Today has been a day of frustration, lots of frustration! The bloody printer kept missing out various bits, not sure why but some of the miniatures on the plate did not print, on the up side, I now have a whole load more miniatures, that I was going to do at another time.

The matriarch and the ram were two of the things that I tried to print… annoyingly, when I moved them into the middle they printed fine. Now I am no expert, but this would indicate a levelling problem. I re levelled the bed and still had a failure in the same spots, now it could have been a simple support issue. I will try printing some other bits and pieces tomorrow and see how I get on.

Well, I suppose sort of might be a better way of putting it…

I spent a good deal of this evening sorting out a build plate with four miniatures, two shields and lots of weapons for them all… I came back to the printer to find this…

Now the mathematically astute will notice a distinct lack of number 4 miniature and the more observant will also notice a one legged man. There are also a lot of the weapons missing too, not to mention the bottoms of the two hand guns… I managed to print the hand to hold the shotgun, only to find I had printed the right hand instead of the left.

So I did what I could with the bits I had and came up with these two (plus the power maul for the sergeant)…

I decided to print them all again. This time I noticed that the bolt pistol and grenade pistol were actually sitting in mid air, so sorted that out! I also supported the heck out of everything that I could. Further to this I increased the lift height and slowed down the lift speed as the FEP was certainly being pulled upwards by the suction. On second thoughts, I have just realised that I increased the lift speed…. doh!

On the up side these are nearly finished…

I am rather pleased that I now have a long weekend… no work for four days! I need the above finished by lunchtime as my mate is coming around for his Birthday Barbecue around 16.00. I do need to go shopping for all of the barbecue food and drinks, but hopefully I can get the wash on them and highlights done. He might have to wait until Saturday (his birthday) to actually get them as it allows me to get some PVA on the bases as well as getting them varnished. The extras will have to come a bit later on.

Tonight I managed to get some more paint onto these chaps and am nearly done them. I want to get a wash onto the metalwork and then a dry brush. I added a dark paint into the mouth area and it made me a bit happier than yesterday…

So this is them nearly finished… I will get some of the dark sand onto their bases tomorrow. The one thing I did notice this evening, or should I say notice properly, is that the one chucking the grenade has lost his rifle barrel.

I had a go at printing the last two from this squad.. it was a bit of a pain to be honest. Chitubox, the slicer program was playing silly buggers and messing with the resolution. I eventually overcame it by totally reloading it and voila my printer appeared, so apart from the failure of the force truncheon (or whatever it is called), the rest printed ok.

So we have the sergeant with a las pistol and the marshal with a bolt gun and chain sword. In hindsight I think adding the bolt gun in that pose hasn’t really worked. I really should have rotated the hand more and had it on its side… hey ho never mind.

I will print off the failed bit tomorrow. He should get eight of the ten for his Birthday by Friday.

The one thing I found about this printer was the relief of just pressing print and off it went… none of the faffing on for half an hour trying to get the print head to come down.