3D Printing with the Stratasys J55 full colour Printer

[monkeysarefun]

So Ive hooked up with a bloke who had the spare $130,000 to get himself a Stratasys J55 full colour 3D printer.

 

https://www.stratasys.com/en/3d-printers/printer-catalog/polyjet/j55-prime

 

Planning to get some of my photogrammetry projects printed in living colour - headstones, statuary etc to see how it goes.

 

Its output is pretty impressive - example, can you figure out whats going on here?

 

ITs a G scale 3D printed him looking at an 0 scale model of an old Holden (car is diecast, not printed)

 

Works well at smaller scales from 0

 

 

Ho and N

 

 

 

 

Edited May 23, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[EDDY100]

Quote

So Ive hooked up with a bloke who had the spare $130,000 to get himself a Stratasys J55 full colour 3D printer.

You got some rich m8's. What's the print time and cost for the Ho figures.

I think I need to get an extra lottery ticket this week😀

[AndyID]

The banana is brilliant.

 

[Enterprisingwestern]

52 minutes ago, AndyID said:

The banana is brilliant.

 

 

Sooo realistic!

 

Mike.

[rab]

5 hours ago, AndyID said:

The banana is brilliant.

 

I like the weathering on it :)

[AndyID]

6 minutes ago, rab said:

I like the weathering on it :)

 

I dunno. I think it might be a wee bit overdone.

[EDDY100]

I never noticed that, to busy looking at the car😀

[monkeysarefun]

Ive sent off some of my own photogrammetry files to get printed, should get the finished prints back Friday or next week. I'll post them up when I get them.

[monkeysarefun]

So my files came back. Prints are really finely detailed and comparing them to the same files I printed on my Photon are slightly crisper and the tiny details have a bit more definition, though a magnifying glass is needed to see the differences at that level.

 

I'm happy with the colours and especially with the ability of it to print the inscriptions on the monuments..

 

 

Interesting to see the support method it uses. Not sure exactly the process but as part of the print it prints the support structure which is like a gel which encases the print. The above prints used a support material which required high pressure water jet to remove, which damaged some of the tiny statue details.

They've moved now to a water soluble one which is what is used on these below, which show them with the support material still in place as they come off the printer. It  can be soaked off in water so is much  gentler process

 

The cars are mine too, N gauge Holden's that I've drawn up in blender and wanted to see what they look like in full colour, might go into production and  flog them if they look good enough, there's no N gauge Aussie cars out there at the moment that I know of so should get 15 to 20 bucks each for them if they look ok.

 

Looking forward to seeing them when the goo comes off 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 21, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[Giles]

Quite amazing! The coloration is very interesting and very good on the monuments - not how one would paint them interestingly..... but obviously so right...

 

Keep it coming, Monkeys!

[DGO]

In theory the water soluble supports should give the very best support structure with no marks left on the finished print, Will be very interested to see final results post goo as the memorials already looked good from the first batch, clearly showing the advantage of photogramatry combined with a full colour 3d printer 

[EDDY100]

Nice one Monkey, excellent prints, this is the future, just got to get it affordable.

BIG question how much would it have cost to print them if you did not get mates rates??

 

Eddy

[monkeysarefun]

22 hours ago, Giles said:

Quite amazing! The coloration is very interesting and very good on the monuments - not how one would paint them interestingly..... but obviously so right...

 

Keep it coming, Monkeys!

Hi Giles, hows things? I've attached a photo from roughly the same angle of the originals so you can compare the colour and details. The photos of the models  unfortunately have a greenish tinge to the white bits which the actual  models  dont have - these are photos that the printer sent me before I got the actual prints and I was a little disappointed with the green look but pleased to find that the models are more accurate. I should take my own pics but I'm just being lazy!

 

Out of interest, the photogrammetry package I use is 3dflow zephyr, its become a bit of a hobby in itself over the last couple of years, I created these using the perfectly useable free version they have but paid for a license version so my concience is clear if I sell stuff I made with it.

 

 

Here is my sketchfab page -  which in itself is a small sample of my actual collection  so Ive got many many prints still to come!

 

https://sketchfab.com/rookwoodgothica

 

 

 

 

 

13 hours ago, EDDY100 said:

Nice one Monkey, excellent prints, this is the future, just got to get it affordable.

BIG question how much would it have cost to print them if you did not get mates rates??

 

Eddy

 

Hi Eddy, apparently due to the way the printer works a one-off print is much dearer than doing a batch of identical ones, something to do with it being quite wasteful of support material and coloured goo which have to be expelled between layers, I nodded wisely when it was explained to me but all I took in was that if I print 10 or more things the price drops by around a half, hence my cunning plan to mass produce and sell N scale cars in order to fund my expensive one-offs!

 

I got charged man-on-the-street prices but if I commit to a production run I get the money I paid directed towards my first print batch..

 

The one-off prices for the ones in the pics are - cars $8, big statue $40, mid-size prints $9 to $12, and the one in the guys hand was $15. Remember these drop for multiple copies. Definitely not a cheap option but they sure do blow my painting abilities out of the water and I do have a contact with the Friends Of Rookwood Cemetery organisation who hold regular popular cemetery tours so I'm hoping they would be interested in selling prints as part of that.

 

Once I get a couple more examples back I'll hit them up, I reckon they'd make cool souvenirs.

Edited May 22, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[johnnyh20]

amazing what can be achieved hopefully in a few years the home printers will be not far off this capability.

[Enterprisingwestern]

6 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

The one-off prices for the ones in the pics are - cars $8, big statue $40, mid-size prints $9 to $12, and the one in the guys hand was $15. Remember these drop by at least half for multiple copies. Definitely not a cheap option but they sure do blow my painting abilities out of the water and I do have a contact with the Friends Of Rookwood Cemetery organisation who hold regular popular cemetery tours so I'm hoping they would be interested in selling prints as part of that.

 

I know prices are a very personal thing, but going on the current conversion rate to sterling, I think for the quality of print and the fact that they come pre painted, they are very reasonable, especially so if the 50% discount is taken into consideration, compare the cost of having an "ordinary" print made and painted to that standard and I bet it could well be cheaper in some cases.

 

Mike.

[monkeysarefun]

3 hours ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

I know prices are a very personal thing, but going on the current conversion rate to sterling, I think for the quality of print and the fact that they come pre painted, they are very reasonable, especially so if the 50% discount is taken into consideration, compare the cost of having an "ordinary" print made and painted to that standard and I bet it could well be cheaper in some cases.

 

Mike.

Im looking forward to seeing how the cars come out. Given the resolution the printer is capable of I'm hoping that the chrome strips, door handles etc will be apparent, and far more in scale than most N scale painted models are. Here there are no Australian outline cars in N and very few HO, most layouts look like every little person living on the layout  has bought a UK Morris or similar or a BMW/Porsche. 

 

The first ones are models of 70's Holden Kingswoods and Monaros, be interesting to see if the resolution is such that you can tell they all have the same number plate!

 

[monkeysarefun]

I have spent 12 months or more getting my Blender skills up to scratch, the result is a dozen or more cars, mainly Australian natives but also a few UK imports that we got here too. 

 

These are initial test prints to see how transparent it can make the glass area. Turns out very transparent (though the ones here have it dialled back to fairly opaque), so next step is to create a representation of seats, dash, rear parcel shelf and steering wheel.

 

  The N gauge ones should retail for around 7 pounds equivalent, I'm not focussing on HO/OO at the moment, I'm not sure how viable they will be since the price quoted is prohibitive unless I can hollow them out sufficiently while still retaining an interior.

 

The beauty of the process and it's advantage as a medium is that it is a simple matter for me to assign different body colours inside Blender which means that all models can come in a full range of the  original colour schemes with extra details like vinyl roofs, stripes and so on added as well if requested.

 

Anyway these are all N scale, a Capri XL, Lotus Cortina and the mighty HK Monaro

 

 

 

 

Edited April 7, 2023 by monkeysarefun

[simonmcp]

I remember an article a long time ago in a model magazine about someone who made cars out of solid blocks of clear material. He effectively carved the interiors as a reverse shape/hollow, ie there was no floor pan to the cars just the seats etc which he then painted. Would that save sufficient material/time to make HO/OO viable? Cars looking great, I assume that to get it more transparent you have to up the resolution?

[njee20]

This is really awesome. How do you actualy define the colours? Where are they specified, in a proprietary slicer presumably, or can they can be somehow inherited from the CAD?

[monkeysarefun]

16 hours ago, njee20 said:

This is really awesome. How do you actualy define the colours? Where are they specified, in a proprietary slicer presumably, or can they can be somehow inherited from the CAD?

 

 

For the files produced in CAD (ie Blender), the model is "hand"  coloured inside Blender  to produce a full-colour model  (ie objects are assigned colours such as duco, chrome, glass etc..

 

Other material properties like "Shininess" and transparency and metallic properties etc are also assigned to individual materials, eg duco is shiny, rubber and vinyl areas less so. The above is  actually quite an enjoyable step and looks pretty awesome inside Blender!

 

Model is exported from Blender in .obj format. .obj format has the actual  .obj file which is the mesh  like an .stl file is, but it can also have an associated .mtl file created which contains details of each colour - RBG  values, transparency etc:

 

# Blender 3.3.1 MTL File: 'Ford XB Sedan.blend'
# www.blender.org

newmtl BEige_Duco
Ns 1000.000000
Ka 0.116564 0.116564 0.116564
Kd 0.350520 0.209332 0.064053
Ks 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
Ke 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
Ni 0.250000
d 1.000000
illum 1

newmtl Black_Plastic
Ns 250.000000
Ka 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
Kd 0.011088 0.011088 0.011088
Ks 0.101227 0.101227 0.101227
Ke 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
Ni 1.450000
d 1.000000
illum 2

 

etc etc

 

The slicer programme the printer uses imports both files to reproduce the coloured model:

 

 

 

It is able to print in transparent, hence the windows can be made "see through".

 

For the headstones, the photogrammetry programme produces a similar output, though instead of the .mtl file it produces a .png file which is basically the entire texture unwrapped and layed flat:

 

This is then reapplied over the mesh by the slicer programme when imported.

 

 

 

There is a format called .3mf which is a much more recent one and is much more efficient then the .obj file, and contains all the material info inside it rather than needing the external files. Meshmixer is able to convert ,obj files to .3mf ones and does a good job with the photgrammetry ones, reducing file sizes by around 70% as a bonus, but it cannot do the Blender CAD  ones satisfactorily unfortunately.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 15, 2023 by monkeysarefun

[Enterprisingwestern]

7 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

For the files produced in CAD (ie Blender), the model is "hand"  coloured inside Blender  to produce a full-colour model  (ie objects are assigned colours such as duco, chrome, glass etc..

 

Other material properties like "Shininess" and transparency and metallic properties etc are also assigned to individual materials, eg duco is shiny, rubber and vinyl areas less so. The above is  actually quite an enjoyable step and looks pretty awesome inside Blender!

 

Model is exported from Blender in .obj format. .obj format has the actual  .obj file which is the mesh  like an .stl file is, but it can also have an associated .mtl file created which contains details of each colour - RBG  values, transparency etc:

 

# Blender 3.3.1 MTL File: 'Ford XB Sedan.blend'
# www.blender.org

newmtl BEige_Duco
Ns 1000.000000
Ka 0.116564 0.116564 0.116564
Kd 0.350520 0.209332 0.064053
Ks 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
Ke 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
Ni 0.250000
d 1.000000
illum 1

newmtl Black_Plastic
Ns 250.000000
Ka 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
Kd 0.011088 0.011088 0.011088
Ks 0.101227 0.101227 0.101227
Ke 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
Ni 1.450000
d 1.000000
illum 2

 

etc etc

 

The slicer programme the printer uses imports both files to reproduce the coloured model:

 

 

 

It is able to print in transparent, hence the windows can be made "see through".

 

For the headstones, the photogrammetry programme produces a similar output, though instead of the .mtl file it produces a .png file which is basically the entire texture unwrapped and layed flat:

 

This is then reapplied over the mesh by the slicer programme when imported.

 

 

 

There is a format called .3mf which is a much more recent one and is much more efficient then the .obj file, and contains all the material info inside it rather than needing the external files. Meshmixer is able to convert ,obj files to .3mf ones and does a good job with the photgrammetry ones, reducing file sizes by around 70% as a bonus, but it cannot do the Blender CAD  ones satisfactorily unfortunately.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the fascinating insight into what is do-able these days, although it all passed over my head at some altitude!

 

Mike.

Edited April 15, 2023 by Enterprisingwestern
sausage fingers.

[njee20]

Brilliant. Presumably you could import logos and what not as well then? Ie could produce actually fully finished items? 
 

edit: items of rolling stock I’ll add, as evidently what you’re showing is fully finished! The cars are great. I’m grappling with painting dozens of Ford Focuses for my car train, Which is filling me with trepidation!

Edited April 15, 2023 by njee20

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

Pardon my ignorance, but would it be possible to print liveried and/or weathered rolling stock within this process?

 

Mike.

[monkeysarefun]

9 hours ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Pardon my ignorance, but would it be possible to print liveried and/or weathered rolling stock within this process?

 

Mike.

 

Assuming you created the file in CAD you can assign colours to it as per the way I did the cars above. Weathering is possible, but applying it through CAD would probably take longer than weathering the resulting print using traditional methods, additionally if you printed multiple models from the same CAD file they'd all be weathered identically.

 

Personally as far as rolling stock and scenery is concerend  I think the printer has a way to go to be used practically for anything larger than N. Even HO cars are prohibitively expensive - I've not had a quote yet but given the volume of an HO car is 8 times that of an N they'd be around £55.00. Work your way up from that for a loco or wagon!  Additionally the resin or whatever it is is at least as brittle as standard resin so dropping anything is an expensive accident. 

 

They do market some stuff, including my headstones, and I'm thinking N scale Australian cars would be a goer given there is absolutely nothing out there and any layout set from the mid-50s through to the mid-80s would need Australian Holdens, Fords and Chryslers to be realistic -( here is a typical view of a mid-60's Australian street,  pick the  non_Australian cars -  theres ALWAYS a beetle though!!)

 

 

Here is their website for an idea on pricing:

 

https://westedge3d.com.au/shop/

 

[EDDY100]

Nice one Monkey. I see you have been putting in the hours with Blender. It's addictive once you get into it.