I eventually got the gatehouse finished. Probably close to sixty hours in total print time but I am very pleased with it.
I was going to do the portcullis, but decided against it as it would be a bit of a faff to lift it up and down. If it was down it would block movement and if it was up then it would stop miniatures getting in the building.
I am going to check the files to see if there any walls to go with it.
So after doing a lot of big buildings and some larger scatter I was running a bit low on filament so I went down a few sizes to ensure I didn’t run out mid print. Here is an original Mordheim miniature trying the out for size.
To breed honest I could have probably done another set of these with what was left on the roll, but my new one came today so I went back to bigger things. Mixed in amongst the bigger things were another set of the crates.
I am really pleased that this machine seems to be back to full functionality. Obviously the money I spent on upgrades, never installed, was wasted as it is now (touch wood) seems to be fine.
I can only remember some of what I added to the build plate so tomorrow I am in for a surprise đ. Not sure what time tomorrow as the build plate is quite full. When I was out just before the bases of things hat were printed were about 3mm high… that was after almost 4 hours printing. I did spot one thing that might cause me problems. One of the crate piles seemed to be touching another thing!
Tonight I managed to get a whole lot done on my unit of flagellants.
I was hoping to get them finished, but sadly it was not to be. Hopefully I will get them done tomorrow. Now quite often I see these type of miniatures with pale skin, but they way look atitthey were out and about throughout the lands so mine are a bit tanned.
I also managed to get the ruins successfully printed at 18% size…
While was having a mooch for things to paint then I came across the trees too. I had printed some last nightwith the reduced sized cows… yes I really am that bonkers! The trees really could have done with some supportsas there are some pancakes on the bottoms, but,they still work, and to be honest they were a test to see if they would print.
As I have decided to go for 6mm Italian wars then, as you can tell by the blog, I have been reducing 28mm buildings to fitmy 6mm.this was because I couldn’t really find any suitable ones to print. Now if you remember, a while ago I found a guy making 6mm Samurai, I didn’t bother looking in the moderns section. Outof the blue today YouTube decided that I would want to watch one of his videos, lo and beholding January of this year he made Italian style buildings, so asylum can imagine I am quite chuffed and am printing a villa, church, some barns and smaller farm houses right now. I will photograph them tomorrow. You can watch the video below…
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.
This evening I managed to get the base ready onto the pikes and other 28mm Renaissance miniatures.
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.
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.
Well I have had a jolly old birthday. Got lots of brilliant presents from the kids. I also got some great maps for RPGâs 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.
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…
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 wonât be done in a hurry thatâs 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.
By heck I was busy this evening!
I managed to get paint on various things, including some Flintloque miniatures too. I re levelled the printer again, this time I made sure I pressed on the build plate as I screwed the bolts in, this was to make sure it was level across the whole thing. I had printed the bust and stand at the same time, but only the bust printed, now it might have been poor support placement. So after re levelling the build plate, I gave this lot a go…
They pretty much all came out fine apart from the beggarâs right foot which hadnât really printed properly (well I donât think it had) … so I helped out by snipping it off… oh by the way the dog does have a head, it is behind the milk maid. These are the villagers from the Frost Kickstarter.
Well this is me on the second day after my jab and although I donât feel crap, I donât feel 100% either. Because of this I cancelled my game tonight and redid my horses from yesterday…
I had to redo them as a couple had totally gone weird, it probably got too cold and the resin thickened a bit causing problems. Luckily today was red hot…okay it was warm, so as I had got home early due to the head then I set the printer away with nice warm, runny resin. They worked a treat. One advantage of having extra horses is that I can now have a pair for my Brougham…
I will try and get myself on with some painting tomorrow. I have so much to catch up on now, the Arbites being a case in point. I doubt I will get much done tomorrow evening as my mate is coming over for another barbecue and to work on the characters for the Aliens game.
Nope we are not talking golf here, there is in fact a small hole in me, I got my second Covid jab today and as such am a bit headachey, but otherwise I seem fine. I stood next to the freezer and you will be pleased (but probably not surprised) to hear that I had not become magnetic. Yeah there are people out there who for some reason think it will make them.
Anyway I checked the horses from yesterday and sadly one didnât print, one had half a leg missing, one had a separate leg part and the third was missing the end of the traces. I donât have a team, but I can probably rustle up a pair.
I reckon the failures on the prints is down to poor support placement, I am not sure why one of them failed totally though!
I am giving them another go in a different orientation to see if that will help, fingers crossed đ¤.
They should be done in about an hour and a half..but I am having an early night so I might find out tomorrow morning if they are done properly… I just had a peep and there seemed to be four things printing.
One thing that is a bit annoying is that I want these miniatures a certain size and am dropping it to 85%. This means that the presupported miniatures are no good for me as the minute you change scale then the easier it is for the supports to fail. I am therefore having to learn support placement as I go along!
My lord if the rings or my caveman miniatures are the âcorrectâ size for me. This means the supports work all the time.
Bogenwald 