Size reduction for 15mm to 6mm

[Thuseld]

Hi all. My friend has a 3D printer and has offered to print anything I send him. I have found a selection of buildings designed for 15mm. I want to print them for 6mm.

I was hoping any experienced printers here could give me the following information:

Is it straightforward to reduce the size down?

What instructions do I need to give my friend in terms of this?

Do you need more information from me?

Experiments here: http://inexperiencedmodelmaker.blogspot.co.uk/

Tranquil Stars updates: https://tranquilstars.wordpress.com

[Mike]

First off when you say they are 15mm is that 15mm, 18mm, something else?
To work out what ratio to use you need to know how big they actually are.

Myself when resizing terrain I just make sure that doors are a certain height and let that be my guide.
I personally would ask him to shrink them so that each door is about 8mm tall.
(that way they look right when a based 6mm figure is in front of them)

As for problems, some of the bits on the 15mm model may only just be printable at 15mm, so making them smaller may mean that details fail.
No way to know for sure until you try though.

The easiest instruction could be as simple as print these at 60% etc.
Though I am assuming he can measure door heights as per above.

[Darkest Star Games]

Exactly as Mike said.  Its way easier to size down an actually scaled model, like going from 1/100 to 1/285, than try to figure out a percentage for a figure size (like 28mm).

If your friend can’t measure in his slicer program then create an object that the file can be scaled to, like as Mike suggested a block that is 8mm tall x 4mm wide with a slight depth.  This can be imported to the build plate setup and then the building can be manually scaled next to it until the doorways sync in size with the block.  (this is how I print some vehicles when I know the figures I intend to us with them are larger or smaller in scale to the STL file).

"I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

[MartinR]

As noted above, you need to decide what actual scales “15mm” and “6mm” are. The former vary between 1/106 to 1/90, although most people plump for 1/100. The latter is between 1/300 to 1/240, although most people plump for 1/300 or 1/285. Baccus are the outliers with their huge sculpts.

Some finer items just won’t scale down either.

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

[Not Connard Sage]

As said, some detail will be lost. Simple is better, if you have a highly detailed 15mm house it’s more likely to turn out a shapeless blob (I exaggerate, a bit) than a ‘monopoly house’. A resin printer will give much better results than FDM.

Having said all that, a few test prints isn’t going to waste much resin/filament.

Out of interest, where did you get the files?

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Thomaston]

The only thing I can add is if you can find 6mm stl file of a figure, load it into the slicer along with the terrain, it’ll give a good idea of how the terrain will look next to minis. You can also offset the figure up by how many “mm” your base thickness is to get more accurate feel.

If the 15mm is too thin you could could try scaling only the height to 60% while the horizontal dimensions could be larger to maintain wall thickness.

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