Today’s lesson is 100g of plastic, while enough to make one side of a pocket tactics game, is not enough to print a whole chess set, even if you scale it down 70%. That is the supposedly clear PLA. Not exactly clear, but it does have a good look. I’ll probably get more and try again. In fact I’ve got a …
Quick Repair to the Ceramic Insulation
I’m a little bit surprised there’s not more about doing this online. It seems to me that the way the insulation is wrapped around the hot end that a lot more people would be having trouble with this. But maybe it’s just me. The goal this time was getting it back to working with the minimum effort possible. So instead …
More PLA experiments
So far I’ve confirmed: PLA likes painter’s blue tape. I’m using Duct brand. PLA can print cooler than ABS. I’ve been printing at 185 C. Printing without a cooling fan causes increased stringiness. What I printed to fix it didn’t work, so for now I’m back to a fan on a box. You need to cool down or turn off …
Print’n PLA
Thanks to Joseph Chiu I find myself in possession of a few 100 grams of PLA so, with my heated print bed out of commission until makerbot ships me the new part later this week I figure now is the time to try it out. The difference with printing PLA is you want to print on blue painters tape,drop the …
Soldering Iron + Drill = New Extruder?
As seen on reddit, user “General_Hardware” happened to have all the motors and microcontrollers to drive a 3D printer and wood to build a frame. The only part they didn’t have was an extruder. So they drilled a hole in an old soldering iron and put an auger through it to drive the melted plastic out. Is this sort of …
Design a robot, win a Replicator 2
Draw up a robot, design an STL of it, and win a replicator 2. You’ve got till March 1st. And while it’s not a part of the contest if you make it compatible with my peg bots you’ve got a bunch of parts already.
More Heroica
Playing Heroica we set up a board where the beginning branched to one way to a long hall of high level monsters and keyed doors, and to the other way with keys and potions. The plan was that they’d go gather the keys and stuff, then go face the boss but my most driven son decided to forego the loot …
Tiki Chess
Whystler’s Tiki chess set was one of my favorites in the chess contest. Each of the pieces just had so much character and detail and it wasn’t too much of a challenge to figure out which one was which, unlike some other sets. Every piece just works so well with the theme. It’s a real treat to have this one. …
Shells Vs Time
TheNewHobbiest asked me on twitter: @CymonsGames I was reading your blog post on printing with additional shells. Do more shells shorten or lengthen print times? That’s an excellent question. Let’s find out. Fortunately I can find out without actually doing prints. The estimate function in ReplicatorG will give me something to compare. The first subject I tested was Cinderella’s Castle …
3D Scanning Pick 2 list
Seems to be a lot of talk lately about 3D scanning on various forums I’m on so I thought I’d collect and condense my thoughts in one place where I can drive traffic [winky emoticon]. It is the next logical step after 3D printing. My take on 3D scanning, with the footwork I’ve already done, is that you have 3 options and …