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

Tag: tent

Canoes and Tents and Snakes, Oh My!

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

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!