Into the desert

It's been a productive week on the 3d printing front with some designing of my own items mixed in with printing offerings from other people. Everything has been printed on these settings apart from the mini-dunes which used a 0.12 layer height.

Nozzle: 0.4mm
Layer Height: 0.20mm Standard pre-set
Material: Bambu Matt PLA
Supports: Auto Tree with outer Brim except buildings which had inner brim.

As we play more V for Victory I've been trying to work out the correct amount of terrain for the game and it became obvious that we really needed something to fill in the slot for low/soft cover that a hedge provides. A search around on the internet came up with a set of files that looked about right. I did need to resize the dunes down to something that looked more like minor drifts of sand rather than towering dunes but that was the work of a few moments in Bambu Lab Studio. I didn't have the ready for the last game we played but they are now ready for the next one.

Continuing with the VfV theme I also knocked up a card & token holder to go by the side of the table, this will save having piles of tokens next to the table. I used the negative space technique from the last blog to make this but having now made some progress with Fusion and the Inset function I would do it differently if it had to be done again.

With the new Halo: Flashpoint bundles on the way I also picked up a card tidier design to keep all the cards and tokens in one place. Mantic Games are selling a version of this but it's much cheaper to get a free design and print it off myself.

Lastly for this week I picked up Fusion 360 again and watched a tutorial in order to start making some progress on designing some buildings. I'm basing these around a 3" cube system so I can use the Deadzone rules as the basis for an infantry skirmish game. I had planned to dive straight into Stalingrad but will be making a diversion via Tobruk (with any luck). I want to create some template designs which can then be modified into individual buildings so after watching a video on the basics of Fusion 360 I was able to create a box and lid. This is a 3" * 6" and I will make up a 3*3 and 6*6 template as well before I start the detailing.

I found some reference photos of Tobruk on the Australian War Memorial site which looks like a real treasure trove of information for any conflict the Australian Army took part in.

Here's a cut down version of the design I printed out to check the parts all fit, there is some warping on the corners which I need to look into. Initial investigations suggest adding a Brim around the print will stop that.