/cgl/ - Cosplay & EGL

As someone who knows how to use a 3D printer, laser cutter and CNC router I feel I need to clear some things up.

3D printers are NOT a magical prop printing machine. First generating files is tough unless you're a decent 3D modeler. Yes you can download models off the interwebs but then you need to know how to prep the file for printing in the software. Second not a lot of things are structurally sound as they are and you have to model in little support beams and structures that have to be cut and sanded later. Third the texture is kind of terrible. Unless you are shitting enough gold to have shapeways printing your stuff it will always come out with a vinyl record texture.

I tried 3D printing briefly and about about 2 hours of tweaking I finally managed to churn out one Tardis ring.I then tried to make one of those crazy geometric bracelets and failed miserably.

tldr; It's still a lot of work to use these machines for both prep work and finishing.

>>7326546
I talked it over with a friend who is a cosplay judge and she says that all most judges care about is how good the finished product looks and you can explain how you made it.