Iron Man: Mark III - 3D Printed

Dancin_Fool

Well-Known Member
Hey guys, I've been working on upgrading my Mark 3 model to get it ready for printing. To backtrack a little I bought a Ditto 3d printer kit in December and wanted an epic first project!

I decided to start off with the arm. After a couple of scaling malfunctions I think I've finally got everything figured out.

I set up a Facebook page to document all my experiments with my 3d printer. www.facebook.com/thearmoredgarage

Here's some pictures of the forearm and glove I printed. The glove is a little small but I wanted to see what kind of finish I could get so I finished part of it. Thanks to Zabana for creating such an awesome hand model.

ImageUploadedByTapatalk1391276392.045676.jpg
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Re: 3D Printed Iron Man Mark 3

Been following your progress on Facebook. Very jealous. I can't wait to get my 3D printer. How do you like the Ditto?
 
3D Printed Iron Man Mark 3

I love it. I've had a couple issues but i think that's because I built it myself from a kit. Now that I've gotten all the kinks mostly worked out its great.

Every couple prints I seem to have trouble getting the bed level and that's super frustrating but I think that's more of a lack of patience on my part. When I take my time and make sure everything's calibrated the prints go really smooth.

The software aspect can be a bit of a pain. It came with a software package that has everything set up optimally for the printer, but the slicer which slices up the models is really slow.

I experimented with a bunch of the slicers that are out there but I seem to get the best results with the slow one that came with it so I've gone back to that one.

It's one of those things that if you have the time and you're willing to put the time in you can get amazing results.

Which printer did you go with?


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Re: 3D Printed Iron Man Mark 3

Looking forward to seeing your progress on this! Are you using ABS or PLA? And what resolution? I'm still tweaking my Solidoodle 3, but it's coming along nicely. Sure is fun to watch, that's for sure :)
 
Re: 3D Printed Iron Man Mark 3

The finish on the glove is awesome. But what about doing the larger parts like the chest plate ? The printer only prints so big.
How do you do the larger objects ?
 
Re: 3D Printed Iron Man Mark 3

You divide the model into manageable pieces that fit on the printer bed, like D_F did with the bicep (as seen on his Facebook page)
 
3D Printed Iron Man Mark 3

Hey Kevin, I print in PLA, I don't have a heated bed so ABS is out. I've been printing at 0.2mm layer height, quite happy with the results. I recently switched filament for the first time and am finding I'm getting a smoother print with the colored filament. I suspect this is just from the difference in melting point between different colors though.

Yeah it's definitely fun to watch. I showed my parents a video of it printing a while ago and it just blew their minds lol.

Jintosh, for larger pieces like Kevin said I just split it into smaller pieces. I have a decent size bed but I like keeping the pieces a little smaller in case something goes wrong during the print I don't lose the whole print that way.

I model in little cubes along the edges on the inside with cylinders through them and plan on putting little rivets through them to help line everything up.

I've got the lower forearm printing right now so if all goes well I'll have more pictures in the morning. It amazes me how well these things run. I've had mine running almost non stop every night since I got it.


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Re: 3D Printed Iron Man Mark 3

Here's the forearm fresh off the printer. It fits like a glove. I still need to print another piece I made that sits inside the lower forearm and holds the upper piece to the lower arm.

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Re: 3D Printed Iron Man Mark 3

I had looked at 3D printers and scanners but it seems like there's a lot of work involved in turning out a decent product.
I just don't have the training to even begin something like this. Guess I'll have to hang around here and watch everyone
else's projects before diving in.
 
Re: 3D Printed Iron Man Mark 3

Yeah it's definitely not as simple as hitting a print button and getting a finished product. There's so many settings and quite often they need to be tuned slightly different for each model to get the best result.

Then there's also the creation side of it. I've put countless hours into creating this model and then tweaking it so it prints properly.

I like it though I've really enjoyed playing with the technology.


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Re: 3D Printed Iron Man Mark 3

That's awesome man! I got my airwolf XL 3d printer working about a week ago and am loving it. I've been trying to find models of iron to print but am having a hard time. I can't model at all so am left with trying to find/buy printable models. I love the idea of modeling in cubes to help you anchor the pieces. Can't wait to see more!
 
Thanks Talshadar, great to hear about the printer, have you checked out Drumguy and KenLandrum's threads. Both of them have Iron Man parts ready to go for printing.

http://www.therpf.com/f78/my-iron-m...t-files-new-helmet-available-post-1-a-189853/
http://www.therpf.com/f78/iron-man-mkiii-3d-print-files-free-182942/

In my own progress I just finished printing a piece which sits inside the lower forearm. This piece allows the upper forearm to slide inside of the lower forearm. The upper forearm locks into place but the lower forearm can still freely rotate.

I've also started to finish the pieces. You can see the first coat of primer and filler on the lower forearm.

Next up will be the fins on the forearm. I've also started modelling the rocket launch mechanism that will sit underneath the fins. I did some checks when I tried on the forearm this morning and it looks like there should be enough room for the servo and the mechanism to run the launcher.

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Awesome!!! How much material did you spend on one arm? Because I have a 3d printer also and I thought about print some parts instead of making of pepakura files. How much material did it get? 500gr an entire arm?
 
That's tough to say, I'd say on the forearm yeah it's probably somewhere around 500 grams. I think the full arm will be about a kg.
 
Man that is such awesome work. What size print bed do you have?

I've been working on a mark vii instead of a III so am having a real difficult time finding print files for anything other than the helmet. I am no good at modelling so it's either find the models or stick with pepakura. I've printed off a couple ear pieces but I'd like to be able to print the arm pieces and parts of the legs/feet but haven't been able to find them. Looking forward to seeing the whole suit.
 
My print bed is 8x7 inches and 9 inches in the z axis.

I've been enjoying revisiting my model and reworking it for printing.

You should have a go at learning how to model. It's such a great skill to have when you own a 3d printer.


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What software do you use for the modeling? What's your process like to go from there to printable STL files?

matthew

My print bed is 8x7 inches and 9 inches in the z axis.

I've been enjoying revisiting my model and reworking it for printing.

You should have a go at learning how to model. It's such a great skill to have when you own a 3d printer.


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I do all my modeling in 3ds max. I model all the parts similar to as I would for pepakura. Once I'm happy with the shape of the model I set up all the crease values for edges that I want to be hard edges. This is so when I apply a turbo smooth modifier the edges will keep their sharpness. Then I apply a shell modifier so the the model has some thickness. Depending on the part ill add another edit poly modifier on top of this and clean up the inside of the shell.

At this point I have a finished model I'd like to print. From here I apply a slice modifier so I can split the mesh up for printing I then add the bracket meshes to the edges where I sliced so that I can rejoin and align the pieces after I print them.

Then I rotate the pieces to best reduce the amount of support material I'll need and export to STL from Max. I use skeineforge to slice the mesh. I find its slow but gives me the best results out of any slicers I've tried.


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Wow. I knew it was a lot of work but that's crazy. I guess once you've done it enough some of it becomes a bit of a routine. That doesn't even cover the skill required to actually model something to begin with. Fantastic work man.

Matt

I do all my modeling in 3ds max. I model all the parts similar to as I would for pepakura. Once I'm happy with the shape of the model I set up all the crease values for edges that I want to be hard edges. This is so when I apply a turbo smooth modifier the edges will keep their sharpness. Then I apply a shell modifier so the the model has some thickness. Depending on the part ill add another edit poly modifier on top of this and clean up the inside of the shell.

At this point I have a finished model I'd like to print. From here I apply a slice modifier so I can split the mesh up for printing I then add the bracket meshes to the edges where I sliced so that I can rejoin and align the pieces after I print them.

Then I rotate the pieces to best reduce the amount of support material I'll need and export to STL from Max. I use skeineforge to slice the mesh. I find its slow but gives me the best results out of any slicers I've tried.


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