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A Bit of a Break

Okay, so it wasn’t that I was doing nothing. I have been messing with slicing files for both printers.

I am going to give some miniatures a go tomorrow, with the settings I have of 0.2 and also 9 seconds a layer then they are going to take over 8 hours to do six of them! Hopefully it will be worth it.

I also sliced the 6mm Japanese castle that I got with the terrain. This is going to take over a day to print, it is pretty huge. This is my 6mm one. I will get the 3DAlienWorlds one for my 15mm stuff.

As can be seen, I have sprayed the buildings and walls as well as print the multiple paddy fields. It is probably a bit big so might end up for the 15’s. I can always print off another one that is a bit smaller tomorrow.

Finally keeping with my Japanese theme. My good lady made me a new mask for going shopping in.

I always feel sorry for Hokusai as poor bloke is trying to paint a nice picture of Mount Fuji and a ruddy great wave hurtles into view. 😂

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Village Walls

So the walls finished overnight only one failure and to be honest I don’t actually know what it is 😂. I had to do some speedy repairs to save the bottom left gate. Luckily two layers of the blue tape pretty much matched the base that had pinged.

The other problem I had was stringing. Before I went to bed I bumped the temperature up about 10 degrees. I think it was too much. I used to do this over the colder months, so just automatically did it last night.

When I did the test print I had no stringing, so I reckon the change in temperature was the problem. Easy enough solved with a lighter…

I have been busy constructing the sitootery again today. It was meant to be heavy rain, but thankfully we had a couple of twenty minute drizzling and that was it. Strong winds are forecast tomorrow so I might not get any more done.

Next on the printer are the paddy fields…

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Painting Hiatus

Achieved sod All tonight, this is not totally accurate. I painted nothing, but I did get the pachy cavalry stuck onto lolly sticks and then got them and some 28mm resin stuff undercoated.

I also got some more walls sliced. My plan is to make a small based town using the printed buildings surrounded by the stone walls. I will have a go at the wooden walls for a village tomorrow.

I was busy today building a sitootery. Basically a conservatory made by myself (its a good Shetland word). Pretty much got most of the frame up today. We made concrete a few days ago which has cured nicely. tomorrow I shall carry on with it. Only one minor injury today, I tried bending my finger 90 degrees in the wrong direction!

Whilst marinading in the bath I was watching one of my all time favourite YouTube channels…

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheCrafsMan

This guy is a legend… he covers all kind of craft and I just find his voice so soothing. Someone said it was a Louisiana accent, but I honestly haven’t got a clue.

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Resin Cleaning – the Importance of…

The title says it all really. Making sure that the ‘raw’ resin is removed from the parts is really important. You can tell from these two galleys…

I bet you cannot tell which one was cleaned the best!

Mikko very kindly gave me some advice and it certainly has made a difference. These things are really small, that is a 6mm miniature in the background. I have now got some new resin so will need to do a test print to begin with as this one is translucent green. I reckon that I need 9 seconds to get the best quality at the present layer height. I intend to try increasing the resolution and see what I can get out of it.

The journey continues…

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Mercy Sakes Alive

Looks like we got us a convoy… yes some more 6mm loveliness arrived this morning all the way from the USA.

Was the dark of the moon on the sixth of June
In a Kenworth pullin’ logs
Cab-over Pete with a reefer on
And a Jimmy haulin’ hogs
We is headin’ for bear on I-one-oh
‘Bout a mile outta Shaky Town
I says, “Pig Pen, this here’s the Rubber Duck
“And I’m about to put the hammer down”

Yes Convoy is one of my favourite films… I have it on DVD and haul it out to watch every so often… One of the best Theme songs ever…

Back in the Day I had a CB and used to belong to the Citizens Band Radio club in the village where I lived.

Although I love the Convoy Theme… this is a close second 😉

So enough of big rigs and CB Gibberish…. the other thing in my parcel was my Lizardmen cavalry…

These are the lizards riding Pachycephhlosaurus which I thought made a nice change from Utahraptors and the like. I did quite fancy some of the other big dinosaurs, but will have to wait a while for them.

This is the link to the website: https://www.microworldgames.com/ the shipping worked out at $12 which to be fair is about as some companies in the UK want to charge me for parcels to Shetland.

Tonight we got back into our RPG campaign suitably distanced. it was good to get playing again. Nobody died, even though they decided to spend 5 days wandering around the barrow downs… we shall continue with it next week.

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Resin Experiments

So after printing nearly 40 miniatures, a pile of 6mm buildings and a small ancient fleet I decided to print some test matrixes to help with the dialling in off the printer…

From left to right, top to bottom, we have 8.5 seconds, 9 seconds, 10 seconds and 14 seconds a layer. The 14 seconds is overexposed I think, but I may be totally wrong with that. From what I understand for circles and pegs you need to have the same amount of holes as pegs, for the bars at the bottom, the bars should technically be able to fit inside the slots below them and the two parts of the thing in the middle should just be touching, problem is they all look the same to me apart from the last one! Well I reckon I have until next Monday to ponder this as that is when the next bottle of resin will arrive.

Pete asked an interesting question about cost of resin over filament. There is definitely a difference. Resin cost me £29.00 for 500ml and filament was £25.00 for a one kilogram roll. Before lockdown the rolls were coming in at £18 a go. So there is definitely a price differential in place. However I have printed shit loads of things. Nearly 40 figures as well as my fleet and buildings so cost per thing is below 50p per item. There is a time differential as well. I can print six figures in the amount of time I could print one on the resin printer. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the Ender. It would take six times as long to print the six miniatures.

I printed these for my eldest, just under 11 hours on the Ender (okay it was high quality)

Height determines the length of time on the Resin Printer.

I will get some of the resin stuff painted ASAP and also shove one onto the Ender and see what the difference is when painted up. A bit of a long journey, but I am enjoying it so far 😉.

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Teeny Tiny Monks

Tonight I Set about getting some paint onto the 6mm monks.

What with the resin printing and not baring able to be bothered then these got put onto the back burner a bit. There is still a long way to go with them, but at least I have made a start. The majority are in saffron robes, but I have thrown some grey and red in there too to add a bit of variety. I also added some Caucasian paint to the bearers at the back as they have now become my peasant bearers for my samurai army. I will probably cut off the armed man at the front and replace them with a samurai or Ashigaru miniature instead.

My Baccus order should be getting cast this week sometime. I am 20 orders beyond the last update so unless there are some massive orders in then I should be getting it next week.

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Further work on the Resin

Ok, first off I think I need to pull back a bit on the resin as tonight I realised that I have pretty much run out, my last print, drained the vat dry, which was not clever. I forgot to check before going out so now I have a pile of house roofs and only one house to put it on. I have, however,got a cunning plan. I will use the broken roof and semi printed buildings to make a burning village… well I think that is what I am up to with it.

The burning buildings will go with these ones…

Resin versus Filament. At this stage I really cannot tell the difference. The one weird thing on the resin is that one of the houses is actually slightly Smaller than the other ones. Another weird thing is that the roofs just about fit. This will be easily sorted as I can print the roof at 51% and the house at 50%. I did manage to print a couple of Tori gates this evening, but sadly the bridge failed, for some reason one end detached from the build plate. In the background you can see the fawn I printed for my daughter as she wants to add it to a diorama.

I put all of the villagers together today… errr there are rather a lot!

No wonder I ran out of resin!

I have ordered a couple more bottles of resin, so nail it comes I am going to be pretty much painting things 😂

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Wearable Dioramas

Today I put my resin fish to good use and made some jewellery.

I had a lot of fish (and a turtle) hence the number of pendants and soon to be pendants..

These were nice and relaxing to do.

Basically a layer of cured resin and then some basing sand, more resin then the fish or whatever with the foliage., more resin then some of the leaves I made ages ago and then topped off with more resin.

My favourite one.

Me doing this caused pretty much the rest of the family to want to do something too. So my youngest is going to do a pond inside a box. My wife and eldest are doing something in a couple of clean jars. So all in all my messing around ended up being a six hour crafting session.

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Something Fishy

Today I painted up some koi, I am going to make something with them tomorrow.

I also found some photos… Pete painted up some Dutch lancers For his Waterloo diorama and Today I found a picture of the Polish Lancers … this was after we adopted one as he was on his own…

I even dressed up as a Cowboy once for a charity event.. took my horse too!