3D Orcs Printing Company

Adding magic to the mundane, one filament at a time.

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You’ve Been Punked!

March 2, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Steampunked, That Is

This past week we launched both of our Steampunk game piece sets, and we love how they all turned out!

First came Settlers of Catan, with airships for the cities, roadsters for the settlements, and rows of gears for the roads.

There’s also a robber with a steampunk goggle hat!


Next was Ticket to Ride, which used the same roadsters for the trains, and includes a steampunk goggle hat for the scoring marker.

Overcoming Challenges

One challenge that is omnipresent in 3D printing is the difficulty of printing overhangs. Since the plastic is laid down in layers, each layer needs to have something below it to hold it in place. Otherwise the printer is extruding soft melted plastic into air, and it has nothing to stick to and hold its shape while it cools and solidifies. You can get away with very small projections, but anything beyond a 45° angle, or projecting more than a millimeter or two, will fail without support. There are ways to print temporary supports which can later be removed, but that tends to leave a messy surface where the support structure breaks away, and requires a lot of effort to clean up afterwards.

All of this means that printing the airships with noses and tails sticking out from the undercarriage was simply not feasible without added support. Or coming up with a whole new approach.

I decided to tip them nose up, so the tail would be printed first, then on up through the body to the nose. That let the tail fins support the rest of it as it printed, reducing the overhangs to something the printer could handle.

Printing Multiples

One of the advantages of having a printer with a large print bed is that I can print multiple items at once. It would take a ridiculous amount of manual effort if I had to print an entire Ticket to Ride set (48 trains and a scoring marker) one piece at a time!

Here’s a full set of standard Ticket to Ride pieces printing all together.

But there’s a risk to doing that. Having that many separate pieces on the print bed means the print nozzle needs to jump from piece to piece MANY times while printing the dozens of individual layers. And each such jump incurs a tiny chance that the nozzle will bump a partially finished piece, knocking it loose from the print bed and putting it out of position. And when that happens, the entire print job is usually ruined.

First, the loose piece tends to get pushed into others, knocking them loose as well. Second, the filament that’s extruded trying to print onto the failed pieces ends up sticking to other nearby pieces, ruining them and adding extra projections that in turn are more likely to be struck by the moving nozzle.

Here’s an example of one such failed meeple print.

And a failed Catan print.

Fortunately, I’ve got my printer configured now so that while it still happens from time to time, it usually works smoothly for straightforward prints like Standard Ticket to Ride and Catan sets.

What if it Still Won’t Work?

With more complex geometry, like our latest Steampunk pieces, this kind of problem happens more frequently. Sometimes I can correct it by simplifying the geometry of the model, which I did for every Steampunk game piece. But when that still isn’t enough and I can’t make it work the way I want, sometimes the only solution is to print fewer pieces at once. This reduces the chance of a problem, and also decreases the impact when a problem does occur, because instead of ruining a whole set, it only ruins a few pieces.

For the Steampunk pieces, the roadster proved the most problematic. (Which was particularly annoying, since it’s used in both the Catan and Ticket to Ride sets.) In the end I had to print most of them in groups of 8 or even 4, which makes producing them that much more time consuming. But they still look great, and it’ll be worth it if players like them even half as much as I do!

Increased Capacity

Fortunately, all of the resulting production delays have been more than offset by the arrival of our new printer!

As I mentioned last week, we chose to get a second Anet ET5X. Setting it up was not without its problems, but all in all it went way smoother than the first one, since I now have a much better understanding of how they work. Having the two of them running side by side makes us feel even more like a professional 3D printing shop!

A Change of Pace

Our current design work is taking us in a bit of a different direction. New game piece sets will be coming before long, but right now our focus is a special request by someone who wants a funky new set of keys for an electronic keyboard. Come back next week to see how this fun new project is progressing!

Got Meeples?

February 22, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Meeple Madness

This week we launched meeples in our Etsy shop!

They’re pretty basic compared to some of our other pieces, but we’ve been wanting to offer this boardgaming staple for a while now. And it adds Carcassonne to our collection of supported games!

Meeple Mercenaries – Raising a Cost Effective Army

With this launch we’re trying a new pricing approach. For the first time, you can save money by buying in bulk, with the best deal being 50 meeples for $15.00. The best part is that you can still get this bulk discount even if you want them in a variety of different colors.

When Good Gears Go Bad

If you read our blog last week, you probably deduced that we were planning to release some Steampunk-themed game pieces. That’s still in the works, but has been deferred by a week. While our designs are really cool, some of them are a bit tricky to print, and working out the kinks slowed us down a bit. The designs have now been finalized, but we haven’t had time to print enough samples for the photo shoot needed for the Etsy listing. We expect to launch sets for both Catan and Ticket to Ride in the next few days.

Spontaneous 3D Printer AI

One of the more amusing printing issues we dealt with was when our printer learned how to play Settlers of Catan. It probably arose out of the predictable camaraderie between the mechanical nature of the printer and the steampunk pieces it was printing.

The pieces intended to be roads for Settlers of Catan are supposed to look like this.

But our printer decided to go for Longest Road and produced this.

Time for a Second Printer

With 3D printers being sometimes finicky creatures, and orders coming in regularly from Etsy, we decided it was time to reinvest the proceeds from our recent sales and buy a second printer. At first I thought we’d buy something different, to diversify our printing capabilities. But after a lot of research I concluded that our current printer has all the features of other printers that cost more, and going for a cheaper one would remove some great features like the heated glass bed and auto-leveling. One day I’d like to get a printer with two extruders so we can explore multi-color printing, but the price point for those is still a bit beyond what we can justify for now.

So in the end we ordered a second Anet ET5X. This also means there won’t be a new learning curve since we’re already familiar with this machine, and all our print files that are optimized for our current printer should work the same on both.

This will give us a bit of a safety net if one of them needs a repair or maintenance, which should help us stay on schedule with our planned releases, while also fulfilling our customer orders (which always take priority). Though knowing me, I’ll just end up designing twice as many game pieces and the pair of printers still won’t be able to keep up.

An Exciting Week Ahead

This week should see the arrival of our new printer, as well as the launch of two sets of Steampunk-themed game pieces. How exciting! Come back next Monday to see how it all played out!

Germs FTW!

February 15, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Pandemic Game Pieces

While the Covid-19 pandemic is truly a worldwide tragedy, the boardgame Pandemic by Matt Leacock and Z-Man Games is a worldwide hit. But those little cubes just aren’t all that interesting to play with.

So at 3D Orcs we came up with our own version of Pandemic Game Pieces Based on Real Viruses. (Ok, so Bubonic Plague and Cholera are caused by bacteria, not viruses, but you get the idea.)

We researched several historic catastrophic diseases, and chose these four to feature in our set of game pieces.

We also felt the standard Research Station was a bit plain, so we created our own version of that too, and the test tubes look fantastic!

Photographic Challenges

However, once the pieces were ready to be sold in our Etsy shop, we still needed photos for the listing. We thought they’d look sharp with the wood grain of our oak table as a backdrop. And they do in real life. But the photos came out all wrong.

The yellow Cholera pieces came out looking green.

And the red Coronavirus pieces refused to come into focus.

In the end we had to nix the wood background idea, and took all our pics on the game board instead. I can’t complain though, they came out looking great!

Coming Back for More

In other news, 3D Orcs was thrilled to have our first two repeat customers!

The first was someone who had previously bought some of our Christmas Themed Ticket to Ride sets,

and now bought some Camping Themed Ticket to Ride sets. It’s wonderful knowing people like our products enough to come back for more! Plus, this buyer is in Germany, the board game capital of the world, making it even more special!

Our second repeat buyer is in Canada (where I’m originally from), and they were so enthused about our Standard Ticket to Ride sets that they bought more colors even before their first ones had arrived!

When Goths Discover Brown

If you know that reference, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what we’re working on next. Come back next Monday to see what our imaginations came up with for some new themed game pieces!

The Orc’s Gambit

February 9, 2021 / / 0 Comments

A New Old Game

The game of chess has existed for over 1000 years, but producing chess pieces is new to us here at 3D Orcs.

Inspired by TV

A few months ago we watched and loved “The Queen’s Gambit”. It got us thinking that we should make a set of chess pieces for our Etsy shop. We wanted our pieces to combine elegance and flare, without veering too far from familiar traditional forms. After trying out a few variations, we settled on these Spiral Fluted Chess Pieces, and we’re thrilled with how they turned out!

Nearly Thwarted by Success

After doing test prints of our designs and refining our models (the knight was particularly challenging), we were ready to print a full set so we could take pictures for the Etsy listing. But then we received a flurry of orders for our existing products! We had to postpone the chess pieces in order to print the pieces people had bought. It kind of messed up our planned release schedule, but that’s the kind of “problem” we’re happy to have!

Pink Proves Popular

We’re often surprised by what people are attracted to purchase. This week’s preferred item was pink trains for Ticket to Ride. They do look good on the board, and stand out as a fun alternative to the colors that come with the game!

We also saw multiple orders for standard Catan pieces,

and sold a few sets of canoe Ticket to Ride “trains” from our Camping-themed collection.

We even had an order for our Hallowe’en Ticket to Ride set, which shows that people don’t want to be constrained by what’s “seasonally appropriate”.

Chess Goes Ahead

With all of the printing needed to fulfill the orders, we feared our chess set wouldn’t be ready to launch in time for this blog post. But a flurry of printing the last few pieces earlier today, followed by a photo shoot that had been planned in advance, allowed us to launch just in time. We hope people love them as much as we do!

Covid Comes to 3D Orcs

Thankfully I don’t mean anyone here has been infected. But the Corona virus does play a key role in our newest project. Come back next Monday to see the pieces we’re creating for a new addition to our line up!

Beyond Game Pieces

February 1, 2021 / / 0 Comments

New Directions

As we indicated last week, our promised new releases took us out of the realm of board game pieces. We ventured into two entirely new areas: jewelry and drink coasters! Read more about them below, but first I’m going to tell you about fixing the heat creep blockage we also mentioned last week.

The Blockage Got Worse

When I wrote about it last week we had a workaround for temporarily dealing with the blockage. But then the problem got worse. While we could still get some filament through, it wasn’t enough. We were facing pretty bad under-extrusion problems, where not enough filament was getting through the nozzle, leaving the print with gaps, thin layers, and poor adhesion. We ended up needing to stop all printing for a day and a half.

Digging Into the Problem

Then our supplies arrived and I began disassembling the printer’s hot end (what you might think of as the print head on a traditional printer). Here you see it opened up and laid out for inspection. Even to get to this point I had to disengage it from the X-axis drive belt, and remove two of the wheels and the print cooling fan. The problem is somewhere between where the Bowden tube (the white tube at the top) enters, and the nozzle (the pointy metal bit at the lower left of the assembly).

Isolating the Problem Area

Next I removed the back panel (with the remaining wheel) from the heat dissipation block (the central black thing with the fins for air cooling), and unscrewed the Bowden tube connector. You can also see a glob of melted and burnt filament plastic on top of the rectangular heating block that the nozzle is screwed into. But to go any further I had to turn on the printer and heat it up. Everything was fused together by solidified printing plastic, and it had to be softened before I could do anything else.

Smokin’ Hot! Literally!

Once it was heated I was able to pull that piece of plastic off the top of the heating block.

I also removed the nozzle and confirmed that the blockage was higher than that.

The Bowden tube itself was really stuck hard in there! I had to hold the heat dissipation block with pliers and pull hard on the tube to get it out, all while being very aware that I was dealing with parts heated to 235ºC (455ºF).

When it finally came out, it was blackened and smoking! Unfortunately the smoke dissipated before I could snap a pic of it, but here you can see the blackened end of the Bowden tube. It smelled faintly sweet, which makes sense I guess considering PLA is made from corn starch.

The Solution

While the root cause of the problem is still just an educated guess (as I speculated last week, I think it came from operating the printer very hot for the metallic filament), the immediate problem was clear. The end of the Bowden tube was completely blocked with burned filament. Since I had already purchased a new one, I just had to cut it to length and install it. I was grateful to not have to remove the heat break (the metal connection between the heater block and the heat dissipation block), though I did clean out the inside of it with a pipe cleaner. (A real pipe cleaner, not the colored ones that kids use for crafts as that would have melted.)

Here it is with the new Bowden tube installed (this one is blue) and the nozzle back in place.

As I put it all back together, I also cleaned it up and tightened some screws that had become slightly loosened.

Better Than Ever!

Here it is printing some heart trains from our Valentine Ticket to Ride set. They came out beautifully and the printer is working better than ever! I love our new Capricorn Bowden tube! My research showed it was the best brand on the market, and I have to agree.

Valentine Earrings

With that major problem out of the way, we could move ahead with our releases for the week, starting with some Valentine earrings! Our first jewelry offering looks stunning! They come in two styles:

Double Heart

and Cascade Heart.

There are six unique pairs in each style, including several featuring our new metallic filament. Follow the links to our Etsy shop to see them all.

Catan Coasters – With Puns!

We also launched our first set of drink coasters.

They’re themed to match the five resources from Settlers of Catan and would be perfect to use when hosting game night!

Each hex-shaped coaster is colored to match a resource, has cute little icons around the edges, and features a related pun. The set also comes with a tray to store or display them!

Next Up – A Whole New Game!

The project we’re currently working on gets back to game pieces, but they’re for a game we haven’t worked on before. Whether or not you’re a fan of the game, we guarantee it’s one you’ve heard of! Come back in a week to see if we’ve launched it!

Spreading the Love

January 25, 2021 / / 1 Comment

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!

Canoes and Tents and Snakes, Oh My!

January 19, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Paddle Across the Countryside

As promised, we’ve expanded our new Camping theme in a couple of fun directions! First up was Ticket to Ride. We added a canoe as the main piece for this set, to replace the standard train cars. It also gets a tent scoring marker, and all looks wonderful on the game board!

Why Did it Have to be Snakes?!

Next we ported (or portaged!) the canoe over to join our other Catan pieces for the Seafarers expansion. We wanted a suitable pirate piece as a bonus item, and decided on a snake. Don’t let his cute look fool you – he’ll still bring your shipping route to a dead stop!

There’s Something in the Air

As we approach Valentine’s Day we thought a themed set would be fun, but the “something” in the air wasn’t love, it was water. At first we weren’t sure why several of our 3D prints were failing.

After attempting many unsuccessful remedies, we discovered that some of our spools of filament had absorbed too much moisture from the air, even though we always store them in ziplock bags with silica gel packets. They look and feel exactly the same, but they behave differently when heated and extruded in a 3D printer. Fortunately it’s not terribly difficult to dry them out. There are commercial filament dryers available, but instead we added a makeshift cardboard extender to our food dehydrator, and voila – dry filament!

We had to monitor the temperature carefully of course, because if it got too warm in there the filament strands would melt together and we’d have been left with an unusable mass of plastic.

Broken Bowden Tube

With the filament in good shape again, our printer decided to thwart us with a problem of its own. The Bowden tube is what guides the filament from the filament drive gear to the hot end where it gets extruded. Ours is the white tube in this picture. And one day in the middle of what would have been a successful print, it decided to break off inside the connector shown by the arrow. (We suspect it had endured some undue stresses over the past few months while correcting other problems.)

We were lucky that the break was so near the end, and the remaining tube was still long enough. I trimmed the end to even it off, and reinserted it. We were back in business, though we did order a new one to have on hand in case it happens again. If it breaks again, the current tube probably won’t be long enough to keep using it.

Feeling the Love!

Finally we were able to print enough of our new pieces to launch our Valentine-themed Catan set!

With that much love on the board, how could anyone steal your Longest Road?

More Valentines On the Way

In the coming week we plan to launch more Valentine-themed sets, and we’re also venturing into a whole new area that has nothing to do with board games. Intrigued? Come back next Monday to see what we mean!

Made to Order

January 12, 2021 / / 1 Comment

Custom Catan Game Pieces

We’re thrilled to launch our first set of game pieces inspired by a customer request!

The Inquiry

It started with an Etsy message I received in late November. A woman was designing a custom Catan board for her fiance for Christmas, and wondered if I could make some custom game pieces to accompany it, including a cabin city, a tent settlement, and a bear robber. I was thrilled at the prospect! Custom design work is exactly the direction I want to take 3D Orcs Printing Company!

The Dilemma

Unfortunately this came near the beginning of the interruption I commented on last week. I expressed eager interest in the project, but sadly had to tell her that while I loved the idea, I wouldn’t be able to deliver anything until the new year. I wished her luck finding something suitable in time for Christmas, and thought that would be the end of it.

Enthusiasm Sparks Hope

I was happily surprised when she wrote back saying she liked the prospect of working with me because I expressed more excitement about the project than anyone else. She indicated that a January delivery might be workable, and asked for more cost information and next steps. We exchanged a few more messages and agreed on an approach.

Initial Design

I found some time to work on the design and delivered a first draft at the end of November.

To follow the Parks/Camping theme she had initiated, I decided on a fallen log for the Catan road (shown with a model of the standard Catan road for comparison).

The settlement became a tent as requested.

And the city became a log cabin (this one also shows the tree from our popular Christmas set.

And her idea for a bear as the robber was perfect. Look out, he’s hungry!

When she saw these designs she was thrilled, saying, “They look amazing!!!” “Seems like we’re on the exact same page.” and “Thank you SO much for bringing this to life for me!!!” Clearly I was doing something right.

Working out the Kinks

Test prints led to a few changes. The “skin” of the log became thicker, the door inset on the tent became deeper, the cabin became shorter and got thinner roof panels, and the internal structure of the bear was beefed up to prevent his head from popping off, which, while rather amusing, would not make for an enjoyable gaming experience.

Once the models were finalized, several were printed to create the photos for the Etsy listing.

Launch!

Finally on January 7 everything was ready to go, and the Camping Themed Catan set launched!

We have high hopes for this set as we head towards camping season. Some people might find these pieces a fun diversion if covid keeps them homebound. Others, if their local travel restrictions and vaccination availability allow, might actually take these pieces along to play with on a camping trip. If you do that, we’d love to see photos!

Next Up

We’re currently working on several new items. We’re expanding the camping theme in new directions, we have some new holiday pieces coming, and we’ve just received some fun new filament to print with. Come back next Monday to see which of these makes it into our Etsy shop first!

Back on Track

January 4, 2021 / / 1 Comment

Life Happens

Here at 3D Orcs, we’ve been experiencing some major life changes (the good kind!) over the last several weeks. Because of that we put some of our work on hold, and sadly that included this blog. Things are settling down now though, and operations are once again going full steam ahead!

Etsy Sales

Even during the crunch we were able to keep our Etsy Shop open, and delighted many customers with our various sets of game pieces.

Most popular was Christmas Themed Catan,

with Standard Catan

and Christmas Themed Ticket to Ride following close behind.

We were thrilled to ship our game pieces not only all across America, but also to Canada, Ireland, England, and Germany!

Seafarers of Catan

In our last blog post, we hinted that we would be launching game pieces for a game expansion set. We did!

We now have standard pieces for Seafarers of Catan available

as well as a Christmas themed set.

The sleigh ships look amazing when played along with our Christmas pieces for the base game.

We’ve got plans for pieces for more game expansions as well as entirely different games. Please let us know if there’s a game you love that you think would be enhanced by custom designed game pieces and we’d be happy to add it to our list for consideration. You can leave a comment on this blog post, or email us: customer.service(at)3dorcs.com

Made to Order

During our slowdown we still undertook some design work, though we had less time for it than we’d have liked. We’re really excited about the results though! The designs need some more work before they’ll be available for sale, but we’ll be announcing them here over the next several weeks.

First up will be a set inspired by a customer request. Someone contacted us through our Etsy Shop and we’ve been working with her to bring her vision to reality. I can tell you now that it’s another themed set of Catan pieces, but you’ll need to come back next Monday to find out more!

A Ticket to Christmas

November 10, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Changing Plans

That saying about the best laid plans of mice and men apparently also applies to orcs. We had planned to release an exciting new product this past week, but despite our best efforts the results just weren’t good enough. We’ll keep working on it though, and we’ll save the details as a surprise when it’s ready to go.

A Different Product Instead

Because of that, we switched gears mid-week to something else we wanted to do soon anyway, and that turned out great! As a result, we were able to launch a new Christmas-themed set of game pieces this week after all!

Nearly Thwarted

But even with a great design, we needed to produce some prototypes before we could list it on Etsy. And that was nearly thwarted when a mishap caused a collision between an orc and the printer. It turns out orcs are exactly as graceful as one might expect. The wheels allowing smooth movement of the extruder along the X axis were badly damaged … sorry, I don’t mean to get too technical. In orcish terms, “Printer broke. It no work.”

But we were undaunted! Well, ok, we were actually pretty daunted for a while there. But as is becoming common with this nifty device, a generous dose of blood, sweat, and tears (which are as common in our studio as at an orc family gathering) resulted in a working printer, and an increased understanding of its amazing technology. Plus, we learned a new adjustment that makes the leveling process much more precise. Yay!

These are the wheels that were damaged. Unfortunately we didn’t snap a pic until after they were fixed.

Christmas-Themed Ticket to Ride

With things up and running again we were able launch our new game pieces!

The sleighs look really great on the board! So do the Christmas gift scoring markers (you may recognize them from our Christmas Catan set, where they are featured as settlements).

And because Ticket to Ride needs a lot of trains, you get a lot of game pieces when you buy this set! Just as in the original game, we provide 48 sleighs instead of the 45 actually needed to play, so you have a few extras in case some get lost.

Expansions

Do you like to play with game expansion sets? We do! And so this week we plan to release some new game pieces to support one of our favorites! Come back next Monday to see what we’ve developed.

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