31 August 2021

Flooding

This morning I woke to find the entire local area under flooding conditions. with the water come up from the river some 3-4 meters, and getting scarily close to the house.  We were lucky and the rain has stopped and waters starting to lower. Our back paddock between us and the forest completely underwater. Fingeres crossed the weather holds long enough for the water to drop back down to normal. 150mm of rain in 12 hours was a hell of a lot of water.




So not alot of painting or printing done today. But I have learnt some more. Found this morning that some of the resin in the vat had cured, so my hobbies room is obviously to light. So i'll have to rethink the setup. For now its all cleaned down and I just dumped the rest of the resin into a contain and cured it. Not going to risk wasting more time with resin that has started to possibly cure in the vat. 

I think it will be a purpose built cupboard with extraction fan in the garage in the near future. in the mean time, some painting to relax is in order.



29 August 2021

This and That

 So no printing done so far today. Spent the time watching videos on YouTube, and then changed the FEP on my resin vat, which was simple enough, just time consuming. So I'll be ready to do more printing later tonight or tomorrow. Mean while I've been working on my Pagoda dice tower and some horses for my Samurai Cavalry. 


Plus I just cleaned up some Magnaguard for Legion I printed the other day and put them on bases ready for undercoat and painting.

Magnaguard


28 August 2021

The fear of resin

 Half and half, My print last night, half was successful and half failed on my print of the Gorogoth. Half the print stuck to the FEP sheet, and the other half was fine. Learnt a few things and what not to do in the future. Had to do a full clean out of the vat and then clean up the FEP sheet, which was a mission. And had to learn a few more things on how to best clean it out. Interesting view on YouTube by various people.



Then second attempt on the parts that failed, also kinda failed,  it started sticking to the FEP and making a poping sound, which I find out later is meant to be ok. I stopped the print out of fear of the FEP breaking/tearing. And cleaned the vat out again to check it. This time the FEP had some serious parts stuck to it, and learning the hard way how not to do things. 

So tomorrow I think test cleaning the FEP sheet again, before I replace it. Be good to get in some practice and workflow methods of how to best handle the vat now that I've rearranged my room to accommodate the new printer.

 I also printed off some handles from my FDM printer for the covers of the new printer, so when I'm working with gloved hands and potential resin on them, it wont mess up the cover to much. Used 3M picture mounting Velcro so I can remove them later on if I decide I don't like them.




Lord of the Rings- Gorogoth

 Found this great model of a Gorogoth to print for my LoTR army I'm planning on building entirely from printed miniatures. 

My first attempt at printing something larger in resin, will be interesting to see how it turns out in the morning.

Lord of the Rings-  Gorogoth





27 August 2021

COVID face mask

 My new face mask is coming along nicely, with some paint is on it. I'm looking foward to walking into the supermaket on the weekend wearing it. (if I get it finsihed in time)  Still got alot of work to do on it, with padding on the back and installing a filter tand strapping as well.


I'm seriouly thinking that I may jsut have to make up a full size helmet to go with it as well. 

26 August 2021

Sad Spider

 Found a really cool stl file of a giant spider so tried out with the pre support file on the new resin printer.

It printed well, but the number of supports was huage and getting them all off was a challange with such skiny legs, so ended up breaking a few of the legs off.

A good print though and another learning curve as well, as my printer settings are getting better and I need to learn alot more around supports.


it may be abel to be saved or I may turn it into a dead spider. 



25 August 2021

First print

 First resin print... well it was very disapointing. I followed the instrucitons and tried printing the anycubic cubic test print.... complete fail..... twice. A bit of cleanup work when things fail.

Then I tried a goblin print with some of the default setting and bamm.. working. First one wasnt quite right on the exposure times, but second one worked a treat with some tweaking. All part of the learning curve. It's defiantly a learning curve as its very differnet from FDM printing. But the results are looking really good so far and I'm only a few prints in.

And now I just washed and cured two knights that came out really nicly ....

photos arnt great, (mobile phone shots)  but you get the idea.



Now to learn more about teh Slicer software and printing options.. And try somehting a bit larger

24 August 2021

Photon Mono X

 My new resin printer turned up today :-)

Anycubic Photon Mono X along with the Wash and Cure station in there new place of residence. So spent the evening setting them and reading instructions  along with watching a few videos. Currently trying out the default test print with the resin I got as part of the deal.

Anycubic Photon Mono X

A big learning curve ahead of me, as its very different from FDM printing. I'm already thinking of rearranging my room to have them near the window for better ventilation.

Packaging was really well done, no damage at all, even with one large puncher hole in one of the boxes from shipping. Setup seemed simple enough, so will find out in an hour or so if my first print works out.

The washing station, I was a little surprised on the 8.5L it can hold. Not that I'll be printing much that will fill it that high. But I'll need to order in some bulk IPA I think, once I get the hang of printing.

23 August 2021

Face Mask

 So the second, larger print completed early this morning. The upper teeth had a bit of a failure, as I hadn't supported them enough in the print. But a bit of cleanup and some green stuff will see that right. 

Printing at 115% was spot on, and its large enough to fit me. With some light sanding and undercoating to do tonight, should see it ready to paint tomorrow.

3D printing

I also tried out using some pva glue across the teeth to fill in a few small gaps, will be interesting to see the result. 

22 August 2021

Test of Honour - Onna-Bugeisha

 My order from Dixon Miniatures arrive on Friday, took 4 weeks, which isn't to bad all things considering the state of shipping worldwide and COVID19. I haven't bough many things from them before, only a few ACW models. So the additional models for my Onna-Bugeisha list for Test of Honour means I have a few correctly armed min's for my lists, which will help with the games and stop making people grumpy. Plus it will make my Hail Caesar army nice and varied. The minis look really nice and have some good detail on them along with very little to no flashing, so thumbs up there.

I got the Geisha/Towns women along with Onna-Bugeisha with Naginata (unarmoured) which rounds out all the models I need for Test of Honour and is a big start on an army for Hail Caesar.

On the painting front I've been working my way through the Hero's box and some of the cavalry, all the while slowly putting together some of the masked men box set I have. Between 8-11 parts per model, its a fiddly job. Also nearly completed my display board for the Onna-Bugeisha, still have to tidy up and highlight the back wall.

Test of Honour - Onna-Bugeisha

Test of Honour - Onna-Bugeisha - shin whackers

Test of Honour - Onna-Bugeisha

Test of Honour - Onna-Bugeisha - Geisha spy


Test of Honour - Samurai Hero

Test of Honour - Onna-Bugeisha





Fail!

 Well last night the print failed, or more accurately the printer failed. For some reason it stalled during the print. Nothing in the logs, so not sure what happened, hopefully its not an issue with the STL file. The one good thing is that I can tell using what was printed it is a little to small for my face. So second attempt I've upscaled by 115%.... 23 hr print, fingers crossed this one works.


Also managed to find the tracking site from my resin printer and its in Auckland .. whaoo.. hopefully I'll get it this week. It will be a good distraction for me while we are in full lockdown.

I'm already planning to make a LOTR army, entirely from printed mini's. Well that's the plan anyway, now that I finally caved in and got the rule books. Which I must say are very nice hardback volumes.

Lord of the Rings: SBG



21 August 2021

Mandatory mask wearing

 Just spent the last hour rearranging my 3D printer station and setup and preparing for the new resin printer to arrive. The CR-20 is relegated to the lower shelf, and I've just kicked off a 20 hour print after running a 10 minute test of a round base through it after the moving.


With NZ now in lockdown again and the fact we now have to wear masks. Thought I'd print off a Samurai mask, since there are a couple of nice examples on Thingiverse and my material mask I currently have is a Japanese Samurai mask as well.

 Cant wait to get the resin printer, based of the stats it will print way faster and of course way better for miniatures. I'm going to print of this mask in resin as well as a comparison.  The resin one will be for my display cabinet and I'll wear the PLA+ one.

Painting it should be fun as well, I'll get some use out of my spray booth I built the other month.



20 August 2021

Smells like Resin.

 

I’ve had a very good start to the first half of the year with work, so got a bit of a bonus which I’ve gone and ordered a resin printer.

Now that they have been around for a few years and have improved so much, along with sorting out the bugs I thought I’d give them a go.

The main decider was the new wash and cure machines they have now, which will take away a lot of the mess and hopefully smell from the resin.... I hope.

Now it's down to the good old "hurry up and wait" for it to arrive from our Anycubic. Hopefully it wont get held up in customs. In the mean time I'm searching for some models to print up for Lord of the Rings.

 


 

19 August 2021

The Big Man

 


Work in progress on the big man. Having fun painting once again

18 August 2021

Test of Honour Dice tower and terrain.

 Been awhile since my last post, have been busy making and painting stuff. This is my latest terrain piece which doubles as a dice tower. Tested it the other night playing a game of Pandemic and it works really well. I magnetizes the base so I can remove the top Pagoda and use it as a sperate piece of terrain. Due to the warping of the base print, which wasn't to bad I mounted it on a 3mm mdf board and built it up with clay. Now just waiting a few days to dry and then some sanding.