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2mm Success and Failure

So after yesterday’s balls up with the Romans I went on a different tack today. First off I made a 3mm base in 3D builder and added two cavalry units to it. It printed off reasonably well apart from a weird bowed back, this is hapf a mil out so can be saved down or something. When I brought it in I realised my MDF bases are 2mm. But as it wasa proof of concept then it worked. Uses more resin, but miniatures come pre supported.

I then decided to try and integral base per unit, this was extremely fiddly and was sort of okay when I tested it at a 45 degree angle. I added the infantry units on their rears with supports, to be honest it was a total mess… I am not sure what went on. So back to the drawing board there. I finished the Gauls that I printed yesterday, some seem to be missing bits so are sitting at about 1.5mm. But as you can see from below it doesn’t really show en masses.

I am not sure on how many men these are meant to represent, but it does look like a fair few. So if I said 200 men to a base then this is a unit of 1000 warriors. It kind of looks like it to my untrained eye.

I also did a proof of concept for some woods using a bit of mdf and some clump foliage.

Today I ordered some light cavalry, skirmishers and some chariots. I will still work in the Romans as it is really beginning to bug me now.

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Small Windmills of My Mind

So today I did a fair old bit of slicingon the resin printer as the FDM one is having a bit of a lie down, looks like one of the back springs needs replacing.to be honest mostly it is still the stock setup.

So after a bit of a false start with the sails, I ended up with this little chap. As per normal he is 18% original size. Again an awesome little model from Iain Lovecraft’s ‘The Frost’ Kickstarter….

Amazingly enough I alsomanagedto print some treesto go with the 6mm forces. These are from the guys who did the 6mm Samurai and are a freebie… there were in fact a larger number of the trees, I chose two and because am paranoid I splayed out the base of the deciduous one in Mesh Mixer.

I will have to add the name of the designer of the trees tomorrow as I honestly cannot remember of find them again.

I decided that the Flintloque miniatures had sat there long enough so I did some more work in them this evening too.

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Pike, Shot and a Printer Revelation

This evening I managed to get the base ready onto the pikes and other 28mm Renaissance miniatures.

Rubbish photos again!

I also printed off forty arqubusiers, and it was then that my epiphany arrived. If you recall, a week ago I suddenly had an issue printing 6mm miniatures. Today I think I know why… It seems to be the supports, and the way they work. The bases were too close together so they formed a solid and more importantly large base.

I printed an earlier set of models that I had had partial success with and when I went back to check part of the base was hanging off the plate… suction on a large area can cause problems with the print sticking to the FEP instead of the plate…

The sticks are the remains of the supports. There is a definite bend in the back bit and you can really see in the foreground where there are ghosts of miniatures. This bit was sitting at about 45 degrees to the build plate. So I went back onto the computer and, as the pikes worked without support, I just went for it… absolutely no problem at all. Forty arqubusiers came out absolutely fine.

So lesson learned… supports on 6mm miniatures are a bit of a no, no.

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Pikes Big and Small

Believe it or not the printer has decided to behave itself, so I have been printing pikes like they are going out of fashion. I also shrunk the command strip a bit. They now fit nicely with the pikes…

Now in case you are wondering there are 75 strips of pikes above. This in fact won’t be enough to cover my four units of Pike… each base has three ranks behind the metal front one, with two wide for each one … okay there are two spare which can be seen in the photo above. I will use these to make casualty markers.

There are twenty printing now, so still a long way to go.

When I shrunk the command strip I decided to live dangerously and didn’t support the flags as I worked on the principle that at the size they were then they should self support… thankfully I was correct in my gamble.

I also worked on some big pikes too…

They are nearly there, hopefully I will get them finished tomorrow.

Finally I got a couple of parcels, the first was this one…

The second was my Furioso supplement, which turned out to be the rules I already had, so they have gone back to AA for a swap. I was really looking forward to reading them…. hopefully they will be here soon.

Tomorrow is some more work in the house and I need to get the shed back in operation as I have a postponed game I there on Friday.

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Arggghhh and Words to that Effect

So I have had another frustrating day on the printer front, I have relevelled the print head, warmed the resin, checked the supports, lowered the print head speed, increased the print head movement and still it is being N absolute swine. I tried printing the zweihanders in various orientations to check it wasn’t problems with the supports…

All five printed perfectly, so I tried a test print with some halbediers, light artillery and artillery crews and boom, only some printed. I now have two with the long match as I did the test twice. This miniature refused to print yesterday.

Needless to say, it is getting a smidge frustrating to say the least.

Now daggerand brush asked about the resin I use and I said I was pleased with how it worked in terms of flexibility and the lack of shattering. I said I would do a little flexibility video to demonstrate things a bit better.

The hole in my finger is courtesy of a small kitten who did NOT want to go to the vet! I learned a really important lesson whilst doing the first video… do not shove a 6mm Pike into one’s kitten tooth hole. It hurts, a lot, I swore lots too.

I am now printing off another test, this time without the raft just in case it is having an effect. My originals didn’t have one, so this is a bit of a vain hope that it is that. Next stop new resin, just in case the original has got something wrong with it – to be honest the bottle is nearly finished so if I need to swap it out then so be it.

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Cost Versus Aesthetics Update 3

Today I was up with the larks to open up the school for a let and to sort out some more loft space … only to remember at 12.30 that they are in Unst today and with me tomorrow… it wasn’t too much if a buggeration as I needed to sort the loft anyway… it did give me 5800 steps . When I got back I set to work slicing  pikes, now as I am a pillock I decided to increase the size from 60% to 65% for the pikes to compensate for the difference in base height.

Here is my Pike test… I put them four deep, but could drop it down to three…see what you think….

They are a bit on the large side, but is it too much, please let me know what you think as I am actually unsure. Having had closer look at the block I have realised that it is the ommnad strips that are on the larger side, the rank and file troops are actually smaller.

This is the hand guns and cannons with the pikes and gendarmes.

I think this is going to work…

I have got some zweihanders printing now, along with some Spanish sword and buckler men as well as some mastiffs.

I also increased the size of the cannon to make it into a heavy gun. I am not sure what to do for a light gun as they were sort of giant handguns on a stand. Come to think of it the Holy Roman Empire kickstarter I backed has some in… time to do some shrinking I think.

So the shrinking has happened, both the culvern and swivel guns… however I am going to have to wait to print them as unfortunately I have had my first failure in a long time…

The sword and buckler men and dogs printed fine… I have one zweihander out of sixteen and none of the officers. I have relevelled the build plate just in case. To be honest the temperature has dropped a bit, but the hand guns had a failure in the same place twice, which makes me think level has altered over time.

So in an hour I will find out if they have printed correctly the second time around.

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Cost versus Aesthetics… an update

I may have found a  compromise to my cost conundrum.

After Azael commented about 3D printing pikes I went on a bit of a hunt. I couldn’t find any historical pikes. I got a bit miffed to be honest as I can get pretty much any period. I put calls out on various groups and still nothing, then I noticed a warmaster advert and the penny dropped… so after a bit more searching and further requests…I drew a blank… no pikes to be had, but then all of a sudden the clouds parted, light streamed down and angels sang… on Thungiverse, the free place I came across a Warmaster dogs of War Pike block. I downloaded them and had a mooch.

Printed full size

Apologies for the naff photo, but these are in heavy armour on the torso and a mix of helmets and hats… success…

So I then set about trying different sizes to fit in with irregular. I started off with making them 9mm tall I included the pikes and eyeballed the figure… too small

I then chopped the Pike off to speed up print time and did one  ar 60% one at 50% and one at 40%. The larger size won. They still looked too small as the Irregular base stood at 2mm. So off I went again and made myself a 2mm base in 3D builder and stuck a couple of three’s on there.

My attempts are seen below…

As you can see the larger ones to the right of the painted minis look too small… so here they are with their bumped up base…

Another naff photo,  but they do seem to work. I will redo them with their pikes and paint them up have a look properly. Here they are from the front…

So the plan is… Irregular in the front rank and printed ones behind. This should drop the cost a fair old bit as the 32 bases of pikes were the ones bumping the costs up. So with these removed I have dropped the price to £50.00. If I remove the hand gunners and cannons and print some then the cost drops to £36.00.

The advantage with this pose is that no supports are required. They print at an hour 20 due the the height of the Pike, the cut down test was just over 30 minutes.

I am now off to print some hand guns and xannons to see what they are like.

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Peasant Size Comparison

Okay that does sound like a thing a feudal Lord might do, but I would like to point out that no peasants were harmed during this experiment.

As I said yesterday, the printed ones at 100% were too small so today I did a little size comparison. I did four tests at 110%, 115%, 120% and 125%.  I then did a highly scientific test by sticking them next to a base of ashigaru and then eyeballing them here are the results…

The 120% seemed the best fit amongst the four chosen. To be honest they are a little on the large side and I technically should have gone for about 117 – 118% but with the discrepancies in base height then these fitted better

Four hours later I have the start of an Ikko Ikki force.

Front row, Samurai with swords, they have a sashimono on, but as I want them as Ronin then those will have to go. Next are the peasants with spears and beside them the peasants with agricultural weapons. At the back are a pile of sohei with naginata. I evidently forgot to order some sohei with the yumi.

My plan is to add in either some Irregular or Baccus individuals to act as prominent people.

Now printing things this small has its advantages and disadvantages. Without a banner they take about 40 minutes to print, a nobori that the sohei have took that force to about an hour-ten. The main pain in the backside is removing the tiny built in supports. They are a bit on the faffy side. Just looking at some if them now and I can see some tiny bumps on the end of spears.

Tomorrow I will give these a base and a spray and see what they look like painted.

I totally forgot to say where I got tye idea from, so here is the post that got me going Tenka Fubu . Some seriously awesome Sengoku era miniatures and terrain on this blog.

Oh while I remember today is my 18th Wedding Anniversary, we never do anything for it, I think our first wedding anniversary cemented how things were going to go… we were in France, Normandy in fact, a place of amazing food and we spent it in a Macdonald’s.

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3D Printed Stuff

I got another ruin printed today.this onetook just over 5 hours to complete. I also printed off the multi barrelled organ gun…

As you can see there is also a pikeman sneaking into the picture. I now have a full unit of twelve, with for some reason, an extra half dozen heads… teach me to try and add up when I am tired. I also did a driver for the wagon with a pile of camp followers too. They are still in the print head now. I will show them off tomorrow.

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Birthday Treats, Printers and Painting

Well I have had a jolly old birthday. Got lots of brilliant presents from the kids. I also got some great maps for RPG’s from my mate. My main present is still in the post. As the old iPad has eventually given up the ghost then I decided to go for a new Android tablet as they are a whole lot cheaper.

Pressies from the kids

I had a lazy old day, eventually got the springs off the brake shoes too. I did manage to take time to flock the duellists bases…

And get another building printed…

The one on the right is from last night.

I am having to get used to slowwww print times… I went back in to check after leaving it for an hour and fifteen minutes (after the usual making sure the base layer was down)… it had got to here…

Luckily it is going over night! This new one is a two level one, hence the two separate bits.

I am also using up the resin in the vat by printing a wagon with a pair of horses. This was to take about three hours, if I can be bothered I will go and check on it in a tick.

Tomorrow I will do some more ruined buildings. They won’t be done in a hurry that’s for sure. The FDM is slow but it is a whole lot cheaper than doing things on the resin printer (if they would fit that it). I might actually do some for my 6mm Armies.