Over the last several days, I’ve been printing a “gaming in bed” gaming table that uses the StageTop system I backed on kickstarter. My goal was to build a table that I could use for gaming in bed, especially at a hotel when I’m on travel. Overall, it’s been a fun project – there are some things that I liked/didn’t like, but at the end of the day, it was good.
Details and the breakdown after the jump. Continue reading Gaming Table for Gaming in Bed
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Over the weekend, I decided it was time to build my long-awaited multi-material upgrade for my Prusa 3d printer. I had planned on ordering this way back in March, but the combination of my funds and other things I wanted to order at the same time being out of stock stayed my hand. Still, after lots of different delays, I finally got around to ordering it and building it. Continue reading Prusa Multi-material Upgrade – Part 1
I’ve recently been backing a number of 3d printing kickstarters. From 3d printable terrain (Hexhog Tabletops: Hinterland Hills, and Fantastic Plants and Rocks), to miscellaneous models (The Graveyard Collection and Pillars of Stone), all the way to full 3d printable games (Pocket Tactics, Chibi-tech SD, and Star Scrappers: Battledrill). One of the things I’m most excited about though, is building a full terrain table – I want to have a modular terrain system that fits into the game vault of my gaming table. Continue reading Building a Terrain Table
Though I built my Warhound and Reaver titans some time ago, and included magnets in the build, I was never really happy with how the magnetization turned out. The magnets dangled out in the open, and, honestly, the number of times I had to reglue them was a bit of a pain. This weekend, I got out all my measuring tools, fired up FreeCAD and my 3D printer, and decided I was going to do something about it.
A while back, I decided I was going to get a new 3D printer. My old printer was becoming a bit long of the tooth, and there have been a lot of advancements in 3D printing technology in the last few (seven) years. A good friend of mine was working at Aleph Objects / Lulzbot, and that gave me a lot of visibility into what was going on in the industry, and that convinced me it was again time to take the dive. While I was initially investigating and looking into a Lulzbot Workhorse, I eventually decided on getting a Prusa i3 MK3S, the wrinkle was, I decided to get a Prusa kit, which meant I’d be building this one myself. Continue reading Building a 3D Printer