Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

I wasn’t rockin Daft Punk until I was trying to come up with a clever title for this post. But now I am so feel free to hit play on this video (and skip the first 50 seconds to get to the cool part) as you read the rest of this news. I updated my Replicator to the latest firmware …

End of day report

The theme of the day was experimentation. True, most 3D printing is experimental at this point but today it was particularly true. Here’s a run down of what I printed. Finished a dual printed chess set. Hopefully next time I can do the whole batch in one go. 3 different toothpaste squeezers to find out which one was best. Report …

First manufacturing… 70% success

Silly me, I didn’t depress the camera’s button enough to actually take the picture of my first attempt at printing a full set. Pitty because it was glorious. Alternating rows of black and white pieces standing like little soldiers… except for the furthest right row. The row containing one pawn, rook, bishop, knight, and the king printed in black. In …

Can I level with you?

I noticed problems with my build platform that was preventing me from printing a full set of chess pieces at once. So I’ve spent the past couple of days re-leveling and testing and got that thing just as right as I could and the test print I was making still didn’t stick. So I took the step I didn’t want …

Look at that quality!

I think I’ve come a long way. I lost my shark clip which when I ride my bike so I decided to print another and look at this quality: …and compare it to the first time I printed one of these: …Hmm. okay, the actual improvement is obfuscated by lousy picture quality. The original had loose threads on the bottom, …

Busy day

In between iterations of my chess set my replicator was hardly idle. Here’s a break down of the things my Replicator and I made today: A fan grill and feed support. I love it when the replicator prints it’s own parts. The fan grill wasn’t particularly necessary but it was so cool and really looks like it belongs there so I don’t …

Action Chess Progress: Triumph!

It is done! All the pieces work. They print well, they go together well, they come apart well, and they look great! Finally I have the chess set I’ve wanted since I was a child. I’m packaging up the files for publishing on thingiverse, but I wanted my loyal readers here to be the first to know that the Action Chess set …

Off with their heads!

Well…. carp. I was testing the new coupling on the pawns and rook and forgot to turn off the “use raft/support” option from another print I was setting up (which I haven’t printed yet but whatever). No problem, I’ll just pop them off an…. Pop pop pop. The tops of every single pawn popped right off. I don’t know if …

The saga of the stuck print

The tool pictured here is called the 5-in-1 painter’s tool. I purchased it on the recommendation of a total stranger on the google groups for removing prints from the platform. See, my prints get stuck to the platform. Really, really stuck. Even letting them cool for 8 hours wouldn’t get them to pop off. I’ve tried razor blades and spatulas but when I heard …

Action Chess Progress = New Coupler

Sometimes pictures don’t do a design justice. I’ve finally figured out a coupling that will mate with itself and print successfully and stable. I’m really happy with this one. New chess design and new print coming soon. Sorry it took me so long to get this report out. Apparently my new webcam software doesn’t do compression and uploading a 3 …