O boy, what did I get myself into

So I basicly made a long term promise to the group to 3d print 2 tables worth of modular terrain, one table based on a abondoned underwater base and the other based on a Haqqislam trading station in space. Besides that I also promised to make some city tiles to play on.

To give you guys a idea, here is the description I've given the guys at my local group;

Abandoned underwater base
Lots of narrow hallways connected to large dome structures. Some domes will be quite open while others are tight and filled with corridors and rooms. Some area’s are flooded or give access to water, allowing troops with Aquatic terrain to traverse large sections of the game table relatively unharmed.

This is probably the most difficult to make, requiring a lot of parts for the domes and probably the one requiring the most storage space. However it’s also the one I’m most excited about.

Space cargo docks
Welcome to alharir alsuwq, the silk markets. This is the place where the silk and all other valuable commodities are brought into orbit and sold to the highest bidder. Once a well-organized place, due to rapid growth and expansion it has grown out to a maze of container storage facilities, catwalks and office space.

Very straightforward this one, just wall sections and connectors on the first level using sliding dovetails with the option to screw on the walls for the second floor using din 912 bolts. Not entirely sure how I’m going to connect the catwalks yet.

I have the option to either:
bolt them into the first floor using the same din 912 bolts,
add a hook so they hook into the second floor and stay clamped between the 2 floors during play or
just print them as part of the second floor.

Besides the modular table I plan to make a couple of 3d city tiles to place on the bare green boards were currently playing on.


I probably bit of more then I can chew, but whatever. I probably start working on it on saturday and will see how far it goes. Still have a lot of time before I can afford a 3d printer.

 

As you say, most of it will be pretty painless once the CAD files are done and even then making the CAD files is probably more tedious then difficult. Also the deeper I dig into 3d CAD design the more I'm convinced that the simple route (but not necessarily the least complex or easiest) is often the way to go.

 

I like your sense of humour Boardron, actually making vector files is a large part of my education so designing some mdf buildings isn’t that hard for me. (I study furniture making and design)

However I think I dug my grave already deep enough ;P

 

Small update:

You're definetly right on the super intensive part Zarc, I've been working 4 hours on the underwater hallways alone and still not even remotely finished thanks to being largely unsure what I wanted and Fusion 360 not doing what I exactly want. In the end I only have the front silhouette finished and as such there is not much to show. This probably means that the first real update will probably have to wait till saturday next week, unless I find some time (and energy) before that time.

In the end I settled on hallways with a 4 inch interior width and roughly a 3 inch height. For the lenght of the hallways and everything else for that matter I decided on a 3 inch system, this means that the distance from one connector to the next will always be in intervals of 3 inches. This will ensure everything will connect and that I'm not restricted to one single layout.

On a different note, for those of you who are unaware I'm still looking for the measurments of the "District 5 Bus Services" busses from Micro Art Studios in order to determine the width of the roads of the board tiles I'm planning on designing. If anyone has those, whould you be so kindly to send me the lenght and width of those? I don't seem to get any response from the Micro Art Studio forum on the old forums

 

It took 3 iterations to finally get right, second one unfortunatly being a little bit too cramped to fit the fingers in, but third time's the charm.

It all started with the below shape as a base, from there I could add the beam structure.


From there I substracted the support for the acrylic windows.


I also added a little dividing line in the middle of the 6 inch hallway.


As some may notice there is a empty space between the floor and the bottom of the hallway, these will eventually be filled up. The reason for this space is that I want to make some maintenance hatches for in the hallways so models can gain cover by crawling into them. For that I have to make a negative of the hatches so I can easily copy and paste this into these area's. Same goes for the area's below the windows.

However I probably focus on something else first, this is kinda driving me nuts at this point.

 

I see what your getting at @Wombat85 , however I plan on printing them myself once I get my own printer. However the filament and production methods provided by protolabs are overkill. Even then, getting it printed in pla by a print service wil cost €41 for a single 6 inch hallway. Now after some calculation I conclude that from 1 1kg roll of filament I can print 2 hallways which translates to about €14,75 per hallway not including the acrylic. Still not cheap, but manageable.

 

I was already aware of the 90 degree flip, but thanks for pointing that out. Due to printing time I'm going to break everything up in parts, but it probably still holds true for the window frames.

Not sure how I feel about the acetone bath, I'm not a big fan of using chemicals, given that acetone isn't extremely harmfull I probably try some other methods first.

As far as molds go, good idea. I probably print those out of flexible filament and see how that goes.
However I let you know if I have any questions.

 

Well services like protolabs ask around €290 for one 6 inch hallway, however they use some of the more advanced printing methods which cost as much as 7 times ordering the same bridge in pla.

I also remember using something like 70% infill, which is a bit overkill now I think of it. 20-30% might be a bit more reasonable, but I could probably get away with less and use a thicker wall thickness which hopefully fix the underhang problem you talk about.

Thank you for taking the time to measure the Micro art busses, however Andrew from MAS has already provided me with all the measurements I need, but I still apreciate it.

 

Pegs might be a good idea to keep the second floor in place, not sure about using magnets to hold a entire catwalk though. Might change it to that only the catwalks are bolted down in the space cargo docks.

As far as printing costs go, that's reasonable, I already assumed that the cost of the 3d printer and filament were added in, but haven't really digged into the whole equation behind it.

As I replied to Wombat85, I plan on buying my own 3d printer and printing them myself. Given the cost of printing 2 tables worth of terrain it's just more economical in the long run. Ordering a 6 inch hallway in pla cost me about €41, doing it myself after some recalculation cost me about €9,70 excluding the cost of buying a 3d printer.

 

Openlock looks promising and I guess that with some support pieces the catwalks would work too. It's also a bit more versatile then what I was originally planning. Alright I give it a try once I'm a bit further with the underwater base.

I guess I could also use the openlock system to connect the hallways from the underwater base with the domes.