So, as the famous saying goes…The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. I planned to get things painted tonight and failed to achieve anything… well apart from looking at pretty pictures in the Battle Tome…
A parcel came today, so I read a bit of this too…
I really must get some painting done sometime soon, even a smidge would do. It has been a bit tricky working from home and trying to keep the kids going on their schoolwork, whilst feeling a bit crap.
Three more days before I can leave it all for a couple weeks as we break up for Easter on Friday. It could have done with being last week.
Hopefully I will have plenty of time for painting then…
Well after yesterday’s total mess of a print I decided to try and do something to help the print overnight. First of all I bumped up the temperature to 224 for the overnight section of the print.
Other thing I did was to build a temporary box for the printer to work in.
It’s in there somewhere
So after a bit of a worrying night, I woke up to a great print… mega phews were breathed.
Print one on the left, print two on the right
The biggest problem I had was getting the bloody supports off. It was a 22 hour print and it seemed like 22 hours to get the support off. It was a nightmare! In the end I managed to pull only one foot off. You can just about see the line on the front foot.
It is a mighty Beasty and was well worth printing. Okay it took 34 hours in total (60 if you include the couple of duff prints). But it did save me £158 printing it. A whole roll of filament costs £18 for a 1kg roll. The whole thing weighs about 160g. So roughly £3.00 (a bit more for failed prints).
I have just measured him…he measure 12 inches (30cm) long. He does look large next to the Saurus cavalry and Kroxigor. (And this is at 70% size of the original!)
He is missing his crest.
The major buggeration I have is that with the lock down is that I am running out of white spray paint. Places won’t post up here so I might have to hold fire on painting things for a while. I was going to phone ahead to the car place and buy some over the phone then pick them up from the door.
This shit has totally got real very quickly. I honestly think I have been sitting in a little bubble and somehow have persuaded myself that everything was going to be tickety-boo.
Tomorrow I will try and get something painted (unless I find something new and exciting to print).
Well I thought I would remove the support from the body. And see if it was saveable.
The legs and spines mostly pinged across the room, but luckily for once, I found all the bits.
Model and support
Now this might be able to be saved with some filler or something similar as well as some Greenstuff. I am printing a second one with the temperature bumped up to 220. According to the filament spec it can go up to 230. I intend to make a plastic tent to cover it tonight to try and keep some heat in. I have never tried pausing a print before so don’t know if it can carry on properly afterwards. I know technically that the printer has a system where if the print is stopped due to a power cut it will store where it stopped and will then carry on. I have never had to try so I cannot pass comment on it.
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.
So now we have fault lines at the middle and the bottom. I am now convinced a secret society is involved here! I am printing a different one out just now And it seems to have a fault line at roughly the same place as the one above. It will be interesting to see what happens near the middle.
The one above has now been glued back together and once it has dried I will get to work with some Greenstuff. This should strengthen the joint as well as hopefully hide it. I am going to add a crest or something to the head to strengthen that too as I don’t want his snout falling off after he has been painted.
The big leech below had exactly the same problem as these Kroxigor. There is a fault roughly in line with the middle miniature’s Head. Now it did have some under extrusion issues. But it is at roughly the same height as the Kroxigor above. It may be a total coincidence though. The fact that the rest of the model is rock solid is what is causing the headache!
Having done a bit of thinking, I went and checked the nozzle temperature. It was set at 200 c. Now it might not be that, but I have cranked it up to 215 part way through.
My plan therefore is to print another one at 215 and see if that makes a difference.
Bogenwald 