Things have been happening but I've been short on time to take pictures. Since I was waiting on pictures to do a full blog entry you get a quick update with teasers for what's in store.
I have a pretty good way to print miniatures on my 3D printers so I've got a variety of those to show off.
I've been working on modifying the base for a 3D printed dragon to hold a set of dice, making it a dice dragon. That's CAD work and I'm not great at it but I'm getting better.
I've been finishing more Printable Scenery buildings for my friend so pictures of those will be forthcoming as well.
My printers will be undergoing a significant upgrade and I hope to take pictures of the process. At least I'll have a before and after set. It should be a sweet set of upgrades.
I have some tutorials for Octoprint, which is the software that's on my print servers. They're detailed and I have some preliminary ones I want to get done before the meaty ones.
I've been working very long days which makes me too worn out to do a lot of things in the evenings. That's not an excuse. It's telling you why the blog has been neglected recently. My housework has been just as neglected. I'm fixing some of that tonight since my kitchen had been overrun and I couldn't stand it any more. That and I wanted clean dishes.
So that's what's in store for the near future. Leave me a comment if there's something you want me to write about since you're the ones reading this.
Sunday, March 24, 2019
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Miniature Storage
Bwahahhaa! I have deboned the bag of t-shirts a friend gave me!
Wait - no calling the local PD for a wellness check on me. Hear me out.
A friend was moving and per my request gave me a bag full of old cotton t-shirts he wasn't going to wear any more and/or didn't want to move. I have a use for those kinds of shirts.
But before I get into that here's the end result.
Shirt carcasses on the left, shirt bones on the right.
Seriously. No wellness check.
What I did was cut out all the seams and hems from the shirts. That leaves me large amounts of plain t-shirt fabric, if you use the side that doesn't have a design on it. Why would I need large amounts of plain t-shirt fabric?
This! This is why!
Those are foam transport trays for miniatures. The vast majority of minis I paint are army miniatures and don't go on display. I store them in the transport trays so if I ever get the chance to play I can grab the necessary trays, put them in a transport case, and off I go. Yes. I will label the edges of the trays so I know what's in them.
These things are great but almost everyone forgets something. The foam is a mild abrasive. The sticky-out bits of minis can and do get the paint worn off them from being moved around in transport trays. Sad but true. The very thing that's supposed to protect them is doing them harm....
Still no wellness check needed.
What I do is use pieces of the t-shirt fabric to protect the minis. It's more work when taking them out of the trays and putting them back but in the long run it means far less work repairing the paint jobs on them. When you have seventeen armies that can add up.
If you're going to do this yourself make sure you're using 100% cotton shirts. Polyester may feel soft but it's not. Go for the cotton.
The well washed ones work best because they're nice and soft. That's why we always keep them around far past their lifespan. Here's a use for them that will keep them in the game, as it were.
For those who aren't as familiar with deboning t-shirts here's how I do it. All cuts are done next to seams so I won't put that in the instructions.
Here's the fun bit. At least I consider it fun because it's a bit of a challenge and if you have a lot of shirts to cut up you can get into the routine.
Steps 1 through 5 can be done and leave one bone for each sleeve.
Steps 6 through 11 can be done to leave one bone from the body.
Step 12 will always be a separate one since there's no seams from top to bottom.
You don't have to try to keep them as single pieces. That's my thing. As long as you get rid of ALL the seams you'll have nothing but nice, smooth, soft fabric to swaddle your troops.
Even if you don't have a lot of minis or fancy transport trays this is a way to safely store your special minis. Wrap them up and put them in a plastic shoebox. The shirt fabric will pad them and keep them from rubbing on each other and as long as you don't jam too many in there it will also keep swords unbent.
Yes. It works for transporting a single mini to a game as well. Drop it in a sandwich bag and you're golden.
Remember - 100% cotton is the way to go!
Wait - no calling the local PD for a wellness check on me. Hear me out.
A friend was moving and per my request gave me a bag full of old cotton t-shirts he wasn't going to wear any more and/or didn't want to move. I have a use for those kinds of shirts.
But before I get into that here's the end result.
Shirt carcasses on the left, shirt bones on the right.
Seriously. No wellness check.
What I did was cut out all the seams and hems from the shirts. That leaves me large amounts of plain t-shirt fabric, if you use the side that doesn't have a design on it. Why would I need large amounts of plain t-shirt fabric?
This! This is why!
Those are foam transport trays for miniatures. The vast majority of minis I paint are army miniatures and don't go on display. I store them in the transport trays so if I ever get the chance to play I can grab the necessary trays, put them in a transport case, and off I go. Yes. I will label the edges of the trays so I know what's in them.
These things are great but almost everyone forgets something. The foam is a mild abrasive. The sticky-out bits of minis can and do get the paint worn off them from being moved around in transport trays. Sad but true. The very thing that's supposed to protect them is doing them harm....
Still no wellness check needed.
What I do is use pieces of the t-shirt fabric to protect the minis. It's more work when taking them out of the trays and putting them back but in the long run it means far less work repairing the paint jobs on them. When you have seventeen armies that can add up.
If you're going to do this yourself make sure you're using 100% cotton shirts. Polyester may feel soft but it's not. Go for the cotton.
The well washed ones work best because they're nice and soft. That's why we always keep them around far past their lifespan. Here's a use for them that will keep them in the game, as it were.
For those who aren't as familiar with deboning t-shirts here's how I do it. All cuts are done next to seams so I won't put that in the instructions.
- Cut one sleeve up to the shoulder
- Cut the sleeve off the shirt completely
- Cut the seam off the sleeve
- Cut the hem off the sleeve
- Repeat on any remaining sleeves (there should only be one more but I don't judge)
- Cut from the shoulder seam to the neck
- Cut around the neck to the other shoulder seam
- Cut down the shoulder seam to the remaining sleeve seam
- Cut around the sleeve seam back to the shoulder seam
- Cut around the neck back to the original shoulder seam
- Cut around the sleeve seam
- Cut the hem off the shirt body
Here's the fun bit. At least I consider it fun because it's a bit of a challenge and if you have a lot of shirts to cut up you can get into the routine.
Steps 1 through 5 can be done and leave one bone for each sleeve.
Steps 6 through 11 can be done to leave one bone from the body.
Step 12 will always be a separate one since there's no seams from top to bottom.
You don't have to try to keep them as single pieces. That's my thing. As long as you get rid of ALL the seams you'll have nothing but nice, smooth, soft fabric to swaddle your troops.
Even if you don't have a lot of minis or fancy transport trays this is a way to safely store your special minis. Wrap them up and put them in a plastic shoebox. The shirt fabric will pad them and keep them from rubbing on each other and as long as you don't jam too many in there it will also keep swords unbent.
Yes. It works for transporting a single mini to a game as well. Drop it in a sandwich bag and you're golden.
Remember - 100% cotton is the way to go!
Sunday, March 3, 2019
Printing Malaise and Opening Access to the Printers
I've been doing a LOT of 3D printing lately. I had a project for a convention that I didn't do and I've got a lot to print for a friend of mine. I got a little burnt out on the printing thing for a while.
This weekend I finally got the cameras set up for the interim. The whole thing is going to change some time after April when I do upgrades that will take me into the custom modification area. That includes new camera mounts. I'm fine with it and I'm looking forward to it. So for now these will work, at least for monitoring. I can use the timelapse videos to practice my editing and make my images to bracket the videos so they're not so abrupt to start and end.
I also need to put my own watermark on them instead of the printer server logo. But that's a small thing.
One thing I did do was remove a server plugin that would have made for 'better' timelapse videos but at the expense of my prints. The general concept is that this moves the print bed and print head to fixed spots before it takes the picture so the final result is a static image. It's pretty cool. I was looking forward to using it.
Then when I got into setting it up there was a big glaring thing I didn't like. It keeps track of exactly where the printer is - X, Y, and Z. That's fine. But what it doesn't like is when you have different kinds of movement at the same speed. It wants all of them to be different. And then you have to change your settings for creating your files to match. That was the deal killer.
I spend a lot of time getting those settings as close to perfect as I can. The end result is the print. Now a plugin that does nothing but take pictures wants me to adjust my print settings. The settings I've spent hours refining. It might not seem like much to change something by 0.1mm but it is.
For one thing that means everything I've already gotten prepped will have to be redone. That's simple for most of them and difficult for others that I've done work on to print exactly as I want. It's also forcing me to change my printer settings to match this plugin - that's not guaranteed to work, mind you - just so it can take pictures.
I uninstalled the plugin from both servers. I'm going to see if there's really an issue with having the print head moving all over during a timelapse. I'm not nearly the only one who does them this way.
Two things to finish up here.
One - I do plan on uploading these to my YouTube channel and I'll get you the name of it once I have everything settled out there.
Two - If you want to be able to check in on the printers whenever you like and be notified when new prints start, etc. then you can do that through Telegram. Install it, create an account, and send a message to each of the bots associated with my printers.
Note - The request won't go through if the printer is running so if you send a message and there's no response in a reasonable amount of time you may have to send it again. I won't know if you sent it and it bounced.
The Telegram bots are:
@Rastl_bot
@RastlWorld_Other_Bot
Two printers, two bots.
Once you're set up you'll get notifications at times and you can request status updates. These come with pictures. I may ask you if you want notifications at certain points in the print but don't enable those by default.
Fun thing. Telegram commands include /shutup and /dontshutup to turn notifications off and on. So if you sign up for them but they're bothering you for the day you can turn them off. Or send me a Telegram message to remove them completely.
This weekend I finally got the cameras set up for the interim. The whole thing is going to change some time after April when I do upgrades that will take me into the custom modification area. That includes new camera mounts. I'm fine with it and I'm looking forward to it. So for now these will work, at least for monitoring. I can use the timelapse videos to practice my editing and make my images to bracket the videos so they're not so abrupt to start and end.
I also need to put my own watermark on them instead of the printer server logo. But that's a small thing.
One thing I did do was remove a server plugin that would have made for 'better' timelapse videos but at the expense of my prints. The general concept is that this moves the print bed and print head to fixed spots before it takes the picture so the final result is a static image. It's pretty cool. I was looking forward to using it.
Then when I got into setting it up there was a big glaring thing I didn't like. It keeps track of exactly where the printer is - X, Y, and Z. That's fine. But what it doesn't like is when you have different kinds of movement at the same speed. It wants all of them to be different. And then you have to change your settings for creating your files to match. That was the deal killer.
I spend a lot of time getting those settings as close to perfect as I can. The end result is the print. Now a plugin that does nothing but take pictures wants me to adjust my print settings. The settings I've spent hours refining. It might not seem like much to change something by 0.1mm but it is.
For one thing that means everything I've already gotten prepped will have to be redone. That's simple for most of them and difficult for others that I've done work on to print exactly as I want. It's also forcing me to change my printer settings to match this plugin - that's not guaranteed to work, mind you - just so it can take pictures.
I uninstalled the plugin from both servers. I'm going to see if there's really an issue with having the print head moving all over during a timelapse. I'm not nearly the only one who does them this way.
Two things to finish up here.
One - I do plan on uploading these to my YouTube channel and I'll get you the name of it once I have everything settled out there.
Two - If you want to be able to check in on the printers whenever you like and be notified when new prints start, etc. then you can do that through Telegram. Install it, create an account, and send a message to each of the bots associated with my printers.
Note - The request won't go through if the printer is running so if you send a message and there's no response in a reasonable amount of time you may have to send it again. I won't know if you sent it and it bounced.
The Telegram bots are:
@Rastl_bot
@RastlWorld_Other_Bot
Two printers, two bots.
Once you're set up you'll get notifications at times and you can request status updates. These come with pictures. I may ask you if you want notifications at certain points in the print but don't enable those by default.
Fun thing. Telegram commands include /shutup and /dontshutup to turn notifications off and on. So if you sign up for them but they're bothering you for the day you can turn them off. Or send me a Telegram message to remove them completely.
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