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Scatter (brained)

Well I had a whole month to make terrain and instead of doing everything I was going to do, I basically didn’t. Getting the 3D printer in and working properly didn’t really help but it is a bit of a naff excuse as the prints take hours to finish. I suppose I just lost a bit of motivation brought about in part by the realisation that I have to store everything somewhere.

That Not withstanding I did manage to finish the hillocks.

The biggest is about 15cm long by about 13cm wide the other two are roughly 15×10

I also got some base grass on the open grave hill…

This is bigger, sitting at 16 x 19 cm. it is about an 3cm high at the cliff end. Hopefully I will get it finished tomorrow a bit late for January’s community challenge, but it will definitely fit into February’s neglected challenge as it sat ignored for a good while.

The last piece of terrain I made a start on was my mausoleum. This came off the 3D printer this morning. It took 8 hours 40 minutes to print. The two 32mm figures show the scale of it.

It is pretty close to a 6cm cube with sticky out bits (I am tired and can’t think of the correct word!)

I am printing the roof just now. It is an hour and a half into a three hour print. Once this is done I will print the iron door and the sarcophagus for the interior. The coffin in the open grave sits in the sarcophagus. I can’t remember how much the above cost PLA wise, once the whole thing is finished I will price it up.

I will get it all painted up and put on a small base.

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Graveyard Scatter…The Return

I managed to get a bit more done on the scatter terrain this evening.

I got the small hill painted brown..

Still the cliff face to paint, but getting there. The one thing I forgot to do was the spoil heap from the hole. I will see what I can come up with tomorrow.

I also managed to get some flock on the other three bits…

Still some clump foliage and tufts to add.

My 3D printer is working away on my longest print yet. I decided to get the Mausoleum printed. The walls will take over 7 hours with the roof taking another 3.

I reckon it will be done at about 03.30 tomorrow.

I was supposed to be traveling to the island of Yell tomorrow morning but as the temperature has dropped to at least -6 and as the gritters were off work today due to Up Helly Ah then I seriously doubt I will get out.

What is Up Helly Ah? Well it is Shetland’s main fire festival, supposedly the biggest in Europe. You can find out more about it here: https://www.shetland.org/things/events/up-helly-aa/lerwick-up-helly-aa

It does look pretty impressive…

Taken from Uphellyah.org
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Guess What…. Not 3D Printed

I actually did something for my Graveyard… yes I really did. Look photographic proof!

I went for the open grave look. I decided that the original three scatter pieces were going to become just lumps and bumps as opposed to graveyard related. I decided upon this course of action as the graveyard would suit 28mm post 1700 games. Not much use when I have a lot of 10 and 15mm miniatures too. They will still be finished in the same flock as the large graveyard but will be minus the Gravestones.

I did however do some printing 😉

I did the missing wheel for the water cart.

I thought I might as well add a couple more as wheels are always handy

Oh and as I am writing this the printer is chuntering away making me some more barrels (the ones above), a couple of coffins, one open, one closed as well as a treasure chest too. I am still toying with putting the open coffin propped up against the end of the open grave…

Tomorrow I will get the terrain flocked and the other bit painted. Thankfully I am off tomorrow so hopefully I can get something done on them.

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More 3D Printing

I promise I will stop sometime!

My MKIII and panzer 38t’s

I also printed a water barrel cart.

It has only one wheel as, although I printed two, I hadn’t realised the wheels are stuck together to make a thicker one. It’s a 10 minute job tomorrow so not a worry really. I would have printed an extra pair tonight but I am part way through printing a 15mm Panther.

Pete asked me how much does the printer cost to run, I had heard about the price of a lightbulb, but in reality I honestly don’t know. I tried doing a bit of research, but the internet is so bad tonight, Pages wouldn’t load. One I did manage to see was $370 dollars per year if he ran it 24 hours a day. Others were saying 2 cents per hour. So I think the consensus is pretty much… not that much. Mine has a heated bed normally sitting at 60 degrees, it has 2 fans in the print head and three small electric motors. Plus a fan on the board (similar to a computer fan).

Another site I found worked on an electricity tester and ran a 5 hour print with the total cost of £0.04.

Whatever the actual real cost is2 cents an hour or just under a penny an hour it still is great fun.

My Panther is now half way through…

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3D Printing… Do I have a problem

Whoops I seem to be hooked by this 3D printing malarkey….

I printed the Tiger 1 over night but the rest was today….

A sock ruler for my good Lady, A Hufflepuff crest for my eldest, a pile of markers for our One Ring RPG… I have left it printing 2 panzer 38t and a couple of MKIII.

I suppose the novelty will wear off soon.

The nice thing is all of the above STL files cost nothing. So quite a bargain.

The one thing I will do this week is credit the designers for everything, something I have meant to do but have forgotten so far. 😬

The white bit on the barrel of the Tiger is a mix of superglue and bicarbonate, sets like rock… some knacker tried knocking the barrel off. Tomorrow I may attempt to finish the Graveyard Scatter.

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Further 3D Fun

Today was a day if 3D ups and downs…

First the ups…

A nice little Stuart light tank.

I also printed of a Lego clone warrior for my little boy, some eggs for my daughter to paint like real ones. My wife wanted something printed as she was feeling left out.

Then the weirdness started. It wouldn’t print her stuff properly, I checked the bed level and the extruder, eventually I noticed that the nozzle kept getting covered in plastic that kept coming back.

Eventually I dismantled the hot end and found this…

The black stuff between the heat block and the metallic red heat sink should not be there. So this all had to be cleaned off and sorted. I added a new nozzle as the first had probably had it. It had worked itself loose too.

I also changed the Bowden tube, the white thing leading into the heat sink. I also changed the coupler, only to find the tube wouldn’t go through it!

I printed a new bit of an upgrade and am now printing a sarcophagus which I thought was going to be a quick one… I reckon it has another hour or two yet….

I also printed a nice little barrel

Tomorrow I must get back to my graveyard bits and bobs…

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And The Mystery 3D Print was…

Pete correctly guessed….

I just printed a 1/100 scale MkIV tank on my printer… I am still grinning like a Cheshire Cat…I started of with a bare plate then 3 hours 19 minutes later I have a tank.

Like Wow! It’s an effing tank! That was printed by me in my house on a printer…. The turret turns and everything. I was going to print one with the plates on the hull and I uploaded the wrong file….

As you can tell I am a little bit excited 🤪🤪🤪

Next up a Panther methinks, or maybe a Tiger or a Hetzer or a Jagdpanzer IV…..

Did I mention I was excited 😉

At this moment I am being a kind father and printing some eggs for my daughter who wants to paint some accurate bird eggs.

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3D Printer…. Longest Print Yet

Well tonight I downloaded the following…

Anyone got any ideas as to what it is???

This image was taken at the 2 hour 15 minutes stage… still about an hour to go. Probably not helped that I am evidently running at 90% speed (upped the speed to 100% now).This is printing at 0.15mm per layer with the infill set at 15%. The print speed is a bit slower being 40mm/S instead of the 60 I am used to.

I am paranoid that one or the other of them are going to fall over 😱 if this works I am going to try and print the Mausoleum overnight, that is if I can work out why the nozzle keeps getting covered in gunk.

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3D Printer…. Another Update ðŸ˜‰

Well as it was bloody freezing again tonight I thought I would bring the printer into the house as it was getting lonely out there. Furthermore my good lady and daughter had gone out for the evening 😉

I levelled the bed again and bloody hell it worked, maybe it was happy to see me!

I ran a few things through it. The downside was I couldn’t tell what gcode was what so it was pot luck with the coffins. The first one was only the coffin lid, I managed to print a coffin second time around.

After that I thought sod it and printed a giant spider.

The base is 63.5mm across so quite a big chappy. This is printed using the stock printer profile. Fat Dragon supply both a miniature and a terrain profile, but I am having some trouble with the slicer so I couldn’t use the better one. The other thing is the legs are out by about a millimetre. This is probably caused by a ‘z’ belt slackness. I will put a photo onto the Fat Dragon forum and see what they think.

After the spider I tried to print what I thought was another coffin….

This is roughly 25mm to a side.

I will have a bash at printing the mausoleum tomorrow night…. wish me luck!