[Discontinued] KNight's Unit Design Thread

Here's some headaches you will learn to love.

Auto support becomes useless
As great as it might seem now, it becomes impossible to remove on large prints, Makerware used to put out decent support material, but they seem to be back tracking.

90 degree overhangs suck
Everywhere support material misses these areas will always "droop" as you call it. I typically try to make everything small (turrets etc) have at least a 10 degree angle.

Warping
Large, flat, thin builds like to warp at the edges, ruining the build. Thankfully raft will fix most of this, and custom raft can be added if needed.

Snags
If your machine begins to tick like a mad man, then the filament is probably snagged on the spool in the back. This can completely ruin long 10+ hour builds if you step away for awhile.

Tension control loss
I don't know if your machine will suffer from this, but the Maker bot 2's have a design flaw. The tension control on the filament is controlled by a screw system, which has to be replaced by a spring system.

This will reveal itself as the machine printing very spotty or not at all, leading you to believe it's a bed leveling issue or something of that nature when it isn't.


However,

There are some up sides of course,

Printing tiny is absolutely possible, I routinely print things in a 1cm cubed area, every little piece of filament in the preview screen matters here.

Sanding/buffing/primer will hide the "stepping". Try wet sanding instead of dry, it will keep the dust down and works better.

Investing in a dremel kit is definitely a good idea.

Getting a rattle can of filler primer can make the prints really seem like real plastic.

Adequately finished parts can be used as positives for molds, so keep that in mind.

Try to stay away from http://www.thingiverse.com, most of the models are made by people WITHOUT printers. (and thus fail)

Yeah I've already been editing the code for the Raft and Support via custom profiles for future prints and like I said, my second print did much better for droop and just have the slight issue of areas that weren't supported due to what I think is mostly just too small given the scale.

I ended up getting all of the rafting off and most of the support structure, the only stuff that is still giving me a headache is the stuff between the tracks but all in all a good print I'd say;


Left is the First Print, Right is the Second Print

I'll probably to one more at this scale to try the new support/raft settings I have but that might not be for a few days yet.

Mike

As I explained, my idea was for a sort of pathfinder, taking inspiration of assorted elements of desert racers and just off-road vehicles with roll-cages and such.

Because PA's systems as is don't really work with the original design, basically it was fine visually but functionally it was terrible.

Mike

Tweaked/Revamped the Thunderbolt Model after figuring out where it might fit into the RCBM Stuff;



Now equipped to launch 8 Missiles out of 4 Missile Pods.

Mike

Can't wait to texture that!

Love it. A-10 inspired models FTW!

If you don't mind me asking, where are you using these? I checked the first post but you don't say.

A quick question, what plastic are you using for those prints?

If it's ABS you might get better results using PLA instead (as it suffers less shrinkage and has better layer bonding than ABS...).

I seem to do pretty well with PLA, never tried ABS

ABS is technically stronger, however it requires a heated bed to get good results. PLA is usually the better option.

Printing with both is actually quite useful, or so I've heard...

PLA can be used as dissolvable support material for parts.

Oh gawd yes. I am so hard right now.

Hopefully most things will find a home among the RCBM type stuff, given that I've designed basically everything so far "in isolation" from PA there is no guarantee anything will have a "spot" somewhere in the long run.

BUUUUUUUUUUUTTTT I'm also kinda really good at this so a lot of these have clearly defined roles that are actually good interesting roles and with the balance direction Nano&MadSci are taking it means as long as the role is good and doesn't overlap with anything else it's easy to slot things in and of course, all of these models can be changed as needed once we figure out where it can best fit anyways!

And of course a bunch of the things on the first page simply won't have a home, the Bismark/Renegade(I did those before there was proper models for Naval/Gunships), the Puma would need a complete Revamp, the Vanguard....I dunno, I don't mind the design but I never had a clear view on it's role so maybe?

Then there are the things that are being revamped slowly, the HedgeHog, Longbow, Rapier(maybe), Fusillade(Maybe, mostly tweaking really) and of course there are some that just might not work, like the Sledgehammer because it deploys and that doesn't seem to be a thing in the code yet.

Of course on top of that getting custom models into the game is still a process that the community is having a lot of trouble with as well.

So nothing really has a specific place yet but they are fairly easy to slot in role-wise and mostly art wise but some would probably need more revamping before I'd be happy with them.

It's all PLA, the drooping happens simply because in those araeas there is nothing directly below it to support the overhang it while it's being printed, liek I said, ont he second print everywhere there was extra support the drooping was solved, it's just that some areas were really small and seemed like they didn't "hit the threshold" to get support added to.

Just keep it in your pants! ;p

Mike

Thanks for the answer!

I believe that it'd be a good experiment to give the thunderbolt a GAU8 sorta weapon and let it do strafing run style attacks. Might not work at all, but it's soooooo very much essential to the thing's character that it's worth a quick test I think.

I do have to say I love your units, the designs project raw power. Which is quite an essential characteristic.

Our fighters already do strafing runs on ground targets, so there's overlap there that we'd rather avoid.

The Thunderbolt is going to launch rockets... lots and lots of rockets. Knight has it rigged so that the engines can rotate into a vertical position too...

...

The possibilities.

It's pretty darn awesome as the current concept definitely.

I'm just a fan of BRRRRRRRRT.

We'd have to fake the actual number of shots; 70 a second wouldn't be very friendly to the engine.

Miniguns will make it into the mod somewhere though. The Cougar is primed for it.

Well the Thunderbolt is quite truly a unique aircraft, almost everything about it is a deviation when compared to most aircraft and that makes it really awkward to translate to a game like PA where the good unit designs tend to be very focused and when you take something with as many unique elements as the Thunderbolt you have to approach it logically and break it all down to figure out what best suits the context you're working in.

As sensational as the GAU8 is on its own, in regards to the Thunderbolt as a whole it's a comparatively minor thing. The biggest aspect is just it's design, no other plane looks like it and it's highly recognizable. Yet if you think about it, the design is such that it can carry an extremely large payload, to ignore that in favor of a GAU8 style weapon is awkward from a design perspective and trying to cram both into the unit isn't a great plan either so in the end I decided that a missile barrage would be more fitting and representative of the Thunderbolt as a whole in terms of visual and mechanical representation.

Mike

Yeah, I definitely understand and you're right. It'll be great to see it in action.

Damn, the future is already here! Now you can print your favorite brutally efficient toy mechanisms of war™ in your living room, kids!


Also these are perfect for... RISK Planetary Annihilation

Mike, where is the one thing that is required, too lazy to search 20 pages!

PS: i really need to find some time...