Look at that? Doesn’t she look just fantastic? I can’t wait to print and paint her. Which brings me to the reason I waited so long to post her (she’s been done for a couple days yet) is that I am so fantastically close to being able to show you a print.



Yeah, that’s right, the machine is just shy of working properly. In fact, with a bit more tinkering, it’ll be very nearly ready for the good times. See, the first layer is printing to the board, and sticking well. Then my hot end comes along and swipes over the top to drag some of the material along with it. Turns out I’m running it just a bit too hot.

So I’ll prepare the bed again, adjust the INI settings on Slic3r and give it another shot. I’m thinking if I can’t get it working by the end of the day, I’m gonna spend all night doing math and trying to carefully calibrate the machine.

See, right now it’s all about the math. Wonderful wonderful math. Getting all the numbers lined up just right, putting my machine to work to get just the right numbers to enter into the firmware and this baby is so close to working. Everything behaving correctly, (within reason, my heater is still weak BUT I’ve found the extra heat resister so if I don’t think it’ll work, I’m replacing it).

And, I’ve got a new hot end on the way by the end of the week, so if my just-north-of-non-functional hot end doesn’t cut the mustard soon, I’ll be replacing it and going back to ABS.

Going back to ABS is so much easier than ABS-TO-PLA, due to the heat values of the materials. So, yeah, very close to being able to get this bad boy up and running, and with just a little bit of magic I can make it work and be printing up all your lovely commissions!

Finally, folks, here comes the next big question of the day:

What kind of contest should I hold for the very first free toy give-away?