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Showing posts from May, 2018

Makercoins!

Hey guys, firstly an update on the printer... I reached out to Cetus customer support and as usual they were quick to reply and after a brief back and forth they have agreed to ship me a new extruder cable and heater module. It is so refreshing to have great customer service from a company, especially with the common belief that Chinese companies aren't as good as western ones in this regard. On that note I'd just like to say that I also have a Chinese phone (Oneplus 3T) and it has been better than any other smart phone I have had previously, including Samsung and my work iPhone. So I'd like to thank Jason and Cecilia from Cetus/Tiertime for all their help! Anyway. This week, as I'm still without a printer, I thought I would talk a bit about maker coins, what they are and why people have them. So why should you create your own?  First off creating your own makercoin from scratch is a great way to learn modelling programs.  It can be as simple or as comp

Printer Update

This week will be a brief update on how my attempts to fix my poor little printer are going. So last week I had tried, different materials, changing settings and changing to brand new nozzles and none of these things made a blind bit of difference leading me to believe that the problem was a little more serious than just a blocked nozzle. I settled on the most obvious explanation; there was something wrong with the heating element on the extruder head, either with the sensor or the heater itself. I had one more thing I could try before going to Cetus customer service and asking for help, I had previously had an issue with the extruder motor which wasn't turning properly and upon talking to Cetus, they sent me a new ribbon cable and PCB for the printer.  As it turned out it was a fault with the ribbon cable, causing the motor to not be able to draw enough power so I after that I had a spare PCB. I thought maybe the fault was with the board itself so on Sunday I got my screwd

I Was Wrong!

So remember how I said last week I thought I had fixed my jamming issue? Well I was wrong. I'm not sure if it's the material, which it shouldn't be as it's the same brand I always use or if the nozzle is buggered, which seems more likely as it's the same nozzle that came with the machine last September. In any case, the only way to sort this out was to change the variables one at a time until it fixed itself and to do that I did following over the past couple of days; Change the material and try and print with the same nozzle and settings. This didn't work, not much more to say about it.  I did a cold pull This involves extruding filament through the nozzle until it is full, then letting it cool to just above the glass temp of the plastic, in this case around 100, and then manually pulling the filament out.  If done correctly it should come out with a little pop in the exact shape of the inside of the nozzle, pulling any debris with it. I th

Miniature Scales

First things first, I think  I have solved the jamming issue I talked about last week!  All seems to be running smoothly for the moment so fingers crossed it should be good for now.  I probably will order myself a set of new nozzles anyway just in case something like this does happen again. In the past I have found myself talking to people about scales in tabletop gaming (I know, life of the party right?) and being met with a blank stare so this week I'd thought I'd quickly go over some of the scales relevant to the games I've previously mentioned on my blog and how they are worked out. Probably the most popular scale in modern wargaming and tabletop gaming would be 28mm or 1:64.  Most well known miniature games use it, for example Heroforge , DnD and Games Workshop all use 28mm scale miniatures. Although Games Workshop uses 28mm, their models appear larger due to the bulkier sculpting and style.  This is also sometimes referred to as 'Heroic scale'.  Game

Print of the Month April '18

Hey guys, for this months POTM I thought I'd print myself a little something to tide me over while I wait for my Tesla Model 3... It's a little supercharger for my work phone! I have to say, I've been having a few problems recently with the extruder jamming on me and I'm not sure why yet.  This meant I had to try three times before I managed to get a finished print of the white sides of the charger... One of the failed prints I'm not sure if the new filament I got has gummed up the nozzle, or if it's just time for me to get a new one (it's the same nozzle that came with my printer last year and has had around 8kg of plastic through it!). I'll keep trying to print stuff but in the meantime I will order a set of new nozzles from Cetus and see if I can get things working again. Another issue I had with the print was that I ran out of silver on the base, totally my fault, so I had to swap material half way through... The print