Posted on by maenoferren22 · 4 Comments

Desert Houses 4

More 3D Printing I am afraid…

Today I had half an hour and had a mess around with 3D builder. I had a go at adding a compound to a small house. I was really pleased with the result.

This took just over 2 hours to complete. The other thing I did was to add the window shutters and doors in the software rather than printing them separately and glueing them on. I had mixed success with this as some were too far forward, but as my wife pointed out it does look like they were sealed up.

The one on the right above was the original house.

The second one looks a bit more complex But in all honesty all I did was join a couple of houses together with a couple of walls. Again I added in the window shutters to the software, I forgot the doors. The bigger one took 3 hours 58 minutes (to be fair it is nearly twice the size of the other one).

I really enjoyed doing this. It also means that the compound walls are secure and won’t need glueing with visible joint lines.

I still need to print roofs for them both, but tomorrow I am going to have a go at something a bit bigger 😉.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 3 Comments

Desert Houses 3

Today I printed off my conversion of a house with stairs with an added tower.

It worked ok, but I reckon the tower needs to be a bit bigger. I dropped it down by 50% too. I do reckon it needs to be bigger.

When you compare it with the two story house with domed roof you will see what I mean…

The door is tiny for a start. This can be easily rectified with a bit of card and a printed door but the height seems a bit naff too.

The other issue I have is the lack of texture on it. Not a problem on its own but it looks a bit weird stuck onto a textured building.

As I was printing off some more walls tonight it suddenly dawned on me that I could actually stick them in situ on the buildings in the software and print them as one.

I shall give it a go tomorrow.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 6 Comments

Panzer II

I managed the panzer 2 earlier. This is different from all of the others in that the tracks are separate to the hull and turret.

I have a couple of problems with this print. Firstly, the tracks don’t match. I seem to have printed a D and an F track! It gets worse…. one is the right track and the other is the left… so all in all a total bugger up! The problem now, is that I can’t change anything without the slicer on the laptop… So my MKII’s will have to wait until repairs are made.

I also printed off a 50% scaled house with stairs. I can now compare like for like.

First up the 60% one…

And now the 50% version…

I reckon I will stick with the 50% versions as to me they look better.

My plan is to print a few and make some hamlets, which can be joined to make a larger village.

And finally another Somua… I was so sad about the MKII

This shows it still with the support in situ…

I will get on with doing a test paint of one of the houses.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 5 Comments

Desert Dwelling Update.

The two story house just finished, but as I said in the previous post the ground floor is the same.

Here we have a comparison of the two. 50% and 60% of the full size.

I am going to go with the 50% size as I think it will look the best.

Here we have the two story version…

Unfortunately I printed the wrong size upper roof. I say unfortunately as although printing a new one should be Easy Peasy, it sadly is not as one of my dear, dear children have totally destroyed the laptop screen. Therefore we will have to somehow get it to Unst and then see if he can fix it before he can somehow get it back to us!

I can now only print the things on my micro SD card. Bugger!

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 7 Comments

Desert Dwelling II

Well I down sized a building to 50% full size and it came out thus:

This is a different one to the first, but is another from the ones purchased from Terrain4Print.

If we look at the first print it looks like this…

It is quite big compared to the MKIII.

And then side by side…

To be honest I think the smaller of the two still looks fine, whereas the first one printed looks a bit on the big side.

I am printing off a two story house, but the base is the same as the one with the stairs.

Once it is done I will do a further comparison shot between the two. Let me know what you think so far.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 5 Comments

January’s Community Challenge

January’s challenge was terrain, so I decided to give some a go. I was rather pleased with the result, however I could have done more if I hadn’t become rather lethargic and lacked motivation.

But anyway I managed to get from the raw squirty foam to a few pieces of terrain.

As I had a bucket load of resin gravestones I decided on a graveyard theme. Rather than a flat graveyard I wanted something a little more dramatic.

I was pleased with how the ‘grave hill’ came out.

I then did some smaller hillocks using the off cuts from the foam. These were originally going to be covered in graves too, however I decided that the pieces would be more flexible if I avoided the gravestones.

I also made a start on another hill, but ran out time…

One of my other plans was to get this completed in January…

I did manage to print it in time, but it was meant to be based and painted too…

I will endeavour to get the last two finished sometime soon.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 4 Comments

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.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 2 Comments

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
Posted on by maenoferren22 · 2 Comments

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.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 6 Comments

Graveyard Scatter Hardly Any Progress

The title says it all really… hardly anything done, in part due to the fact that a PVA and paint mix takes a fair old while to dry.

I will choose some gravestones or something for them. Part of me thinks one of the carts should be put on one of them…probably the top one…

After some feedback I decided on one more piece, this time with an open grave.

The theory is I am going to use a printed coffin in the bottom or possibly an open coffin propped against one end.

Whilst mixing the PVA with the paint I came across this….

It was like a giant snot in the bottle, needless to say the bottle went into the bin. The snot would not go back into the bottle so much stickiness occurred!

My laptop is back home now and I have sorted out my gcodes for various things to print. Unfortunately the shed is too cold to print in…Bloody typical!

I am going to have to build some form of enclosure for it so that it stays snuggly warm 🙄. Technically I could move it into the house but I don’t have anywhere to put it. The shed is 2/3 the size of the house which is why it is out there. We call it the shed but it is the old cattle byre.

The temperature is dropping to silly levels again tonight, so probably no printing this evening. Which is really annoying as I have a backlog of stuff I want doing.

To be honest I am enjoying making terrain again, it is so much easier than painting miniatures. If you drop a clanger you can always shove a bush onto it 🤣.

On a whole different subject my Ebay purchase arrived yesterday…

I got twenty miniatures for £15. I haven’t checked to see whether they are painted in acrylic’s or not. If they are, I reckon I can tart them up a bit. If enamel then I am not sure. I reckon they won’t come off their bases which is a bit of a pain as most of my other Flintloque miniatures are on circular bases.

I will photograph them all tomorrow when I get them out of the mega protective wrapping.