Different Skyscrapers

I’m still stuck in the realm of building up a western town for Shadows of Brimstone. I say stuck but I actually enjoy the process (even though it feels like the current building is taking forever). Mind you there have been some trials and tribulations along the way too. And then I realize I haven’t been talking about much of this lately because the last thing to show up here was the first house I had built. I’m on building number four now and I have made changes to the first house along the way.

So where do I begin?

I think the first thing is going to be talking about some issues. See, since I printed out the stuff for the first house, I had moved on from the easy release build plate to a glass plate. Now that I am used to working with it, I wish I had done this a long time ago. The glass has made a world of difference in how my prints are turning out. I’m working with hair spray for bed adhesion and pretty much just getting out of the way. I had also replaced the tension springs on the bed at roughly the same time. This has cut down on my need for level adjustments by a decent margin. (Knock on wood. I don’t want to jinx myself).

And from there, I have had this blue filament for a while. I had set it aside because it was giving me issues. Stuff like stuck nozzles and prints coming out horrible. I had dropped it in frustration and vowed to never buy that brand again. Hadn’t even planned to use it again but I couldn’t just toss it, right? So, it sat on the floor in my desk area collecting dust.

Then a day came where I was between filaments. I had ordered some new stuff from Hatchbox but it hadn’t come in yet. I thought, what the heck, lets see if we can dry this old stuff and see what happens. I popped it in the oven for about 5 hours on 175 degrees. It was a quick switch out and I had the printer humming. Ended up getting a couple floor pieces before I ended up with the first failed print. I’m thinking this stuff is beyond saving at this point.

I started pulling stuff apart and was ready to work through the stuck nozzle. But I found that the nozzle wasn’t the problem at all. I had flow without a fight. So ok, next bit of searching. Turned out the filament had been wound around the spool super tight and in some cases blocking the flow from the spool. The problem came when it was stuck at the spool and couldn’t be moved. So yeah, I proceed to pull the filament from the spool and set it on a new one. In that moment I couldn’t think of an easy way to do this. I ended up with a decent amount of filament spread all over the place. I also found a spot close to the end of the spool that was wound so tight it broke as I was trying to release it. I ended up with a couple different sections of filament to work with. The nice thing was, once I had that issue taken care of, I was able to print with it just fine. Minor inconvenience, but enough of a pisser that I would rather stick with the brands that don’t give me issues like this.

Anyway, at this point I have gotten three buildings finished out. At least the printing of them. I am still forever away from getting them primed and painted. I have tried to play around with the builds as I go. I want to get something new and different into each building as I work through the designs. So far I think I have done fairly well with it.

And then comes the current building. This one is a combo between a hotel and a tavern. It feels like it’s taking forever. Part of that, this is the biggest building I have put together. There are so many pieces I need for it and each piece takes a bit of time to get printed. Of course, as I go through, I am still figuring out what it is I want to do with it. One of the biggest battles I am currently having is whether or not I am going to add an additional floor. It is sitting on two stories right now with the third bit set to become a roof. But I could easily make that into another floor.

The fun bit of this, I can get it built just as it is right now. All floors are removable, even the roof sections. So, if I wanted to add another floor in the future it isn’t anything but the time to print the parts to put that in place. Which brings me into the thoughts I have been having recently.

I had stuff like tinker toys, legos, and the like growing up. It was always a thing to build stuff with it all and figure out new ways to put it all together. But one of the sets I really liked and wish I still could find, was something called girders and panels. Essentially that was a set of plastic bits that worked about like steel beams for the structure of skyscrapers. The panels were the pieces that created the façade of all the buildings. You had various designs of windows and such to cover the skeletal frame. With that stuff you could design a city for Hotwheels cars. I built a number of different cities with all of it.

The buildings I am putting together now have a nostalgic feel to them. Granted I am not making stuff for my toy cars (though I will use some of this stuff for Gaslands anyway). This is a bug that follows you through your life apparently. It’s also probably part of the bug that got me going through architecture classes the first time I was in college. I guess at one point in my life I thought of making buildings but in real life scale. The crazy things we do in life…

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