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Here is my brother’s reply:
We were using creality slicer. The filament is pla, the nozzle is at 210 and the bed temp is 60. We were using supports where the support would touch the bed and a raft. We’ve switched programs to cura now and are trying to work through a bunch of issues with it.

Here is a photo of a test print. Looks better but...

Also, what does it mean if something is not a manifold? Can it not be printed at all?

I think that print came out decent, not perfect.

I’m limited on slicers since I have only a chromebook. Astroprint.com (uses Cura 3.6.0) is what I’m able to operate with. I still get the stringing you got on that print. I think it’s a combination of needing to increase retraction and speed of printing.

When I print I use PLA as well, I have my nozzle set at 220 and bed at 60. I’ve thought about dropping the nozzle temp down to 215, but that temperature can vary between different manufacturers of PLA.

Support wise I go nuts and do supports everywhere. Not great for fine detail work, but on terrain it works well. These three samurai figures were done with full supports on a raft.

The fox samurai in the middle lost his trident, a combination of my overzealous snipping and the fact that I plan on replacing it with a yari or naginata anyway. The guy between him and the red masked guy had ankle issues. They were too thin in the print and all but came off when I was cutting away the supports. His weapon will also get replaced, unless I completely reprint him. The Wolf samurai with digitigrade legs came out the best of the bunch. His sword is super thin, but survived. All the little white dots are the connection points where I removed the supports. I’m thinking or redoing them all at 3-5mm larger (heroes), but if priming covers some of the blemishes they might just work out. Either way they will be used a sub painting test.

I've found enabling support interfaces a major benefit. Puts a thin surface between the supports and the print, which comes off way easier and leaves far less to clean up. Still got to be careful on the smaller parts, but it's so much better for when you are supporting larger areas like wings or printing minis on their side or back.

Something which is not a manifold means its not actually a fully enclosed volume--something is wrong with the mesh in your geometry file. Given to understand that usually is something like a missed or turned around triangle or vertex, and yes, it will cause printing issues. I know there's programs to fix it, though I don't recall the names at the moment--just starting out myself.

This is why you use supports.

One chaos spiney beast survived coming through the warp portal because he had support. Go it all alone like the one on the right and you lose your forelimbs, part of your chest and most of your lower jaw. Always thank your patron god and give proper tithes.

Filament for the Filament god!
PLA(stic) soldiers for the pile of shame!

An hour of taking off the supports later.

He is one scary chicken wolf. It has double decker claws on the front limbs and very Tzeentchian feathers covering him. Would be a fantastic mount for a Tzeentchian General.

That's a big beastie! How long did that print take?


Got some really solid results on the Ender today, a Mind Flayer that looks great next to my bought resin ones and a Manticore that's come out pretty damn sharp as well. I'll throw up some pictures tomorrow.

Taking a shot tomorrow at a multi part very detailed mini, it's somewhat daunting but i reckon I've got everything dialled in now so it should go fine... And if not, hey, that's the great thing about this stuff, mess up one print and you can just take another shot!

I know what you mean about being dialed in, I’ve gotten some nice prints lately and don’t want to futz around, even the stringing is really reduced.

Got a call from my job today . Looks like I’m headed back in about three weeks. I guess I need to start piling up some 9-10 hour print ideas to start when I leave for work .

Been printing, just not posting, kind of trying to find the right idea for my army. So I have a selection of spirits/oni/statues to try and get ideas.


Also building a wall to keep the murder goldfish out

 Theophony wrote:
Also building a wall to keep the murder goldfish out

Tsu fish!

https://l5r.fandom.com/wiki/Tsu

Throwing L5R at me .

That’s the type of push I need to work on the samurai project.

Also anyone looking for a Ender 3 right now, I just got an email on a price drop from Creality. The Ender 3 like mine, the basic one $179.99, the Ender3 Pro (which I would have gotten if I could have afforded it at the time) $209.99.

Go
Buy
Print

Thanks for all the help, guys. We’ve been dialing it in and testing things out, and I think we’re pretty close. We finally got a Bolo that looks good, but the attempted Necron ship still didn’t turn out. (It’s an original design by someone in the FB group.)

I'm not sure whats going on with the Necron ship. To me it looks like it slipped off of the supports while printing.

The Bolo tank looks pretty good. lots of layer lines, but i think at that scale its pretty decent.

I've been looking for the .Stl file for the Z-axis spacers that I printed and installed. I know I got it from watching one of a few dozen youtube videos showing essential (or top xx) Ender3 upgrades. It really keyed in my prints once I had it printed and installed. The video showed quite a few upgrades including the fan cover, cable clips, filament guide and the cable chain cover. You may want to watch a few of those and see what could work for you the best. I think the one I watched was by All3DP.


Shows it at right about 5 minutes.


Also, Just signed up as a patreon for a 3d site (titan-forge). Does anyone know how to get the .stl files? It shows my joining and I have access, but I cannot find where to get the files. I'm an idiot, so don't think that I have clicked the big logo that says go here, because I don't see that .

Edit: Found it, Downloaded them

So I went and spent the $10 for the Dragon empires 2 bundle. Tried an old spoolof filament that had given me troubles before, it’s back I never the bad pile . Lots of stringing, but thankfully no clogs. Details came out good enough for me on the Kirin.

The worst part was that the spool was black and shiny. Made it hard to see what was supports and what was detail. One of the hero’s helmet crest horns was cut off because of this.

Scales are visible and defined.

The black spot on the mouth was because I primed it then saw that ALL the whiskers were just one whisker and a bunch of small supports.

Don’t tell the vet, but it may have gotten a snip between the legs where I thought it was supports and it turned out not to be .

Goldfish rider finally stayed glued to his base so he and a kitsune figure are primed and drying now.

How much training have you got in neutering Theo? Poor Dragon thing

These things are fiddly enough to de-support from a resin printer... I hate to think how fiddly it is with yours :/

I think I lost a couple of the helmet crests on some of the earlier sets as they are delicate things

That's a heck of a print, very detailed. I hear you on the difficulty of the black filament, I'm having similar problems with my semi-opaque white... really just need to get some grey.

Pretty sure I saw the Titanforge Empire of the Dragon bundle on MyMiniFactory earlier if you're still chasing it down, though it was $60.

 Paradigm wrote:
That's a heck of a print, very detailed. I hear you on the difficulty of the black filament, I'm having similar problems with my semi-opaque white... really just need to get some grey.

Pretty sure I saw the Titanforge Empire of the Dragon bundle on MyMiniFactory earlier if you're still chasing it down, though it was $60.

Over been using grey mostly and found one that’s a PLA+ for $23 a Kg on Amazon. I will most likely just go with it from now on, this black one was because nothing else was available at the time.

Yeah, I’ve seen the bundles on MyMiniFactory, they just had them available to patreons in smaller bundles for $10 each. They also promise a discount code for their stuff on MMF, but I didn’t get the code yet.

@LTMW, no training on that, but all my cats know I’m the one that took them to get it done .

What should I look for when buying PLA?

Also, how is ABS or PETG different? Which is better for minis?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
What should I look for when buying PLA?

Also, how is ABS or PETG different? Which is better for minis?

I have been warned to stay away from ABS. It gives off vapors that may be harmful to inhale. Quality wise it's like the first round of bones figures.

My understanding is Petg is stronger for making load carrying parts, cogs and wall brackets.

PLA is basically what most gamers are going to use. PLA+ is just a better quality.

No matter what they say the quality of their PLA is, you want something with less than a .03diameter variance.

The one I have been using the most is manufactured by eSun. I get it off Amazon. Runs about $23 for 1 KG.

When you do a search on Amazon, walmart or just about anywhere else and type in 1.75mm PLA filament, always doublecheck before you buy. twice I have used those parameters and been given a 3.00mm diameter filament.

Theres also wood filament (PLA with wood bits inside), metal, silk. all sorts of things.

www.esun3d.net. They send a trifold brochure with the 1Kg rolls that goes into details about each type and gives the suggested setting for each as well.

The discount code would have been in the same patreon post as the download links to the month's files unfortunately.

 endtransmission wrote:
The discount code would have been in the same patreon post as the download links to the month's files unfortunately.

Oh well I’ll know for next time .


I’ve given up on black PLA. The new one I got was so stringy and so shiny that I just can’t even bring myself to try and cut the supports off of this Chia pet looking lump.

I still have a full roll of my grey PLA+ which I will swear by and switching back to it.

I just read that after buying black PLA

Oh, and we made a bigger Bolo.


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It now takes up a whole street on the Dropzone mat.

Bob, did you do those tanks in one go? Nice work, if so. I don't trust mine to pull that off.

Are any of you guys finding that you have issues with stringing at all?

 Barzam wrote:
Bob, did you do those tanks in one go? Nice work, if so. I don't trust mine to pull that off.

Are any of you guys finding that you have issues with stringing at all?

We did the Bolos in only one go, both sizes, because we haven’t learned how to cut the models apart for printing. Took several tries to dial in the printer and get anything usable out of it. The 40k Sicaran was printed in 6 pieces, and the sponson guns took about six tries.

Stringing is a pretty big issue, but my brother got it dialed in enough so that the printed item can be cleaned of webs fairly easily.”, although it’s time consuming.

I did this ship in one go, although this is the fourth attempt. It’s an original Necron ship from the FB group, about as fair game as buying a Battlefleet Helios ship in my opinion. The top looks great, but I have no idea why the bottom looks this way.


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From what I understand, the temperature is a cause of the stringing. The printer can also be programmed to “wipe” between layers? Not sure I understand the complexities of this marvelous contraption.

I was having big stringing issues until yesterday, made a few setting changes that pretty much eradicated it in one fell swoop. Here's what I changed, if it helps at all:

Print temperature 205 ->198
Retraction speed 40mm/s -> 50mm/s
Retraction Distance 5mm -> 6mm

Small changes really. but can't argue with the results. Yesterday's prints looked the the aftermath of a visit by Spider-man, today I printed four models together on a plate with nary a string between them. YMMV from filament to filament, but these certainly work for me.

Stringing issues here as well. I’ll try some adjustments later as I’m back to using my grey filament.

Bobthose prints are looking great. I think the underside is because of temperature, supports and bridging. It’s the issue I have with my prints on the support side if I don’t have enough supports. Basically the temperature is a bit too high which allows the filament to remain flexible longer and sag when bridging between the supports. I am looking into getting a desktop computer up and running to use a real slicer program so I can better adjust supports and bridges. I tried to dial back my temperature manually on the current print, I’ll see in a couple hours, but it was already looking so much better than before.

Paradigm, what filament are you running? And was it really 5mm to 60mm(that’s like a 1/4” to 2.5”, Or was that a typo?

Started trying to slice the big dragon from the Patreon. Printing the main torso at best quality with supports was 30+ hours .

Edit: Please post some before and after when you guys make adjustments, that way we can all see the improvements and decide if we are going to try them ourselves .

Sorry, yeah, 5mm to 6mm, not 60! At the minute I'm using a white PLA that I can't recall the brand of, I'll check tomorrow. Though I do have some eSun PLA+ arriving tomorrow that I'm probably switching to

Not got any un-cleaned minis with the old settings, but I'll post some pics tomorrow of my current results and a more thorough breakdown of the settings.

while it would not have pulled the filament completely out, I figured it wouldn’t have been productive that way .

So here’s a quick idea of the change from black PLA

Yes there is a model in that blob, actually three parts to a model on a raft. Can’t see details, so even trying to cut away the supports I know I amputated part of a bow, and both katana and wakizashi handles of the rider. The mount lost both front paws though I was able to find them in the cut offs and replace them. No idea how it will look once primed.

And here is the same print with same settings using the ESun PLA+

A lot less stringing. Clear details and very little sheen which makes cutting the supports off easier. In the end it looks more like GW HIPS sprue plastic.

The only adjustments I can make on the Ender itself without reslicing the model is temperature. I just started a new print, the three Ninja from Dragon Empire 2 patreon bundle. I’ve adjusted the temperature down to 210 to see what that will do for me. Pics in about 6 hours.

Edit: About 20 minutes of cleaning and assembly and the details are phenomenal. The bow is thinner than a spear shaft from WGF ashigaru. The textures and beads on the model are smaller than the textures on the HIPS plastic molded figs