Small Medieval Castle
Small Medieval Castle
3D
Published 2019-08-27T15:50:13+00:00
This castle resulted from the constraints that we have with printing volume and time. I wanted something that looked realistic, could be populated on each floor with furniture and people at 1:72 scale, yet that could still be printed on a 223x223mm printing plate.
These constraints may be similar to what the owner of an impoverished hilltop in South Germany, Bohemia or Austria would also have faced: limited space, limited construction timeframe and limited budget.
My other must-haves included a tile roof, a clockwise spiral staircase for mobility between floors, a fireplace on each floor, and sanitary facilities (there are two privies on level 3 with a wonderful view). Also, there had to be a watchtower with interior wood stairs between levels to observe and track approaching merchants, boatmen or other potential victims of banditry and extortion.
The walls, tower bases and the gate are interchangable with my previous post for a Roman-style frontier wall (in the file here the crenellations are smaller) and dimensions of all elements here are the same, so you can use any of the wall and gate files there to further customize your castle.
Note that the keep has three levels, there are main hall and spiral staircase roofs, and a rooftop floor. A drawbridge can be downloaded from a separate free post "Wall Segments With Gates, Drawbridge".
A complete version of the minimum-size castle that can be printed using these files is shown here in 1:144 scale, printed out at 50% size with PLA on an Ultimaker 2+ using a 4mm nozzle.
This castle would also look nice in a model railroad display at 83% size (= 1:87 HO scale).
A picture also shows the main keep as well as the Watchtower with some of the walls in the much larger/majestic 1:72 scale (100% size), with some appropriate figures added. Enjoy !
Update 02/2022: Sometimes, instead of just having a 3d printout or a rendered still life of a model like this in some idyllic setting, wouldn't it be fun to actually experience it yourself by opening the gate and walking in ? A basic walk-through of this castle is available at the other end of this link https://play.unity.com/mg/other/webgl-builds-214863 . Note the doors here are not yet functional (just walk through them) and you'll need probably at least 8GB of RAM on account of the poly count. But if so, feel free to climb to the top of the tower for the view or take a look at the lavatories on level 3 from inside.......
You will need to use a raft for the separate elements unless you feel like separating out the various smaller loose elements in the .stl files. At 100% size, the three main levels are lengthy prints (typically 12-18 hours). Note the castle keep comes out as a square that is 2x wall 'units' long by 2x wall 'units' wide. Some cleanup trimming will be necessary on connector holes and pins.
The wood roof in the "tower top" file here comes with its own floor - this was added for stability during printing out. I just remove it from the stands with pliers or strong scissors to get my removable roof for the tower top platform.
| Date published | 27/08/2019 |
| Support Free | YES |
