3d printing help required

[The Disavowed]

I have been planning my biggest home build custom gun handgun for a while now, and have decided to build it completely from scratch using 3d printed parts for the most part, electroplated to finish to give a nice shiny silver metal look.  I have bought a new 3d printer, an Ender 3 neo, filament printer.  I have decided on this approach partly for legal reasons, plastic parts that are essentially a toy rather than hand finished metal parts which the old bill would probably throw a skitty over.  

Problem is, I have never printed a single thing (so far my printer is still boxed) in my life, and I don’t have the foggiest when it comes to file types and stuff, or programs to use or anything.

The gun is similar in base to a 1911, so pretty straight forward really. I think I can probably obtain the blueprints for the real gun if needed, but I can buy a 3d model online, but I don’t know if it’s any good for this purpose, or what format I need, or file type or anything.  I figure that I need to make some changes anyway in order for it to work the way that I want it to, so can probably steal quite a few of the smaller parts from a 1911, or a Desert Eagle.

If anyone has experience with 3d modelling that can help me out please drop me a dm and I can mail you over the files that I have so far to see if they are any good and to get some advice.

Cheers guys 👍

[The Disavowed]

I still require help with this if there is anyone with any 3d printing experience? I am not after anything complicated, just some clarification as to the file type that I need in order for my model to work as I will need to purchase it and I don’t want to get the wrong format.

🙏

Thank you

[hitmanNo2]

Are you looking to buy a file to print yourself?

[The Disavowed]

Yes, exactly that as I don’t have the cad skills to model it myself. The file I looked at is available in .3ds .max .dxf .dwg .fbx .blend .c4e .dae .duf .aep .glb .gltf .bip .lwo .mxs .mb .psd .3dm .skp .xsi .stl .usd .usdz and .obj

I know my laptop won’t run blender, and I haven’t really had much chance to try many other programs yet, and from what I have watched on the YouTube I think if I am not mistaken the format I would want is .stl?

my printer in the ender as I mentioned in my post, and I kind of figure if I am going to start by printing a useless boat or castle then I may as well start by printing a gun part, at least I will use that and I figure it’s still just the same work to do, it’s just a case of getting the right file type.

any help and advice is very much appreciated 

[cazboab]

The little boats and castles are actually really useful in setting up your printer for the first time, because how they fail will match up with thousands of other people who've done the same, and then you can just do what they did to dial your settings in with a quick post on a 3d printer forum. If show most folk a random misshapen gun part, they'll either have no idea what's wrong or see gun and think you're trying to be John Malkovich from "in the line of fire"...

The format you get the files in won't really matter, as you use a slicer program (I think Creality send you it on the setup drive for your printer, if not just search creality slicer and download whichever version is appropriate for your computer)to turn the 3d object into something the machine can actually use to squirt hot plastic in the the right way, you just load up the 3d file in the slicer, it'll tell you parts that it thinks need rafts or supports, then you click slice and it will commune with the omnisiah, and sooth the printer's spirit to hopefully ensure a correct result.

[The Disavowed]

That’s excellent, thanks for the advice, maybe I will print a little boat then 😆