Chronicling my adventures in 3D Printing, Dungeon Design, Miniature Painting, and being a Dungeon Master for 12-18 year-olds
Who knows how long I’ll keep this up, but I wanted to start documenting my mental and spiritual downfall into 3D printing, D&D, and working with teenagers. So, for starters, I’m a teen services librarian working for Chicago Public Library. I have three Master’s degrees: a B.A. in English from Kansas State, an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a MLIS from Dominican University. As you can see, not one of these degrees is in engineering or any kind of science, so I’m literally winging it with the computer and printer stuff.
Growing up, my brother and I would put our gaming computers together, so I am well aware of basic computer hardware and knowing the importance of what plugs into what. As technologically advanced as it sounds to say “yeah, I built my computers,” it is not hard. If you grew up in the 90s and remember plugging a game cartridge into the N64, then you can put a computer together. (Just don’t blow on the RAM. ) With the advent of Youtube and, hell, the internet in general, I find it easy to translate “I’m not tech savvy enough to do ____” as “I am too lazy to use Google.” (I can seriously write an entire book about how much I can’t stand tech fear/laziness.)
My first dip into the 3D printing world was forced upon me. The central administration of the Teen Services department sent out a bunch of new 3D printers to all of the smaller libraries with a grant-funded teen space. My library, a regional, got a Flashforge Finder, a cheap ~$230 Chinese brand 3D printer that comes pre-built in a fun, red, box-shape. This printer is a Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) printer, which means it prints like a glue-gun, depositing thin layers of melted plastic on top of each other to create an object.
Our library actually had a previous 3D printer collecting dust in the closet, an UPmini, but the plastic it used was ABS, same as LEGOs, which means it put off a toxic stench while printing and for that reason it was discontinued by the libraries. The Flashforge Finder, however, could print easily with PLA, a biodegradable and compost-able plastic made from corn and soy starch (and even real wood!). (I’ll write a follow up post on the differences between a lot of these plastics later.)
At first, I didn’t know what to do with the Flashforge when we got it. I had only brief experience with 3D printers before, and I was pretty sure it was going to end up as another massive paperweight in the office. It dawned on me, about a week after it arrived, that I could use it to print miniatures for our popular Dungeons and Dragons programming I ran twice a week at the library. Up until then, we played the game using a digital browser-based program, Roll20 (which I can also write a post about more later.) As cool as Roll20 was for visual representation of the game, we had a limited supply of laptops and they were slowly dying. Going miniature-based would be a great way to go if I could get it to work.
So, I took a crack at the printer. I failed repeatedly.
I fell in love.
Every damn print was a stringy, stupid mess. I fiddled and fiddled with settings, looked up all kinds of good and bad advice online, and printed tons of terrible and some okay prints. I could see pictures of other people’s prints that looked great, perfect even, and I wanted to know how they did it. What tricks did they pull?
You see, that’s where it begins. You realize “Oh, maybe it’s just THIS printer… I should buy another printer.” Or, the fun one: “I see what’s wrong with my printer… but I need to 3D print the part to fix it, which requires another printer!” And then, once you’ve got a good printer going: “It’s not printing fast enough, I need more machines to pump out more prints!”
My library now has three 3D printers and I own three of my own. It was inevitable.
So, to round off this introduction into my current addiction/obsession, if you’re thinking of dipping your toes into 3D printing, understand that you may find yourself going from one little printer on your desk to “I need to buy another table again to fit these three new printers.”
