The downside became, in trying to get it to work, I broke off a tooth of the escape wheel.

Even then (this was four… five? years ago) my thought was that it would be fun to fabricate it myself rather than getting in touch with the company who advertises being more than happy to replace a component (I haven’t even researched terms and conditions…)

I’ve thought of engaging one of several people I know who possess a 3D printer, but never considered enough to actually follow through.

Jump ahead to now. I have obtained a printer myself. Why not create my own? Here’s my first effort. I’ve still got a few iterations I want to try before I call it done.

Lessons learned

If you look closely, you’ll see that the wheel has a broken tooth, probably happened when i pressed the assembly together. I didn’t see the tooth until it was pressed together, so it’s a good thing I’m planning on further iterations.

I printed with such tight tolerances that I needed to press the assembly together. Even though I designed it to be more or less modular, I can’t easily disassemble it.

In my arrogance, i got a good bed level and a good test print early on, and the 3d gods laughed! I went directly into creating a support structure for the control cable that drags on the print bed. I felt it was poetic! Little did I know just how poetic the experience would be.

The quality of the final print was not super great. It took 10 hours of waiting to learn that the final result was spongy, and the layers de-laminated.

The bed wasn’t as level as I thought it was, and i ended up changing my process from inserting the paper and shifting, to requiring the paper be insert-able. This seems to have had the desired result.

The spongy aspect seems to be a result of temperature. I increased extruder temperature from 200C to 205C and turned off the fans, which which so far appears to have had the desired effect.

Edit 22MAR2022

The second attempt went much better after the previously specified adjustments.

Resource: thingiverse.com

Maker: ve6btc

Design: CR-10 V3 X Axis Cable Chain (Revised)

It’s a fun, yard game with fairly simple rules, and we decided I should make our own pieces, and play with my family when we get together for dinner next.

I purchased a router a while ago, and immediately started thinking it would be nice to have a router table… and here it is.

Because I haven’t shared the Reset yet… there’s the before and after of the clean up process… I’ll sweep the floor later.

I came across a video that detailed a 5000 year old board game that was claimed to inspire Backgammon, and decided I wanted to recreate my own version.

I originally tried to engrave the surface, but wasn’t happy with the outcome and ultimately scrapped the project.

The second effort, I used a wood burner and was much more happy with the result.

I started by modifying some D4 dice with pips on two corners, but the paint came off surprisingly fast, so I modified them to have more of the corner painted, and created these cups to reduce the handling of the players.