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Printer Shenanigans II

So today I checked various bits on the printer. I took apart the hot end as well as checked the Bowden tube and the couplers at both end. When I pulled the filament out I noticed this…

There was a definite bulge near the tip. It wasn’t huge but it was definitely there. Something up near the hot end was causing drag leading to a slight backing up of the filament as it heated.

So I set about having a look.

The Bowden tube was sitting up against the hot end so it wasn’t that. I took of the nozzle and discovered the issue (or at least I think it is)…

Top nozzle is brand new out of the box. Bottom one is the one I just took off. I compared the bottom one to others I had removed and this one was the only one with this build up. Now it might be that Some filament got left in there when I pulled it out, but it had the usual whisp on the end like it does whenever I change a spool so I think, fingers crossed, that this is the problem.

i put everything back together and I did a bed level. The machine was restarted and I printed the wardens, or attempted to…

The bed was too low, I then relevveled the bed and guess what, it was too high… third time lucky I hope as I am reprinting them…

And they were too close to the base plate, so close in fact that I couldn’t get them off. Unfortunately they split in half as the top layers came away and left the bit on plate behind… I swore!

I am now trying the square base.

My plan is to print a temperature tower, if I can work out how to do it in Cura. That and a bed levelling guide. The other thing is that the middle of the bed seems higher than the rest so I will move things away from the centre and see if that helps.

As Eric said, it might be an idea to go down the glass and hairspray route.

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3D Printer Shennanigans

Tonight I fiddled a bit more with the printer. I checked all of the bits that I could. So to test it I gave it the big square base that it totally cocked up yesterday.

I pulled a fair bit of filament off the roll to allow it to have as little drag as possible and the print came out like this.

Problem is it had a bit of a naff crack in it. I shoved some superglue into it to help out. I have also sliced some rocks and things that I will glue over the crack to help strengthen it. So next thought was much better than this….

So that was a start. I do reckon that this weekend I am going to replace the extruder. Luckily I purchased one about 2 months in to owning the thing and it has sat in its box for ten months!

The other thing I did was to increase the temperature by 10 degrees. I was going to print another one off with the new temperature but being the pillock that I am I forgot to add it to the memory stick!

So instead of redoing it I printed what was on the card…

Townsfolk… from what I remember top row left to right:

Guard, porter, passer by

Barmaid, priest, lady one and two

Blacksmith, traveller and farmer

This lot were printed at 210 and have an infil of 50% (I think) .

They are pretty solid but some still have a slight delamination on the outer layer.

I also decided to print some dwarves, sadly, or not, I ended up starting to print some dungeon dressing, which will be great, but will take 3 hours instead of one..

It looks like I will be playing Hunter Call of the Wild for a bit longer…

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 11 Comments

3D Printer Issues.

Tonight I tried another square base. It set off really well and by time it finished it was a total bloody mess. Yesterday’s tile looked like this…

Today the base looked normal then at about 2/3 of the way up it went to pot…

You can see the shift line on the left of the right hand fold, the bit to the extreme right is the top of the same piece. There is definite extrusion issues. I probably shouldn’t have been able to snap the piece as easily as I should have.

I swore lots and tested yesterday’s floor and snapped that too…I therefore swore more.

Under extrusion can be for a whole host of reasons. Anywhere from a clogged nozzle to problems with the slicer.

I have unloosened the extruded arm a smidge as this can be one of the issues. I checked the Bowden tube was still in situ and once the new miniatures are printed I will pull out the filament and see if there is a bulge at the bottom. Once cool then I will see if the Bowden tube is burned, meaning it has pulled away from the nozzle.

I see a few more days of swearing coming up!

Some knacker forgot to increase the infil on the miniatures!

They are rather funky though.

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Vertical Printing

Tonight I really could not be bothered to paint anything, so instead I redid some of the meeple bits and pieces on Cura.

I redid the orks, they are printing now. The other thing I attempted was a vertical 2 sided room. This is 9cm square by 3mm wide. Every time I tried this before it failed. Luckily this time we had success!

This, as I said is double sided and it works well with the rest of the things I have printed…

I do think it will make a nice, extensive dungeon once I get everything printed.

I am pleased to say that the orks have come out loads better. I increased their infil to 25% and it has made a difference.

There does seem to be a bit of a weird delamination on the edge of the shield and on the arm of the ork holding the axe, but at least they are solid now.

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Uruk Hai …Finished

Tonight was my daughter’s Parents evening. All good there, we never thought there was going to be a problem and it is good that there wasn’t. It was funny watching some of the staff wanting her to take their subject at exam level.

As we got back after 8.30 then there wasn’t really much time to do a lot so I got them based.

This is them all together. It was after I took this photo, I realised that the Wargs and original hero had the base edge painted chocolate brown… the rest I did black!

The issue, if issue is the right word, is that all the rest of them (around sixty or so) were mostly painted by someone else and are more based on the film. I need to paint the rest of the Mordor orks in this style.

I still can’t find the warg riders, so it looks like I am going to have to have a mooch on Ebay to see if I can find another seven as ten is a nice round number 😂.

The other thing I got done tonight is to build this Space Marine …

He is one of the individual hero packs the kids got me for My birthday. Talking of Games Workshop. I found out today that the undead part of the £2.99 magazine I got would cost me £25 in a box. It was even better value than I thought it was

i was going to get the printer running tonight doing some 9 x 9 rooms for my meeple dungeon, but sadly the printer told me it was too cold to print anything ☹️.

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Wind, Rain, Uruk Hai and a Frightful Drip

The weather today has, quite frankly, been pants. The wind has been howling most of the day. Add rain to gale force winds and it is the making of a crappy kind of a weather forecast.

So tonight I decided to print off some more corridors…

Yeah, exactly the same as the other ones, but they are rather nice 😂. I popped out to see how they were going and there was a small puddle under the printer. It looks like the wind has damaged the roofing material in the shed and let the rain in, right over the controls of the bloody printer. Luckily due to the slope on the front it ran right off. The whole area is now covered by blue insulation foam, as is my wife’s office and the book cases.

The other thing I managed to do was pretty much finish off the Uruk hai.

The flock is still to go down, but the actual miniatures are ready to varnish.

Still a few days of tales to go before any repairs can be made 😢

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Uruk Hai…Getting There

I had some more jobs today… spent an awful lot of it swearing but also went to the club… more if that later.

The shower thingy works (in a fashion) hot water pressure is so low that any cold over a trickle causes it to freeze you. On the upside four of us managed a shower tonight instead of us all fighting over a bath.

So after I threw myself in I managed to get some more painting done.

These are almost finished. The Uruk bows went a bit of a weird colour but really only the bases and the back of the shields to do, and the touching up of all of the bits I missed (but that goes without saying… it’s a standard).

So this afternoon three of us had a go at Journeys in Middle Earth.

In the party were, Legolas, Gimli and Beravor (a ranger). We played the first mission. This was simple… hunt the wilds for some pesky bandits. We managed to sort of achieve our aims. We located the bandit camp, but unfortunately we took too long and they saw us coming. We did a lot of things wrong and had to redo things when we realised our error, but we all enjoyed it. When the adventure ended Gimli was down to his last ‘hit point’ and Legolas was about to be eaten by a Wild Warg. Beravor was, I think, up a tree looking for signs of the camp. Luckily that was what we needed to end the session.

Hopefully tomorrow I can get the Uruk finished…. then I am in a quandary… Finish off the Marines, paint 15mm Samurai or make a start on these…

In the box are the heroes of Helms Deep as well as the full Fellowship set…

Or a further option is make a start on the undead GW nasties.

I shall decide tomorrow…

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Uruk Hai, Printers, Bathrooms and New Toysm

Earlier today I printed off some more corridors for the meeple game…

They came out okay, took five hours to print the three of them but on the upside the bump in the middle seems to have disappeared, or at least reduced.

The top two are the original ones.

The new bed certainly helped, but to make sure I shoved a ‘post it’ note under the middle to raise it up a smidge.

I had a bit of a stressy day, more if that later, but I did manage to get some more paint on the Uruk.

As for the stress…Today, you probably heard the swearing from wherever you live. My good lady asked me to change the bath taps and I went forward with good humour (okay that’s a lie). I muttered, grumbled and definitely made a fuss.

Good job I did because it became a right bastard. Our bathroom is just wide enough for a bath and a toilet. The sink has to sit at the end of the bath so really not much room to manoeuvre, or take bath taps off evidently. When I replaced the original bathroom, the bath went in first…. therefore getting the taps off was problematic. I managed to get the hot tap off, the one furthest away, but the cold wouldn’t come off. Not sure why but in the end I had to use the angle grinder to cut the thing off. This is where I learned that angle grinders cut through brass taps and into fingers when they jump.

To get into the bath we thought we were going to have to remove the toilet cistern, so we started to undo it, unfortunately the connector wouldn’t come off either so we ended up with a bit of a leak.

All in all the twenty minute job took about 4 hours. Next time I get a plumber out🤬.

But to cheer myself up I managed to blag a copy of this…

Not too bad really £2.99 for thirteen miniatures. Part of me wants to get another one. I am not interested in the stormcast miniatures but the chainrasps are a useful undead addition to various games.

We have eventually finished our Lord of the Ringsathon. It is either going to be Pirates of the Caribbean or the original Star Wars Trilogy.

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First Fire Festival

As mentioned yesterday, the first fire festival of the year takes place today in the original capital of Shetland.

I always go to the Scalloway one as it is my friend’s birthday round about it and we stand at their house and watch the procession go by… Tonight we duly parked up and set off walking to my mates, only takes five minutes but it was rather windy and rainy. We got to his about six thirty and waited for the firework to tell us they were ready to start at 19.00. We heard the bang, got our coats on and went outside expecting to see the torches being lit… not a one in sight. Due to the high winds and rain they re routed it. So there are no pics of burning torches and a galley being torched or anything else like that. However I thought I would send a pic of the sea in the wind the other day.

I blagged if off Facebook…

This was taken on the tombolo at St. Ninian’s. The people are stood on the sand in the photo below.

Hardly a wonder that we hadn’t had a ferry for a good few days. (It left three hours early today, to avoid the worst of the wind).

Today, however there was some nice news, The delivery driver turned up around half four with my new base plates for the printer. It was just a simple task of removing t(e old one and then replacing it with the new. it came off eventually!

On the upside the new one looks rather smart…

For some reason the bed would not level for ages, but I got there in the end. I am seriously beginning to think that the metal base plate has a dip in the middle as I can get the edges dialled in spot on, but the middle is always just a little too high.

Anyway I needed a test print, so as these were stored on the usb card I gave them another go.

I compared the original prints (top) to the new one (below)…

As can be seen, the bottom ones are a lot better (apart from the top of the first one). I will resolve these and give them some more top and bottom layers to help with the missing layers, either that or give them a bit higher infil. I think this was pretty low.

The wind outside is howling, the rain is hammering on the roof and windows but this was this morning as I parked at work…

Red sky in the morning… shepherd’s warning….

Hopefully I will paint something tomorrow.

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Uruk Hai… Smidge Done

I really didn’t get much done this evening as I sat on the sofa after tea and nodded off. I really had to force myself to get off my backside and to get some painting done.

Pretty much all the plate armour is done, what is really interesting is that the more I get painted then the more bits I missed are becoming obvious.

I am not sure if I will get anything done tomorrow as it is the first of the fire festivals and we are off to my mate’s house to watch the procession and eat hot dogs.

I will post something about it tomorrow.