostly blocking out where the parts will go and their rough shapes) and I'm sure there are going to be many unforseen difficulties, but I just wanted to know if this type of thing had been done before with any sort of success and, if not, why not? Also, if I miraculously actually manage to pull this off without giving up, what would be the best way to obtain screws and pins that could be easily standardized: by which I mean, I'd want to be able to post instructions "I used X screw and Y pin from Z source" so others could print from Shapeways and easily follow along. I haven't built any of the joints yet or separated the parts into the smaller pieces that would screw together and I want to do so already knowing what parts will be needed as well as being sure they'll be available.
First there are some awesome designers on here and some who sell on shapeways. Dig a little and you'll find some good stuff. This is one of my favorites: The Thugmeister (994C829AE) by fakebusker83 The drawbacks of 3d printing are: The plastics are generally not as durable and/or flexible as ones used in industrial casting. This is and can change... Depending on the printer, design, and material details can be hard to get correct. 3d printing a deluxe sized bot is expensive. It generally takes several prints and design adjustments to work out the kinks. This can add up quickly. Just browse Shapeways and/or see what it costs to print a small design. Now think in terms of 60 plus pieces that have to fit together perfectly. The advantages over scratch building (if you're a good designer): It can be quicker and time is money. It can help be more precise. It can help create a piece and sprues for reproduction more efficiently. It can be cheaper than blowing through materials when creating preliminary or beta designs. I am not sure of a wholesale screws and pins source. I use the 300+ eyeglass screws sold on ebay.
I myself have considered using small nails as pins should I ever get to that point. I'm intrigued about using screws tho. How would that work?
Some picture frame/arts and crafts nails (tacks but not thumbtacks) have knurled ends toward the head or bottom so I guess they could be used. They come in numerous sizes and thicknesses. I have seen that before but don't know exactly where. This is very much a MacGuyver sport where your imagination and testing to see a material's use is the only limit.
I use screws in some of the stuff I print. I just use small ones from the hardware store. Beauty thing is, if you can't find the exact screw you need, you just design around what you have.
I think you really nailed all of the main points. I don't think you can really do a full on bot at this point economically or efficiently. 3D printing is great for addon parts that need further work (painting, sanding) but are not going to be production pieces because of the types of plastics. They cannot easily achieve an A1 surface finish and if they do are very brittle. Tolerances will not be the same. Also, I think computer prototyping in 3D to move the parts around and check stresses and clearances is going to take days on a deluxe figure and you are better off doing prototyping on the end material than printing in a test material that will not provide a comparable test. Further, with a production bot you are looking at economies of scale. The 3D printed test is just going to be so expensive to do on your own. It is definitely a hobby for a one of a kind but not what I see as a feasible way to get to a reproducible form.
Thanks for the feedback everybody. I realize 3D printing is expensive but I really wanted to build the whole thing from scratch rather than existing parts. Of course the other factor is I have frequently started some sort of project or another, not necessarily toy related, and lost steam before finishing (I'm an artist with like a dozen or so finished digital paintings and ~100 that I'll get back to "someday.") So, if I'm honest with myself, there's a very good chance I'll run out of steam before finishing and I would hate to have spent any significant amount of money on materials only to abandon the project. With 3D design, if I give up before I reach the printing phase, I'm not out any money. I'm pretty sure that, if I made it to the point of printing, I could stick with it through the sanding, finishing, and painting. On the cost side, if I were to attempt a figure on the scale of a voyager or a masterpiece carbot (6.5-7 inches), does anybody know about how much that would be to print from Shapeways? Most parts would be the standard plastic, though a few that need more detail would be the ultra detail frosted. Say about 15% would be high-detail. I was thinking of doing Arcee so it wouldn't be super bulky but it's still a significant amount of material (she's slender but, even if I figure out ways to reduce kibble, she's going to have a pretty big backpack). Funny thing is, I probably wouldn't buy a third party Masterpiece-style Arcee for more than $100 but I can easily see myself spending $200ish for my own creation even though it would be of lower quality. I suppose part of that is the joy of building it myself (who among us didn't play with Transformers as kids and wish they could build their own?) Screws would mostly be to hold fixed parts together. The two halves of a thigh for example. And then a pin would be used to connect the thigh to the waist joint or whatever. There's also a way to do a hinge-type joint where two fixed parts go around a third swinging part. The fixed parts would have a plastic shaft bridging them and that shaft would go through a hole in the third part. The two fixed parts would be screwed together through a hole in the middle of the shaft while the third part would be free to rotate on the shaft. I believe the voyager class Beast Hunters Optimus had hip joints that worked like that.
Yeah, I get all that. I should be more specific: How would you use the screws? Would you just start screwing parts together and let the screw tap its own holes? Or would you drill a small guide hole where you would later put a screw? Or model a hole in the part?
Oh. You'd model a hole. You could tap the hole if you like or you could just let the screw do it. I guess you could model a post and drill into it but why not just model the hole?
This 3D Print toy is currently for sale. You should get one to study https://www.facebook.com/Fan-built-CHUG-Style-Beast-Wars-Dinobot-558750100967940/
That looks awesome! Don't think I'll get it: I never had any interest in Beast Wars (I was a die-hard G1er until Transformers Prime came along and was awesome). But it's good to know it's possible. Here's what I've got so far. There's no solid volumes and the parts are still very rudimentary but it's still really early.
Please let me know when you do. I'd love to exchange tips. I'm finding that this is very difficult. I mean I knew it would be, but it's interesting the challenges I run into. I made the mistake of fully modeling a few parts and then trying to figure out how to make them work with the transformation only to find that they are very much in each other's way and I've got to either massively redesign them or figure out a way to break them into smaller pieces that fold out of the way in transformation (not very practical in this case). Not a big deal though: with this being my first attempt at 3d modeling, I figured I'd be throwing out and rebuilding several parts as my skills improve. Having said that, I'm finding that 3d modeling isn't as difficult as I expected (engineering a transformer is the difficult part). I'm using Blender which is very powerful and has all kinds of fun tools to make it easier. It's still a very slow process, but I rarely hit a wall or anything: it seems if I can figure out the shape I want, with some patience I can create it in Blender. Another thing is I'm finding Arcee to be more difficult than I expected. I figured she was pretty close to being a shell former so the robot parts would be easy to design but it turns out it's more difficult than I expected figuring out how to squeeze everything into the shell. I'm having fun though, so, even if it never comes to fruition, it's still a rewarding experience.
I always start with a tubular frame with joints in robot form and build from there. It seems to be easier to then add parts once deciding on how to fold up the bot. But, as you mentioned tolerances between parts is a booger. This is also the biggest challenge when getting your prototyped parts to work together. Do you have anymore pics of the progress you're making? Arcee is great to start with... with a little tweaking you'll also have a good blur as well.
Wow.. A 3D noob starting with something as difficult as a transformer? With Blender no less? You are using Blender because it's free, and some people sculpt with it and send the pieces to 3D printers. You can do that. It could ultimately work. But I fear you are creating a LOT of difficulty and frustration for yourself. First and foremost, Blender is an art program. It's a 3D modeler and animator that has a reportedly steep learning curve. While you CAN make industrial shaped parts with it, it's not as precise as an actual CAD package. I have a CAD background, and the mainstay of my work is in AutoCAD, where I also did quite a bit with Solidworks. But alas, I changed jobs and no longer have access to Solidworks. There are 3D CAD freebies out there: 1) Onshape, which is a cloud based 3D CAD package. 2) PTC Creo Elements is a downloadable 3D CAD package, but you need to stay connected to the internet for it to stay active. 3) Autodesk Fusion is mostly cloud based. All 3 have you make 3D parts, which then you make assemblies out of. But the most important factor is accuracy. I personally found Fusion to be confusing, and have only messed with the other 2 a little bit. Onshape so far looks promising for myself, altho I would prefer something to DL and keep. My advice: start with pencil and paper. Then take it into 2D Cad (I advise Draftsite. They have a freebie that seems to work almost as good as AutoCAD when it comes to general drafting.) Then after you have the bugs worked out, THEN take it to 3D.
This is what I've got so far of the legs. Keep in mind that every time I make significant progress, I figure out a better way to do it and have to start over on various parts (gonna' rebuild the bikini/skirt/whatever part today I think). Also keep in mind that I'm pretty much only doing this on the weekends so progress is incredibly slow. The robot in the background is just some generic 3d model female robot I found online and imported for scale (I set it to 7" height 'cuz I figured that's about where Arcee should be to scale properly with 6.5" MP carbots and 10" MP Optimus). So now that I've shown the hips/leg, I have to almost completely redesign them 'cuz I tried putting the parts where they'd go during transformation last night and realized that there's about 3mm of overlap between the hip and thigh in vehicle mode. I'll probably also have to widen the vehicle mode a little (I guess that's why all Arcee toys have a wider car mode than you see in the movie/cartoon). I also have to say that, while I'm definitely keeping an eye on the her design in the '86 movie, I'm not going for strict toon accuracy. It's a little embarrassing to admit but I'm trying to make her just a little sexier. I'm taking some desgin cues from this model (though obviously not that mousy face and I'm trying to not go quite as slender in the legs) and from this guy's work. What I want most from this project is an Arcee who won't look out of place standing next to my MP Transformers. I would like her to have as small a backpack as possible (I really don't want it to look like she's just wearing her vehicle mode on her back) and I really don't want to see wheels poking out of the back of her legs (I have some ideas on that but still not sure how I'm going to pull it off). I'd also like her vehicle mode to look as good as possible and I'd like to try to avoid the pizza-cutter wheels every Arcee toy has (I'll probably have to give up on that: there simply isn't anywhere to put thicker wheels on her body). @bellpeppers, I may have to try out some of those programs but I'm actually starting to get pretty comfortable with Blender and I love how easy some of the tools make it (using the subdivision modifier to make a nice smooth model that only have a few vertices to edit is awesome). EDIT: Remolded hips:
I kinda' figured that would be the case. For other TFs besides Arcee, cad would probably be better but Arcee has a lot of rounded shapes. The remolded hips have brought it down to 1mm of overlap which I should be able to shave from the inner thigh without too much impact on the bot mode: shrink half a mm off each side and then have it move out just a little further in transformation. I'm a bit intimidated by all of the car shell that I need to figure out how to collapse. I'm thinking I might have the hood fold in half and form the back of the bot mode torso so I'm not trying to fit it and the trunk into the backpack at the same time. I'll have to try it and see how it goes. I'm also not looking forward to figuring out how to squeeze in the wheels.
Personally, I would do a mock up with an artboard in order to get the basic transformation down before even starting with CAD work. It'll give you a better understanding of dimensions and engineering and it'll also allow you to discover as you build in a physical form. After you have the transformation down, translate it into CAD, readjust the forms, then add surface detail. My two cents.
That's not a bad idea. Maybe that's what I'll do next time if I do another one of these. Might save a lot of headache. Here's the latest update: I got the leg to transform and fit in place with no overlap. I had to relearn some high school trigonometry (joke's on me: I said I'd never use it) to figure out exactly where to put the transformation joint in the leg and it worked, but strangely my calculations on the angle the leg needed to bend were completely off. No idea how that happened but I found the angle through trial and error so whatever. Now I just have to build the actual joint. I've replaced almost all of the car parts and I'm working with all solid volumes now (in retrospect, there was never any reason to use hollow faces but it was good practice anyway). The plan is for the trunk section to collapse horizontally, meaning the parts that bridge the middle to the legs will slide into the middle to reduce the backpack size. I've still got to rough out the dashboard and seats and then see if I can figure out where I want them to go in transformation. I have an idea for making the seats collapse horizontally to keep her waist narrow but the windshield is going to be obnoxious unless I segment it and that's kind of hard to get away with when doing clear plastic (Shapeways frosted ultra detail plastic can be polished to make it clear with a yellowish tint). EDIT: One more quick screenshot of the WIP bot mode with the newly sculpted chest piece.
