Ooh, what could that be for?

I made this prototype for an idea with absolutely no graphic design which I immediately regretted. In fact once I had the prototype in hand I wondered why I felt like I even needed it. It was so obvious. So onward to some design work first.

The tortoise doesn’t always win

With skin turned on one of these was printed at 20mm/s, the other at 40mm/s. Can you tell which is which? Nope, neither can I. There is no discernible difference. The picture doesn’t really show it but they’re both equally bad. My conclusion still stands. Skin doesn’t play well with detail

Continuing to push the detail

A bit more fiddling this weekend to get more detail as fast as possible using pocket tactics pieces. From left to right, the archer and shield maden were printed at the same time with a 0.1mm layer height and the skin plugin on to double the exterior layers, really pushing it. The hope was that providing two prints at once …

Milestone reached

I wasn’t sure it was going to make it through the print I was doing. But it did. Barely. I have just ran out of my first spool of filament! I don’t know if I should be happy or remorseful. I really don’t have THAT many 3D printed things lying around, do I? Where did all that filament… Oh. Yeah, …

3D Printing tidbit 4 – Closing RepG from the Task Manager

If ReplicatorG locks up your windows machine (which happens more often on lower spec machines) and you can’t get it to close do the following: Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to bring up the Task Manager Go to the Process tab. Find “JavaW” (Not ReplicatorG) and click on it. Press the “End Process” button.

3D Printing tidbit 3 – Test your filament diameter

Filament diameter is a killer. If you don’t test it before you print you’re likely to waste a whole plate of pawns. [Sigh] PS. Bonus tidbit: If you’re like me and build to an SD card from replicatorG then be sure to give your S3G additional information by changing the name of the file when you save them. For me …

Pushing the detail, the detail pushed back

As soon as I saw pocket tactics I knew I was going to be printing it. And what a great opportunity to dial in my printer settings to get the best possible prints of very small details as fast as possible of course. Click on image for higher resolution Quarter for scale. The fire mage on the left was printed …

Chessbots first pass sold out. Store update.

Yes, I’ve finally sold my last chessbot. Thank you to everyone who has supported me in this first run. The next run will be even more awesome. For one, I’ve gotten better printing techniques so the models will be even higher resolution. I’ve also been able to afford some new filament with the sales of this pass so I will …

My son’s printed monster teeth

As soon as my 7 year old son saw that I had red filament he immediately had the idea that I should print some teeth for a monster. Blue with red tips. I had him describe them to me. He drew me a picture and I had to explain to him that there was a 3rd dimension he needed to …

Just a little to the left

Did I mention how I fixed my Y-Axis alignment problem on this blog? Turns out the problem was that the waiting position was far enough forward that the tug of the filament feeding and electronics cables were pulling back against the carriage. Normally the steppers can handle it but the very next command after “go to the waiting position” is …