By now pretty much every one has heard of 3D printing, and because you’re probably involved in this hobby even own your own or have used 3D printed models. So you probably don’t need me to tell you how they are so good at producing tiny little figures for us to play with. But I think that’s only a tiny part of what they bring, and I’m just going to tell a little story and how 3D printing made this possible.

I recently bought into a new paint line: Pro Acryl by Monument Hobbies. Their starter : starter set looked like a good place to start. Now I have been using Vallejo and Scale75 paints which all come in a pretty standard 17mm dropper bottle. I have quite a few of these and even built some storage for them out of PVC pipe and MDF (see this blog post). One problem with these new paints is that they have a different size/shape pot.

So, I could go to the hardware, look for PVC pipe with the right internal diameter (maybe find it), get some more MDF, PVC glue, etc and build myself some new ones. But it’s several years later and I have an FDM printer. So after about an hour of tinkering with Fusion 360 I have the following:

Now it’s nothing particularly attractive, but the holes are the right size. It’s the right shape/size that it will be easy to handle and fit on the desk and also hold 25 paints – there are 24 in the starter. It also takes into account a couple of things I’ve learnt about storing paints. First the idea of PVC pipe stacked with a bit of an angle was pretty good. It sits against a wall and holds paint pretty densly and easy to remove; I prefer this over shelves. I’ve also learnt a little about storing paint in my garage: first you want the nozzle up and at a bit of an angle as temperature changes in there and when you open them and it’s gotten warmer then paint oozes out and you make a mess. In short it’s just right for exactly what I want.

And in a little over 24 hours I had the following

Which as you can see is perfect for what I wanted. The model could do with some work (I didn’t bevel the edges, the wells for the paints could probably be shorter and I could do with tweaking some of my settings on the printer). But it also only took about an hour of time and if I wanted to I could adjust the file and print again. I can also pretty easily get another one.

Now this is just a single example of what you can do with free software and zero training (I can code and do maths, but my 3D modelling skills are courtesy of YouTube and the kind people who upload tutorial videos). I went from a problem to a perfect solution in about a day, and the solution is exactly what I wanted, I’ve not had to get shelves that are too big/small or found a pipe with a bit too big inner diameter that takes up more space on the desk. I can make exactly what I want pretty quickly and pretty easily and also to be honest cheaply. The filament for this print was $5, the software free and yeah the printer cost a bit. But to be honest this was off a Neptune 3 Pro, which only costs $250 AUD.

So while I too love all the amazingly detailed sculpts out there for terrain and miniatures that you can download, print and look great. And you should totally do that and it makes absolute sense to either have one or access to one in your hobby group. However, if you do have one, and next time you need a thing: maybe a 24x35mm base or a holder that is just right for what you want. That 3D printer and a bit of time might well be the solution.