Finally managed to get the trophy for this year’s Magic: The Gathering tournament to print properly. Previously, I had broken the model into 4 separate pieces, in order to minimize the printing challenge. Although it printed well, this also meant there were several very noticeable seams in the final assembly.
This year, with some more experience and some fine tuning of the printer, I opted to re-slice the model and print as a pair of pieces instead. If you look very carefully, you can see the seam where the two pieces mate, but it is rather well hidden. More importantly, this time I actually saved the models, so that next year I only need to update the year, and re-print.
The base piece ran without concern, just a lengthy amount of material and time. The second piece (the sword itself) was actually troublesome. The initial pass was just a fraction too tall for the printer, and laying it on it side created several surface inconsistencies every time I printed it. As a solution, I trimmed a bit of the insert side (where it is inserted into the base), and re-printing vertically. That ran successfully, and captured quite a bit of the detail in the design.
I realized my prior posts failed to credit the original source – although I have remixed it somewhat at this point. The original model is available from Printable Scenery, as their model Sword in the Stone.
