Two New Valentine Sets
Last week we announced our Valentine-themed Catan set. Since then we’ve launched Valentine-themed sets for Ticket to Ride
and Seafarers of Catan.
The game boards look wonderful with hearts spread all across them! Will these sets be as popular as our Christmas sets (Settlers, Seafarers, and Ticket to Ride)? Time will tell!
More Valentine Items to Come
Last week we mentioned that we’re also working on some non-gaming items. For reasons unrelated to 3D printing they’re not quite ready to go, so we’re saving them for one more week. For now we can tell you that they’re related to Valentine’s Day and will still be available early enough to order, ship, and arrive before February 14.
Metallic Filament
A couple weeks ago we told you that we had acquired some fun new filament. We’ve been playing with metallic gold and silver, and they look great!
But they’re very finicky to work with, resulting in many failed prints. Even a relatively minor glitch like this one puts an unattractive mark across the shiny surface.
We haven’t decided how to include these in our Etsy shop yet. We’re sure our customers will love them, but we want to be certain we can deliver and we haven’t yet got it to a point that it’s reliable enough.
Wood Filament
We also bought some filament with actual wood fibers infused into the PLA plastic. It’s supposed to make prints look like actual wood, and we were excited to try it! But it turned out to be even more finicky than the metallic colors, and just looked beige, not particularly like wood.
So we returned it. We may try another brand at some point, but for now wood filament is off our agenda.
Heat Creep Blockage
We’ve talked here before about clogged nozzles. It’s been a periodic problem, but one we’ve learned to deal with quickly and effectively. This week though we’ve discovered a new kind of blockage. This one seems to be caused by something called “heat creep”, which is when the heat that melts the plastic filament at the nozzle moves up too high and melts plastic further away from where it’s supposed to. That plastic then solidifies into a clumped mass that new filament can’t pass through.
The result is a clog that can’t be corrected by clearing or replacing the nozzle. When it happens mid-print, the filament simply stops extruding, leaving a half finished print like this Ticket to Ride train.
Caused by Our New Filament?
We suspect this happened because of our new metallic filament, which needs to be extruded at a much higher temperature than our usual filament. It’s likely the heat creep happened then, while the printer was operating at a higher temperature than normal, causing a blockage that’s now interfering with our regular printing. Which means this is yet another reason that we’re not yet officially launching our metallic colors.
For now, we’ve got a temporary workaround, and supplies are on the way that will let us disassemble, clean out, and reassemble the entire hot end.
Development Continues
We’re not letting that problem slow us down though. We’re putting the finishing touches on the Valentine mystery items mentioned above, and also working on another new product. This one is related to one of our favorite board games, but is not a new set of game pieces. With luck, it’ll be ready to launch within the next week too!
