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A Bit on the Wobbly Side

I have sat for about 45 minutes trying to get the energy to get off my backside. I am hoping that I am not coming down with the thing the rest of the family has got.

For this reason I am having an early night. I am going to head off now and check how the second ram is doing on the printer, but the first one came off perfectly. Here they are…one and two. I thought I would show you the auto supports for the miniature. I tend to do an auto support then add more as necessary. In this case I think I forgot to change to light supports before slicing.

I need six in total for a cavalry unit in Dragon Rampant. These are just the same model reprinted. I will slice some more. They come with a lance, sword and mace as well as having four different bodies. A separate ram is available too. This means I could have mounted infantry. Come to think of it there might be an unarmoured ram too. I honestly cannot remember.

I am printing off another three two handed pole arms. Once these are done then I will count up what I have in terms of bodies and arms and print more arms as necessary.

Today I Went against tradition and actually bought some GW undercoat. I got lead belcher as I thought that I had a lot of armoured models to paint up. I will spray them metal and then paint the cloth and flesh white so that I can use the Contrast paint. I might totally regret this! So I will do one unit and see how I get on with it.

Two more days to go before the summer holidays. We had sports day (indoors) today and are having a leavers presentation tomorrow. Typically it is going to rain tomorrow so we might not be able to let the parents attend. I was doing it outside to allow them to see it… bloody weather has put paid to that.

My new teacher is coming for a visit tomorrow to meet the kids so that is something to look forward to.

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It is Alive!!!

Alive I tell you, Alive!!!

Okay maybe a bit melodramatic (or a lot), but this evening I have printed a dozen crossbowmen in two lots of six and three pole arms that wouldn’t print at all….

I deliberately spaced things out in case the extra suction in the FEP was causing problems. I have attempted the pole arms three times before this and they failed each time. This time I just put them on their own on the build plate and voila they came out fine. I have changed nothing else. All settings are the same. Right now I am trying a dwarf mounted on a ram… not like in the hobbit thankfully, but a fully armoured one. We shall see how it copes. Hopefully everything is spaced out enough for a successful print.

I got nothing painted as I have spent all evening looking for some missing 6mm Samurai cavalry. When I checked the Baccus shop it stated the army I bought should have had two units of 15 strips. I can only find one. On the up side I did find the Daimyo base with all of the necessary figures still blue tacked on.

Silly season is upon us once again… 23.56 and I can still see up the valley…this was the view at 23.30…

The iPad camera was struggling a bit

It is now going to get a bit darker every evening 🥴

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More on the Cavalry

Tonight I wrangled with the printer a bit again and got further than yesterday. One type of halberd isn’t working so I am going to redo the slicing of it to see if that helps. It seems to be failing at the lowest point so there is something wrong with the supports… anyway enough of printers. I got a bit more done on the cavalry…

I went hunting for another pack and then realised that this was actually it… it will do as Samurai Armies didn’t have huge cavalry forces. I toyed with the idea of a different colour for the cavalry, but decided against it. Therefore we have 15 minis in each colour. In case you were wondering I painted the horses in threes, then did the armour colour. I suddenly realised that one colour would have three black horses, so I changed one to the opposite colour to allow a bit of horse variation in both forces.

I also managed to get the archers done…

Now if I remember correctly then there are two packs of yari armed troops and one of teppo. These will need to be added to the sticks and then sprayed white, but I am pretty much half way to doing the whole army.

Tomorrow I hope to get some more done on these.

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Printer Woes…Again

There are some days when there aren’t enough swear words in the world to suffice. I went to sort things out this morning and found some rather deep scratches on the glass bed…I managed to get two banners and a mace and shield off the plate, no miniatures were in evidence.

I haven’t got a clue where the scratches came from. The only thing I can think of is that something had got stuck to the vat and when I moved it then it scratched the glass. I tried printing again and although I got something off I still had failures. Now I forgot to reset the lift speed which might account for things. The scratches were in the same place as some of the failures but not all, so that might not be the cause…

I got a miniature off the bit where the centre scratch is…. here he is….

As things are upside down things look weird… the two missing figures should have been bottom left and the three missing pole arms bottom right. It is all a bit annoying and confusing. I will re level tomorrow and print six miniatures, each in a different place and see if I can work things out. wish me luck!

I did manage to finish the unit of twelve Dwarves…

I also ordered a pile more of these bases… hopefully they will come sooner rather than later.

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Starting on the Samurai Cavalry

Tonight I made a start on the cavalry…

The archers just need the flesh doing and then they are done, apart from the bases…

I will hopefully get some more done on these tomorrow night. I am interviewing tomorrow, so wish me luck. I need the right person for this job.

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The Dwarves Muster

Today I managed to get some more Dwarves printed… All was going well until this evening when I went to print the last one (well actually three) with their banners…two of the three printed and the banner sort of did. So I relevelled and set it off again. Hopefully by tomorrow I will have something to show for it.

Anyway here are my heavy Infantry without their banner…

I also managed to get my rear rank of pike done… now interestingly there is one missing. Part of me now wonders if it failed and caused a problem in the vat…

I also have a large problem… The above is the last base I had! I am hoping that I can get some more, otherwise it is going to be an absolute sod if I have to change them into something else part way through. These came with my Flintloque miniatures and I transferred them onto 2p’s or mdf bases. I never thought I would actually run out of the unused bases.

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Maximilian, Dwarves and the Samurai

Well Max and the Dwarves came out really nicely…

I achieved a mage too! I have also printed out half of a rear rank of pike, along with some artillery crew. These will be available to view tomorrow. The second half are in the process right now. Over four and a half hours to print, for no other reason that the pike was vertical.

I also managed to get some more done on the Samurai archers….

That is them nearly done…I am not sure what colour to do the fletching on the arrows, if I do them white it will look like I have missed a bit so I might have to just water down some Contrast to make it off white.

Tomorrow I will get them finished I hope, then onto some cavalry before swinging back round to more infantry. I am sure that I have some Teppo too.

This made me chortle a bit too much…

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 6 Comments

Something Achieved

Today was rather tiring. A day’s training via video conferencing… child protection training is never fun, but as a child protection trainer then it is always weird that I have to be trained in it. Yesterday I managed 9800 steps… today 4000 most of that after I got home. I managed to get some stuff done after the parent council meeting.

First off I scampered to see how the mounted Maximilian had got on… he hadn’t. The magician, the sword arm and Max himself were missing. Once again it is a bit of a mystery as to why they failed, when everything else has been working fine. As they were the first of their type printed It might have been an issue with the supports, but normally things are tested solidly before going out, so it could well be that either it was too cold and the light weight supports failed, or it could be that the build plate has gone off level again.

The only thing to print were the new officer and the lady magician (I am actually struggling with words tonight and cannot think what either are). Here they are with the flag and drummer…

They fit in nicely size wise with the others. I am busy printing a few of the Dwarves that came as part of the kickstarter. We shall see if they print okay.

I also managed to do a bit more work on the samurai…

So the amount of white on these has reduced a bit, this time each colour got a specific helmet colour, I really couldn’t be bothered messing around with half a dozen shades.

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Sort of a Night Off

I am what is best known as knackered. The last time I felt this tired was when my eldest was born and they didn’t sleep for 12 weeks as they had reflux… a week and a half to go until the holidays, in that time I have to interview people, have two days of training, short list with a colleague, sort out for the end of the year and generally stop the oldest kids going off the rails before leaving for secondary school, sort out end of year assessments and record keeping etc…wish me luck!

Anyway tonight I seriously could not be bothered to do much, I sliced a pile more miniatures and rescued the remaining five halberds off the printer…

So I now have a unit of twelve with attached flag waver and drummer.

I am printing off a mounted general and entourage. I shrunk my Lovecraftian zweihander down to the same size as these ones to add in as a fancy officer type. I think he will fit right in (78%) seems the right size this time.

The original test prints from last month.

So that is three full units of twelve done, a half size pike unit and some officer types… in terms of Lion Rampant, when the pike are done then I will have 20 points of a 24 point retinue.

I really doubt I will get anything done tomorrow night as I have a parent council meeting until 21.00. Luckily I will be able to do it from home as we are online. I just have to write the head teacher’s report before 19.00 tomorrow… it is always a sod trying to remember everything that I need to add.

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More Printing, More Samurai

Tonight I had more success on the printer front. The next lot worked fine apart from a couple of niggles… First is the sword on the flag waver hasn’t printed again, second is that some of the pike and halberd shafts are wonky in places, but I am getting there…

I am printing another set of halberdiers and flag/drummer combo that will give me a unit of twelve halberdiers with flag and musician as well as a musician and flag for the pikes. I will need to print a few with vertical pikes to go as the rear rank.

I also managed to get some paint onto the samurai archers…

So it was a bit of a productive evening, not the greatest, but at least something was achieved.