Mattia Mercante’s 3D Printed “War Machine” Exemplifies Detail Capable on Form 1+ 3D Printer

With Avengers and Iron Man fever sweeping the nation as of late, just about everyone wants to grab a piece of the action. After all, who can blame them?

We’ve already seen the 3D printing space get invaded by various Iron Man creations, from 3D printed Iron Man prosthetic hands to arc reactors which actually glow. This goes to show that 3D printing technology can be used for just about anything nowadays.

For one 3D modeler, named Joe Grundfast, and another 3D printing enthusiast, Mattia Mercante, 3D printing allowed for the creation of one of the most incredible 3D printed models you will ever see.

No, it wasn’t Iron Man, nor was it his famous arc reactor, but it was a character that many people who are Iron Man and Marvel fans will certainly recognize. Grundfast created an incredible 3D sculpture of the “War Machine,” an armor suit that is extremely detailed and quite impressive looking itself.  Perhaps not as popular as the famous Iron Man suit, the War Machine suit certainly is pretty bad a$$ in its own right.

Mattia Mercante, the owner of a Form 1+ 3D printer by Formlabs who has already created stunning works including a large and detailed bear, was able to take Grundfast’s model and 3D print it. The results were a 45 cm (18″) tall tangible replica of Grundfast’s incredible model. In all, the War Machine 3D print included 46 individual 3D printed pieces plus an additional three dozen bullets, which were all assembled together to create the final model.

Mercante used an FDM-based 3D printer to print out the rock stand, and his Form 1+ to print everything else. Everything was printed at a 0.1mm layer height with the exception of the head which was printed at 0.5mm. In all, it took about 98 hours of print time for to print all of the components of the figure, and another 67.5 hours to print the rock.

The figure itself was printed using Formlabs’ black resin, which provided the perfect backdrop to paint on. Mercante used acrylic paint and a dry brush to paint the figure the best he could. As you can see, it came out very well.

This really goes to show the extent of what can be created using Formlabs’ SLA 3D printers. The tremendous model provided by Grundfast, combined with Mercante’s 3D printing know-how, ultimately led to a creation which certainly doesn’t look like anything that came off of a desktop 3D printer.

What do you think of this model? Would you have done anything different? Discuss in the 3D Printed War Machine forum thread on 3DPB.com. Check out some more images below.