Model Secrets

BattleWheels rests much of its weight on the shoulders of 3D printing. But even this has its limits, of course, and so each and every model needs to be properly thought out and optimized. As the author, I have put all of the experience that I have gathered over more than 10 years of professional 3D printing into the creation of the models for the game.

I faced many problems, the first of which was the correct wall width. Different slicers approach different wall widths differently - what Cura prints in four strokes, the Prusha slicer prints hollow; and what suits the Slic3r, is printed inaccurately by Cura, and so on and so forth.  Fortunately, there is a magical wall width constant of 1.85 mm; this prints optimally on all devices, and also allows for the printing of interleaves. This means that BattleWheels can print at an acceptable speed and still remain tight and accurate. A nice example of this usage is the dice model, which only consists of the sides without a top or bottom. This is for the simple reason that different types of infill and different ways of printing the walls and ceilings would cause the die to be unbalanced, meaning that some numbers would turn up significantly more often than others.

Another frequently solved problem is overhangs. Here, the solution is simple but very laborious. Simply don't do them! All of the models are designed so that the visually interesting parts do not exceed 45°, and the functional parts never exceed 55° from the vertical. In a few rare cases, however, it is necessary to create horizontal bridging. For this I use what I would call ‘wedge bracing’ at the edges. This allows the printer to cross a wide gap in only one direction on the first layer, creating a filament in the space that doesn't tear off and has time to cool. In the subsequent layers it creates two paths on this filament, reinforcing it. Then, the printer can hatch as it wishes, depending on how the slicer is set up.

Another problem was the springs which hold the stats insert in place and also centre the box accurately. Since printers often don't have the best bed-levelling or enough pad adhesion, printing the springs directly onto the pad was not an option - they had to be inside the model but not adhered to the model. The standard solution here is to omit one layer of printing underneath the spring so that it does not adhere completely and can be released later. However, this could not be done in our case because each user would have to use the same layer height. In our case, therefore, the spring is mostly printed in the air and only adheres in the corners to thin surfaces, from which it breaks away when first used. This unique design for the springs also gave rise to our logo - just look at the cross-section of the base model.

So, these are just some of the secrets of our models. Hopefully they have caught your interest, and maybe you can use them to enhance your own creations.