Update Quicklinks: Printing, Painting, Blog
Its that time again for my weekly updates! Man time moves way too quickly. Also I cannot believe it is March. Before I begin my weekly summary I have to give a massive shoutout to my Baby Sister as its her Birthday today!! I love ya sis.
As for what I’ve been doing for the last week. Well lets just call it “If at first you don’t succeed try try again.” For both FDM and resin printing i’ve been testing and testing my printing settings in attempt to improve both print quality and success rate for the various difficult prints i’m currently attempting to accomplish. I’ll get into a few of my experiments down below.
This week was also exciting because it was Reaper Con virtual expo! I was so pumped to be able to attend virtually and have so many virtual classes that were absolutely free. I ended up recording most as I did not get the time to sit and paint along as much as I would have liked.
Printing Updates
As I’ve said above this week has been entirely focused on the beginnings of going down the deep deep rabbit hole of experimentation. On the Prusa FDM printer i’ve been attempting to figure out support settings for various roof pieces of the Kingdom of Thamarya Kickstarter. Since most of the roof pieces do not have a good flat plane of which start for printing, I am forced to float the pieces while using the support material as the starting point. Because of this and the whimsical nature of the roof it is more difficult to really tune in the support settings for a smooth underside of printing. Since it is the underside I can easily craft over it and smooth it out so the pieces are absolutely functional. I am just a perfectionist. I keep telling myself that once I nail the overhang/bridge printing of these roofs then my support settings will conqueror any terrain life throws at me.
This weeks deep dive support setting: Support Density.
As for resin printing I’ve been really trying to dial in my exposure times using Elegoo ABS-Like resin for my sonic mini 4k. Knowing that not all presupported models are alike i’ve started to encounter some that are giving me more trouble. Knowing that others have had success with them i’ve been determined with walking the fine line between great dialed in exposure times while also making sure that 1) my prints adhere to the build plate and 2) adapt to the small supports provided by some companies which are incredibly difficult which require higher exposure values. I’ve even been going so far as making reference charts for myself. Its still an ongoing experiment but I believe i’m starting to understand it all better.
There are some weeks when you can crank these out and others when all you do is experiment. Sometimes it can test your patience and endurance but i’m determined to learn as much as I can about the 3D printing hobby. This is yet another reason to start a 3D printing guides and troubleshooting section on the website.
Painting Update
This week in painting i’ve definitely suffered from extremely lofty goals. There is so much I want to accomplish but yet I am struggling to start and finish projects. This week the focus was definitely ReaperCon Virtual Expo. I went through the entire online class schedule and picked the ones I wanted. However I think I signed up for 8? classes and only sat through 2. I recorded as many as I could and got notes written downloaded to access later but it is definitely a lot of content to go through.
On top of that I spontaneously had the house invaded by my family. Although it was great seeing them as I haven’t seen some since August it definitely cramped my style in the planning of painting over the weekend.
Overall I’ve decided to attempt to wrap of some projects on the site and printing projects in order to lessen the amount of things happening on the hobby space. This will definitely result in painting less but also a large portion of mental sanity.
Blog Update
The Blog as seen some growth over the last week most namely the addition of the Painting homepage of the site. It is still largely empty but gives an image of the direction I hope to go in for the future of painting for the site.
As always my ambitions & goals are far exceeding my output. I am still adding content regularly but some content is not yet ready for you incredible readers. I don’t have a timeline but I promise i’m doing my best to really build a solid foundation for the future of the site.
I’ve really struggled with finding a balance in accomplishing all the things I scheme and plan about. I believe it is a combination of being a perfectionist, absolutely exhausted from life due to being in the 3rd trimester of pregnancy, and having so little hobby time. I have soo many ambitious project ideas and choosing which ones to knock off the list is hard. I am always extra motivated knowing that people are interested in particular things. Do you think if I have a potential project page of things I have been scheming about, you’d be interested in helping me narrow it down by nominating ones to work on? Let me know what you think.
Again thanks for reading. Feel free to comment on what you are working on as well. Happy Hobbying,
Crazmadsci
I have to admit I am particularly keen to see how that charming wagon turns out. I am still hesitant on 3d printed items, having had mixed results myself.
Done! I’ll paint the wagon this week. Motivation of a suggestion really helps, thank you.
As for your 3d printing adventures, if you need help send me an email or something (crazmadsci@gmail.com). If you take pictures of your issue, name your printer, material etc. I’m sure we could put our heads together and work towards improving the experience.