January 9, 2022: Now I知 3D Printing (Part 2)

I have now successfully printed Saint Ick, the Christmas octopus that was the extra gift in the Foes campaign. The road was not completely smooth. My first attempt failed because I did not install the spacer properly (okay, exactly backwards, if the truth must be known) and did not rezero the machine after installing it. My second attempt failed because I, err, forgot to tighten the screws after setting up the print plate; this produced very distorted figures. I washed and cured them anyway, for practice (and to get something to test paint colors on).

My third attempt mostly worked. The Saint Ick figure has two parts, and I printed in triplicate. Five of the six parts worked perfectly; the sixth just didn't build as it should have. It could be that I left a dirty spot on the print plate. It could be just, as Jean says, the phase of the moon.

It took me about 20 minutes to cut the supports off one St. Ick and prepare it for priming. I'm going to use the Army Painter "Uniform Grey" primer. (Do not bother trying to paint resin minis without priming. I tried, just so I could write about the results. One word: Pathetic.)

Then I set up a batch of skeletons for printing. The Chitubox setup process is not hard at all – it's just not documented. I got nine skellies onto the print area. (A thing to know about resin: Print time is determined only by the height of the job. It takes no longer to print a full plate than it does to print the single highest item on it. This is different from filament printing, in which a big job takes longer because the printer head has to move.)

More on this soon. Will the skeletons come out grinning, or will I be boned? Stay tuned.

-- Steve Jackson