I’ve been thinking about a 3d printer filament buffer for a while, but haven’t really made the time to actually solve this problem, mostly because my multi-material printing has, to date, been pretty minor. That’s not to say I haven’t been using my MMU, only to say that so far my prints have primarily needed tens of tool changes rather than hundreds. At this scale, my “non-buffer” buffering solution worked reasonably well. I’ve only had one or two jams, and it wasn’t that big of a deal. Well, I decided to try a “big” project, and printed some miniatures with soluble supports which resulted in 216 tool changes. This, I found, is why the filament buffer exists. Continue reading The Filament Buffering Problem
All posts by The Plaid Mentat
Math on the Weekends
Among those who know me well, it’s likely no surprise that there are two things I really enjoy – solving problems and doing math. So, when I find a problem that turns out to be just a math problem, solving it is really fun. That’s what I did this weekend – I wanted to 3d print an addition to my 3d printer that would help my filament buffering problem, but the design required that I obey some obviously mathematical constraints. Continue reading Math on the Weekends
Looking Forward in 2021
Having spent a bit of time looking back, I’m ready to look forward into 2021. This year, I’ve got a whole pile of resolutions that I’m excited about, and even something that’s not a resolution for just this year, but something I’m looking forward to for multiple years to come. I think over the years I’ve well-tuned what I choose to be resolutions and what I choose to just be things I may or may not do over the course of the year, and this year’s list is overall pretty safe. They are things that I’ve planned a bit ahead on, and things that are very achievable this next year without going too far out of my way. On the one hand, I might ask, why bother if it’s not a challenge; on the other hand… …I’m not sure I really need a challenge this year, as there will be plenty going on without anything extra.
With that said, here’s what I’ve got: Continue reading Looking Forward in 2021
2020 In Resolutions
With the last blog post of the year, it’s time to go through my resolutions and see how I did. I always find this one interesting, not only to judge how I did, but also to look back at my intentions. Sometimes the two match up, sometimes… …Not as much. As usual though, this is going to be strictly pass/fail based on what I set out to do, whether the intentions match up or not. Continue reading 2020 In Resolutions
2020 In Review
It’s not saying a lot to say that 2020 was an odd year. There was a lot going on, and I certainly had a lot in my life that wasn’t planned for. Still, I’m still here, still healthy and doing well. As usual, this is the first part of my end-of-year blog posts and I’ll talk through the year through the lens of how it went, where I’ll save how I did on my resolutions for the next post. Continue reading 2020 In Review
Designing a Special Tile – Part 2
Apparently, I’m quite good at taking a hiatus on a cliffhanger of a post. I left off last time talking about customizing a Hexhog STL with runes to make a Warmahordes objective marker and all the little pieces of software and techniques I used to make that happen. But, designing and printing the tile was only half of the equation; the other half is painting it up so that it looks nice.
Designing a Special Tile – Part 1
A while back, I talked about building a terrain table for miniature gaming using the Hexhog Tabletop system as a base. One of my first design projects was to build objective zones for Warmachine and Hordes. While there’s no reason you couldn’t set objective zone templates on a terrain space, I thought this was a cool opportunity to design something that fit a bit better with the overall ascetic. Also, I latched on to the idea because it’s something that I could do with my existing tools – this is always a boon for me because there’s a ton of things I can’t do or am really bad at, and this is something that I could.
A Small Preview
I haven’t been writing quite as much lately, as I’ve been using that time to do some painting. I’ve got a longer post coming about what I’ve been working on, but since I haven’t completed my project, the post has been delayed. Check back here next week, and in the meantime, here’s a preview:
Life without an FLGS
Although 2020 has had plenty of things that shook up everyone, one of the things that happened before the pandemic closed a lot of stores, was that my local game store, The Rogue’s Roost, closed down. There were a lot of things I liked about The Rogue’s Roost that I now miss, but there are some more subtle things that I just don’t get without having a game store that I visit on a regular basis. I’m going to dig into this a bit below, as I think about what the year has been like without the opportunity to visit any local game store regularly.
Prusa Multi-material Upgrade – Part 2
After a week of troubleshooting, I’ve finally gotten my printer back up and running again. If you read my last post, you’ll remember that I upgraded my Prusa with the new MMU2S, and while building the upgrade itself wasn’t too bad, getting everything working again afterward didn’t go well. I didn’t document the time I spent troubleshooting, taking things apart, and putting them back together, but I did document the original build, so here’s the image montage of that, then I’ll talk through the steps I took to get it all back working again.