So it has been printing for 21 hours now and it is a bloody mess. Some major fault lines part way through the build. The only thing I can think of is that overnight the ambient temperature in the shed dropped significantly causing the layers to not bond properly the bottom few and upper ones are fine, just the middle bits over night.
I might be able to save it with a Greenstuff skin over the worst bits, but part of me thinks it is going to be a waste of time.
Bugger… or words to that effect!
It comes off in an hour and I will see what kind of a mess it is when I get the supports off.
The tail that I printed is as tall as this, but had no problems at all. It has either had a partial clog that has pushed through or it is a temperature thing. If I restart when it comes off, I can increase the temperature of the nozzle overnight. Hopefully that will sort it out…
Today I cleared off all of supports on the various Kroxigor.
Quite a force!
This is what the waste pile looks like from five of them…
I need to work out how to reduce the raft size and try some different supports. These were a bugger to get off. One of them actually pulled a foot off one of the earlier prints when it came away.
The other thing I did was to ‘design’ and print some other weapon heads.
The two bladed ones used the original weapon head base as seen in the foreground. The knife blade came from the goddess of War statue that I had printed ages ago. I removed the hand in 3D builder and added it to the weapon base. It did start off looking like the one with the spike, but the support took one of the prongs with it. It looked weird with just one of them so I snipped off.
The big Beasty torso is printing right now. I will have to wait until tomorrow to see it finished.
One hour in… 22 left to go!
I might actually have to paint something this evening 😱
Today I printed off the armoured Kroxigor. He took over 4 hours to print, I couldn’t work out why he took an hour longer until I put him next the the rest. Originally I thought it was because of all of the spikes etc. But it was because he is about 25% bigger.
He is rather nice. Problem I had was that there was a lot of stringing. More than the other ones done at 216.
The other thing I did was to print the Dread Saurian tail.
I am really pleased with it. Touch wood that the temperature is spot on and the printer is dialled in properly too. Tomorrow I take off the remains of the filament spool and add a brand new one. The reason for the new one is a 22 hour print for the body of the big Beasty.
I also spent a bit of time this evening designing a few different weapon heads in 3D builder. I thought it would be a quick way to make the Kroxigor look a bit different. I still intend to add bits and bobs to their heads in Greenstuff. There are bits and pieces in the Seraphon box as well that can be added.
I gave some new filament a go today…it’s called cotton soft… came out a treat. I may be breaching copyright, but it is for personal use and not for sale.
I decided to print the head crest (or whatever you call it) again. I believe I will not need any Greenstuff on this one… I hope!
For clarity, the wavy fault line is the support. The piece looks and feels solid. I am going to print off the armoured Kroxigor tomorrow and then will make a start on the dread Saurian. Tail first, then the torso. According to Cura the torso will take 22 hours to print! Hence the reason for wanting to get the thing dialled in properly…
Speaking of the Big Beasty… I found rules for one on the Forgeworld site. Not sure how many points one costs, but at least I found something!
Another 5 days before I can escape incarceration. Not much fun having to work from home when you aren’t exactly poorly, but are not exactly well.
Luckily the printer only needs a button pressing to achieve something 😉
So last night I changed the temperature half way through a print and had no issues. So I did another print with the temperature up to 216 instead of the 200 it had been at.
It seemed a bit high as it was bobbling and stringing, so I am printing another one at 210 to see what that is like.
I have actually lost count on how many of these I have printed! I think with the one on the build plate then I have got seven useable ones, nope I just counted and I have eight useable ones. I will print off one of the armoured ones to act as a leader.
Okay I got them all out!
These nine plus one more… I think I got carried away!
As I have so many I am going to add various bits and bobs added to them with Greenstuff, this will make the same ones a bit different. I am going to change some of the weapons to add variation too.
I will wait until I open the new roll of filament before going for the Dread Saurian print. To be honest part of me is tempted to redo the head crest as it looks a bit naff with the Greenstuff filling the gaps.
Today I didn’t fancy painting anything as although the cough is intermittent I have begun to feel a bit fluey and under the weather.
So instead I hit print a couple of times. One on Kroxigor 2 and the other on Kroxigor 3.
You may notice a definite similarity between the two. I have either printed number two twice in error or somehow I sliced the same thing twice and renamed them. It is more likely the first option as I only changed the first part of the file name when it came off Cura.
They don’t look too bad when they are cleaned up a bit 😉
What I think I will do is print off the head of the armoured version and add it to the second one of these. I will also make a ball of Greenstuff and give him a big spiked mace or something similar. That way at least they will look a bit different.
Interestingly neither of these are showing the fault lines that appeared on the longer prints. They have definitely gone higher than where the fault lines were…
No evidence of cracks on the Kroxigor!
I am having an early bed tonight as I do feel a bit wibbly. Nothing to worry myself about, just a bit pants. I managed to get some stuff done from home. But just before finishing Webmail decided to die on me and is not playing any more. On the upside if I do feel crap tomorrow I can legitimately say Sod it and not do anything until I feel better.
Wow look at me trying to see the silver linings in things!
Anyway the battle tome has arrived…It can be added to my collection…
Left 2008, middle 2020 and right 2003
It is a pretty book, but as I haven’t played AOS before then most of it means nothing to me. Now I know I am being hyper critical here and in no way want to have a dig at the artist in any way, shape or form, but I actually prefer the older cover illustrations. Ditto with some of the internal artwork.
I feel there is a subtle wrongness with them. Now it may be nostalgia talking here as I have read the other ones so many times… this is one of my favourites Illustrations from the 2003 book…
There is a similar composition lizards against a foe. In the colour lizards surrounding Chaos forces and in the other lizards surrounding humans. As I said it is nothing major just a feeling of wrongness that I cant put words to or give a reason why.
As for the rest of the book they have the usual painting ideas and pretty pictures of the various models…
There is also a bit of background fluff as well as the various groupings known as constellations. Each one has a different way of fighting, some have gazillions of skinks in the shadowstrike host and others have a more solid battle line the Sunclaw host. (Speed reading so might be talking cobblers here ).
There seem to be factions too. Each one being different to the others. Some are really magic heavy and others are more primal.
I will have a good and proper read later on and report back.
The one thing that is totally missing (or I have missed it) is the dread Saurian. GW make one in resin so there must be rules for it somewhere. I have seen videos on YouTube too referencing it… looks like a bit of googling is in order later on too.
I have set the printer away on another Kroxigor to see if it has the same fault lines as the bigger stuff.
So, as I said yesterday, I had been printing something terrain wise for my Seraphon Force. Here it is…
Seven hours forty three minutes to print…
I plonked a couple of Saurus next to it to give you a size of scale.
Not everything is perfect though… it has bloody big gaps in it. Now these can be filled etc, but it does mean that there is a problem with the printer. Probably some sort of under extrusion or for some reason the layers aren’t bonding together properly. The latter might be caused by damp in the filament. The roll has been on there for a good while, and as the heating packed in in the shed it has not been the best conditions.
I also started on the dread Saurian. This is a Seraphon Mega Beasty. Now I don’t have the dosh to buy one, so I thought I would print it.
This thing is …king huge! I actually dropped the size down to 70% as the body wouldn’t fit on the build plate. As you can see, even scaled down it is a bit on the large side…The head alone is bigger than the large scale Saurus hero.
A mere four and a half hours to print this!
Now the problem I have is that I don’t want to try printing the body until the printer problem is sorted.
The Mega-Beasty comes in four parts. Head, torso, tail and finally head decoration. I am printing the latter right now and I think, just by looking at it, that there are going to be problems. It is splitting apart in places, funnily enough at roughly the same height as the throne and head.
As a total aside, I am still having the panic episodes which quite frankly are doing my head in. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow so hopefully he can help out. On the up side of all of this, I am noticing the warning signs a lot more, the panic attacks at present might be due to me fighting back.
Didn’t get in until 7.30 tonight so by time dinner occurred I was too knackered to do much, but at least I got a bit more done.
It is really just the metalwork and tidying up a bit to go, then onto the Riders of Rohan.
A bit of excitement occurred today, apart from my wife and the two youngest being unwell with cold/flu symptoms.
The Authority has decided to close all schools for the whole of next week (apart from three on the outer islands). They emailed at 13.05 stating that staff needed to be told by 13.15 and parents by 13.30. I was already back teaching by then and just happened to check my emails. Otherwise we would have found out after the kids went home. They phoned to say had I received the email two minutes before 13.30.
This closure is not for health reasons, but because we have very little supply cover for the schools and we have lost a lot of staff and kids who are self isolating (or in the case of a lot of the kids, been removed from school by anxious parents).
As of yesterday Greater Glasgow and Clyde had fourteen cases of the virus and our little island of 22,000 had six. We had the dubious honour of being third. As of this morning we almost doubled that figure to eleven.
Now you may think this closure is a bonus, sadly not. All staff are expected to attend their place of work. No extra painting time for me.
Hopefully I will get the orks and Rohirrim finished this weekend.
Until tomorrow…seeya. I will end with a nice picture overlooking South Whiteness
I reckon it is going to be frosty tomorrow morning!
Bogenwald 