10mm BAOR 3d Prints

 

A while ago, before PSC had got around to releasing its 10mm NORTHAG stuff, I thought I'd 3d print some for myself. At that time I only had my Ender 3 printer, and though the resulting prints were okay for game pieces, they weren't fantastic.

Recently I got myself an Elegoo Mars Pro resin printer, so I thought I'd print some more to see how they'd look. I'm pretty happy with they way they turned out, in the end.

I doubt that I'll proceed with this project though. Now that infantry are readily available from PSC and elsewhere, and the amount of infantry I'm liable to need for a game means that the cost isn't too exorbitant, there doesn't seem to be all that much point in DIY stuff.

For comparison, here's a fire-team I printed in PLA
on my Ender 3 FDM machine.

Chieftain AVLB (1:150)

My friend Steve has recently become the proud owner of a Creality resin printer, and one of the things he printed is the hull of this 1:150 scale Chieftain AVLB (bridgelayer). Then he gave it to me, which was very nice of him.

I printed the bridge myself on my Ender 3, after adding some treads to the top surfaces which were missing from the original STL. The bridge is detachable from the hull, and one of these days I'll also print a deployed version of it.

Centurion AVRE – fascine (1:150)

I printed a pipe fascine for my 1:150 scale Centurion AVRE (digital model by Bergman).

The fascine is attached by magnets, so it can be added or removed at whim.

It's heavy enough that I had to glue a slug of lead under the hull rear to keep it from nosing over under its weight.

Centurion AVRE (1:150)

I've got myself something for my 1:150 scale 1983 BAOR, for pushing and pulling and blowing things up: a Centurion AVRE.

It's the 1:100 scale Bergman model, rescaled to 66% and printed on my Ender 3.

My friend Steve is awaiting the arrival of a Creality DLP resin printer, and I'm all agog to see how it performs. I suspect I shall have to end up getting myself something similar, even though resin printers are a lot more expensive to run. The quality of print they're capable of is just much, much better than my trusty FDM machine will ever be able to produce.

More 1:150 BAOR

Some more vehicles for my BG:NORTHAG 1:150 Brits are complete.

Above are FV432 APCs, and to the right, a FV104 Samaritan battlefield ambulance.

All are 3d printed in PLA on my Ender 3.

Command & Control in 1:150 Scale

This is a FV105 Sultan, a British command vehicle based on the CVRT series, modelled in 1:100 scale by loxfil and printed by me in 1:150 scale for my BG:NORTHAG BAOR force.

STLs are available from https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/family-cvr-t-set-two-fv104-samaritan-fv105-sultan/

I don't have any suitable 10mm infantry command figures for it as yet, and I'll probably wait until we're plague-free and things are more or less back to normal before I try ordering any from overseas.

I've magnetised the base and vehicle, so that the vehicle can be used separately if need be. The base itself is cut down from an old credit card, and flocked with my home-made sawdust and foam flocks.

Chieftain 5 (1:150 scale, remix)

The remixed model

Some time ago, I downloaded a 1:100 scale Chieftain 5 model from Thingiverse that was intended for printing at 1/300 (6mm) scale.

Unfortunately, I don't recall who was the original designer.

I rescaled it to 1:150 for my BG:NORTHAG British army.

It was fine, as far as it went: the proportions were good, but it was quite simplified in several areas to make it printable in very small scale.

I decided to tinker with it a bit — not a lot, but just enough to refine some of its details.

I gave it a new gun barrel, and refined the curves of the cast turret front. I added sockets so that I could magnetize the turret. And I thinned down the tracks, and added a bit of track detail.

I also split the hull in half, fore and aft, and printed it in two pieces. This gave me much smoother printing of the very shallow curves of the hull front.

As I said, it was OK before, but I like it better now.

The original model

Very Tiny Toy Soldiers

Since the Royal Mail has not been delivering anything to New Zealand, and I have the Battlegroup: NORTHAG rules to try out but no access to 1:150 – 1:144 scale infantry, I thought that perhaps I should try making some of my own.

And here (right) is the first test print, a four-man 1980s BAOR fire team, alongside a pair of gigantic towering PSC 15mm WWII Soviets, for comparison.

My Ender 3 with its 0.4mm nozzle isn't capable of rendering all the detail present in the model, but it does a good enough job for wargaming purposes.

Here they are alongside a 1:150 scale FV432

This was the first attempt. They printed better, but were about 25% too large.

Single

Team base

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Next day...

Now I've added a Carl Gustav team. Haven't printed this one yet, but I don't anticipate any particular issues after printing the fire team base.

Centurion and Chieftain (1:150)

It's a bit out of the period for Battlegroup NORTHAG (which is nominally set in 1983) but I really like Centurions so I made some anyway.

This is 3d printed on my Ender 3 from a model by M. Bergman. It's 1:150 scale, which I chose for all my BG-NORTHAG stuff because it's close enough to 1:144 to play on the same table, and because it makes for easier scaling.

I'm not sure exactly what sort of markings British armour would have had in the mid-'80s, but from the photos I've seen, any markings there were seem to be pretty small and low-viz, so I probably won't bother with any at all.

I have some Chieftains as well, of course. This is also 1:150 scale, and it's printed from a much less refined model than the Centurion, as it was intended for printing at 1:285 - 1:300 scale. However, it is Chieftain shaped, and it will do the job for me at tabletop distances.

I do have a more detailed model of a Chieftain in my collection, but its proportions are a bit out of whack, so I actually prefer the lower-detailed one.

I don't recall who it was who designed this model, unfortunately, and the .STL file format doesn't store useful metadata like author name at all.

Jumping back in time a bit, here's the Conqueror. It was intended as a long range heavy gun tank (with a massive, for the time, 120mm gun) to support the Centurions against the Soviets' JS-III, which had really put the shits up the allies when it appeared just after WWII.

I've elected to paint it in plain overall green (but not the dark Deep Bronze Green of peacetime). The plan was, at the time, to repaint everything in their battlefield disruptive livery, if and when it all kicked off. Assuming there was time, of course. Later on, in the late 1960s – early '70s, somebody decided that was a silly idea, and they started keeping everything in battle-ready paint all the time.

Leaping back ahead, this one is a Challenger 1, which only just squeaks in to BG-NORTHAG's 1983 setting.

It was supposed to be the replacement for Chieftain, but as it turned out it never made up more than a third of the British tank strength before it was superseded by the Challenger II.

BAOR Beginnings (Again)

I've made a start on a 1/150 scale 1980s BAOR force. I've done this before, not too long ago, in 1/300 scale, but this scale will be easier for me to see and manipulate on the table. I'll mostly just be replicating that micro-scale army in 1/150 really.

I never actually got much use out of the 1/300 scale stuff, and I'm still pretty ignorant of post-WWII equipment and doctrine, but if they maintain the quality of their WWII stuff, I expect NORTHAG will serve pretty well as a broad-strokes introduction to the period.

The infantry are going to be the problematic part. I can print them OK, but at the moment I have no digital models specifically for 1980s British troops, and I'll quite likely end up having to sculpt some.

Cura Profiles — 1/150 Comparison Prints

With the imminent release of NORTHAG I've become interested in printing some 1980s BAOR stuff in 1/150 scale. I thought I would do a comparison test to see what sort of printing time to quality trade-offs I could afford to make. I don't require diorama-quality models for my wargaming pieces, but I do like them to look decent at least.

The test-bed model I chose is a Chieftain tank, modeled by a chap who goes by the Thingiverse moniker of Captain_Ahab_62. It was modeled in 1/100 scale, but intended to be printed scaled down to 1/285; I've scaled it down to 1/150.

All of them were sliced in Cura 4.1 and printed on my Creality Ender 3 in eSun PLA+. All were printed on a raft, using tree supports with support roofs enabled. All are shown straight off the printer, without any cleanup at all.

This is printed with the FDG Minis profile I've got into the habit of using for my 15mm stuff.
The layer height is 0.08mm, print time was 8 hours 22 minutes.

This one uses Cura's built-in "Extra Fine" profile.
Layer height is 0.06mm, print time was 5 hours 57 minutes.

This one also uses a built-in Cura "Fine" profile.
Layer height is 0.1mm, print time was 3 hours 31 minutes.

The higher speed of the built-in Cura profiles appears to have given me a bit of ringing in vertical surfaces, but I doubt that that would be very apparent under a coat of paint, and the advantage in print times over that of the FDG profile is substantial. The Fine profile renders adequate results for playing pieces, and it is quite quick, but the Extra Fine profile is markedly superior, and still fast enough that I could get three tanks off the printer in a day's run, so unless there's a matter of great urgency, that's probably what I'll use.