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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.

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Desert Houses 2

Another couple of houses printed today…

One with a domed roof and the other with stairs mirrored on the left.

On the post it notes are the time it took to print them. Today’s printing time a little under 6 hours. I forgot to check how long the walls took but let’s say 2 hours, so for 10 hours print time I have enough for a village. I have some already printed so half way there to my three villages.

Someone said to me the other day that the printers take too long. I can’t argue with the fact that a small domed house took two and a half hours to complete. But if I had purchased them online, it would be at least a week to get here. So my 2.33 doesn’t actually seem that long as I set it going, made sure the first layer was sticking well and voila off I went for some lunch and a bit if diggering.

Tonight the domed house with stairs was printing as I made tea, ate tea and watched some Allo Allo with the kids.

Tomorrow I am going to do a test print to see how they look painted up.

Regarding Allo Allo, I had forgotten how funny the first couple of series were. I have them on DVD. My eldest got some of the jokes but the other two saw funny things but didn’t necessarily understand the humour. Luckily I was able to side swipe the question about the egg whisk and celery!

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 5 Comments

Desert Houses

Technically this type of house is found throughout the Middle East, but as they are going to be for a desert war campaign I shall use the term.

With the laptop replaced I managed to slice a pile more buildings. I printed off the domed one as well as a pile of walls. These are from Terrain4Print. I liked the free one so purchased the rest.

It was the second attempt at the particular dwelling however, it would seem that about 5 minutes after I left it to it, the Bowden tube coupler (the bit that feeds the filament from the extruder to the hot end) had decided to unscrew itself so the filament ended up as a nice coil all over the back of the printer. I had to dump a metre at least as it had fractured and I didn’t want to take the risk of it shearing off in the tube. The rest went back on the spool and back through the machine.

The walls come in two lengths with one of the longer ones having an arched gateway in it. The little diddly wall in the middle is just one of the shorter ones reduced in size the slicer program.

The weird gate is actually the infill to help the printer, I could probably have got away with it (the house doorway and windows weren’t supported) but I decided to be careful as there were a number on the raft. This is it in situ and removed. It has left a bit of a mess when I ripped it out, but nothing 10 seconds with a knife won’t shift.

I will build some compounds like the following as well as individual buildings. These are just placed in situ, but it kind of gives the idea.

I will print off some more houses tomorrow and see where I get up to. I have got a tower from another designer. It is a bugger as I really don’t think it will work without support. My plan is to split it at the upper floor level and print it in two pieces then glue them back together again. Another idea is to combine it with larger building above. I will have a play around tomorrow to see what I can come up with.

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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.

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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!

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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 · 6 Comments

Aww Isn’t it Cute

I managed to print off the British MKVI

I still have a Panzer MKII to test print as well. I have also managed to find an M3 Grant that I can print. This one is 1/56 scale so will need reducing.

On the 3D printer front: I did purchase the village set from Terrain4Print. $10 for a pile of files is pretty good price. I will test print some of them as soon as I can.

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North African Buildings

I decided to have a go printing some buildings.Both of these came from Thingiverse.

The one on the left is from Jonnybrokenbones, I have this one and a two story one from him too.

The one on the right is a free sample from a set by Terrain4Print:

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/216710/Modular-arabic-village?manufacturers_id=11761

Now what can we say about them. Both of the took about two and a half hours.

The one from Jonny is a nice simple design with a roof that drops in. It doesn’t have a door (it is from the other house) I just stood one up against the hole to see what it looked like. It has a full base too. This one is designed for 15mm miniatures.

The other one by Terrain 4 Print was a reduced sized from 28mm. I dropped it down to 60% size. This one is a hollow shell with a complete separate roof just below the exposed beams.

It comes with separate doors and window shutters. In the free one it comes with a domed roof too. This one is really well detailed. It can’t be seen that well in the basic black PLA, but the render has ‘fallen off’ in a few places. The roof is also textured.

I checked up on the bought version…Basically 6 different buildings and a couple of separate walls (however if they are mirrored then it takes it up to 12).

Now if I were a total skinflint I could make 4 ‘free’ buildings from this set, plus another few free ones from Thingiverse. But you know what, of the two I really do like the one from Terrain4Print. A lot of work has gone into the design of these buildings and it only seems fair that I help out the designer. I will purchase the set of six and tip the other designer from Thingiverse.

I want these for a desert themed board for ‘What a Tanker’ If you look at the pic below you can see how big the buildings are compared to both a tank and a 15mm figure.

I reckon I will reduce the size down a bit more to 50% as the buildings look just a bit too big still.

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Somuaaaaaaaaa

Somua ah ah

Print the tank and drink your tea…..

Somua ah ah print the tank and make coffee…

sorry was listening to Black Lace there….

Anyway tis’ done.

Here he is the little rascal, all printed and ready to go.

I moved positions on the build plate and he worked fine. I did manage to rip the back of the turret off when I was removing the support struts…which was quite a pain in the backside. You can just about see the line. I now have two Char B and the Somua.

I would like some of the little Renault FT tanks if I can find some.

I would have printed up another Somua or a Panzer MKII or even a British MKVI Light tank (or was it a MKIV) but decided to print up a small desert house. It is 2 hours into a 3 hour print. I have also got a two story one but that will take over 5 hours to print.

I managed to get some more paint onto the dwarves…

Still a long way to go but getting there.

I actually haven’t opened the submarine game box all evening. How about that for self control😖

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Printing Tanks II

So tonight I decided to get the Somua S35 completed.

A nice French Medium tank…

Nice flowing lines etc….

Sadly I returned to this!

To be fair there are some nice flowing lines in there too…it must have popped off the bed the second I left the room. Interestingly enough. I tried again, instant failure. I decided to give another Matilda a go…

Worked fine, I went for another Char B… last time I looked at it an hour in, all systems were go.

The one that failed was front left, the ones that succeeded rear left. It could be that the front left has lost the level or that it is a bit greasy. Either way I will give it a wash and a re level tomorrow.

As can be seen from the photo above the Char B came out spot on! Below is how it came off the plate.

As with some of the other tanks the 37mm gun was a little fragile and snapped off.

So tomorrow we try the Somua again (possibly in a different place 🤔).