3d Printapalooza

Hi All,

Hope your social distancing is going well. Mine has been ok. As usual a lot going on, but not a lot finished. I'm hoping that changes soon.

As mentioned in the title, I've pretty much been printing non stop since my last post.

I found out what happens when you have really, really good adhesion to the print bed. A little super glue fixed that right up.

My order of replacement bed parts came in sooner than expected. If you order from Amazon these days you can get some pretty long estimated delivery times for some items. Pictured above are the super skinny replacement mat, the glass plate I was going to upgrade to, and the stock binder clip that holds neither due to the thickness differences from the stock mat. Someone on facebook suggested Swiss Frame clips, so I have some on order. Later someone suggested painters tape to hold it and I wondered why I didn't think of it. Currently I'm printing with the skinny mat on top of the stock mat that I accidentally carved a chunk out of trying to pry my prints up.

I've been having issues painting these. I decided to take this opportunity to learn how to use the airbrush. It's going ok.

I've gone through my first kilogram of filament and moved on to the black filament. I found out that grey is the cheapest option of all, so I have 2 more spools on their way. As you can see I've also gotten bolder with my prints. I'm now printing all 6 wall variations at one time. Cura 4.5 said it would take just over 21 hours, but it has been taking about 19.5. I did try to weld the black to the white, but my join popped apart once it got to the filament feed. Fortunately I was printing clips and the print finished with about a foot of white filament to spare. That's an acceptable loss to me.

I also stumbled upon Dungeon Print Studio for helping me plan out what to print. Since I want to use these for Advanced Heroquest, I figured I'd try my hand at making some of the quest levels for The Shattered Amulet Campaign. It took some fudging as AHQ has some different dimensions than the Fat Dragon tiles. But I think I got it pretty well. The cool thing about this site is it also has other Fat Dragon Sets as well as other manufacturers models so you can plan out a lot of stuff. It then lets you print out a list of parts you need to print. Pretty cool. The one down side, more of a bummer really, is that I found out that the Fat Dragon space tiles I bought are not really going to work for Space Hulk. At least not without some modifications that I am not able to make at this moment

And finally, I'd like to welcome XarfaiEngel to the blog.

Thanks for looking, hope you are making headway into your miniature piles.

Ender 3 - Doing it wrong until you get it right

Hi All,

Well it took a lot of trying and setting, and re-setting things on the Creality Ender-3, but I managed to get my first print done.

I thought, perhaps a little naively, that I could set it up out of the box and let it rip. It comes partially assembled and putting it together has a very IKEA furniture feel about it.

If you take the plunge I highly recommend the Official Facebook Group here. In the files section is an extensive guide for assembling and tweaking your Ender-3, written by Luke Hatfield. Also lots of people on the group who can give you help if you show them pictures of what is going on.

I also highly recommend Chuck Hellebuyck's Filament Friday (CHEP) youtube channel here, specifically this video with the links to his gcode for bed leveling and test printing to check the bed level.

The first thing I did wrong was pinch the z-limit wire under the vertical support beam. I had tried to hold it out of the way multiple times while assembling and didn't realize I had let it slip under once again. I pancaked the wire pretty bad in two places, fortunately for me it still works. I would advise taping it well out of the way while assembling.

The next problem I had was the cross beam that holds the print head. I had a 6mm difference between the left and right sides. CHEP talks about adjusting the left side and I did that about 5 times and couldn't get it right. Finally I loosened and re-tightened the right and got it straighter, fixing the difference to within 2mm.

I then ran the CHEP bed level, using a post it to set the nozzle height (not shown). Then I ran the test. Success! I ran my fingers over the corners to see if it was sticking to the bed. I then peeled that off and set a print I found on thingiverse to print.

I probably should have run the bed level code again. The lighter look of the line on the right seems to indicate the bed is too high on that side.

But I let it run and ended up with a pretty good first print in a little under an hour and a half.

I had some trouble getting the print off the print bed. The stock scraper was a tad too thick to get under a corner, but I had this tool for slicing clay and sculpey and it worked a treat.

I think I'm going to print up some more bits for making up sci-fi buildings. I've also got some Fat Dragon Games stuff for making dungeon tiles and Space Ship tiles I'm looking forward to trying out.

Thanks for looking, and I hope you can learn something from my folly.

Secure and Hold Carthag - A Star Breach battle report

Hi All,

  Things have not been great on the hobby front, but rather than bore you with the details I've just stopped posting unless I have something positive/finished to share.

  One such thing is the battle report for a game of Star Breach we played on Leap Day at a local game store in the Metro Phoenix area. We had a good time and met some of the other other local guys.

  Thanks to Brendan Carrion for setting up another meetup. We're hoping to be out at Arizona Game fair later this month, but are playing things by ear due to this Corona Virus thing.

Anyway, here's the game.

  Aidan and I tag teamed this game and, as can be seen from the results, had a swath of horrible rolls right through the middle of the game. Still it was good to finally get a game in. I also finally got the list editor for Star Breach working in Battle Scribe. I'll detail that in a subsequent post. If I'd thought about it, I would have posted about that sooner.

  It may be time to hang up the old IG, they have died spectacularly in just about every game I've fielded them in. We shall see. I feel the need for a big, stompy robot. I like Star Breach, but I'll have to think on a better way to track hits. The dials are a way to do that, but they look clunky next to 28mm figures in my opinion. The same with the D10's. Also a lot of modifiers to try and remember, but I think that will go better with more games under our belt.

Thanks for looking.