Just a 'Hi' as I'm new here. Also a comment about multi-colour printing.

Hi there. Just joined.

Finally got my Ender-3 Pro to print without problems of adhesion, nozzle height, bed leveling and all the rest of the hoops you need to jump through.

On the basis of 'Run before you walk, fly before you run' I'm experimenting with multi-colour pritning with a single nozzle. Quite a few YouTube vids on the subject but they all chose the simplest prints.

Some things I have already worked out:
You need a single-layer thin 'register' box around each colour to make sure that Cura accurately places each file in exactly the right position as different colours will have different boundaries and they won't line up.
There's a limit to how small you can make any extrusion. I'm trying to get lines below 0.2mm wide with a 0.4mm nozzle so that may be the limit.
The YouTube videos all show the print face-down on the bed. Not ideal.
Loads of filaments are too transparent. At least two layers of 0.2mm needed for proper colour rendition.

I'd be really interested in anybody else playing in this particular sand--box. Maybe we can 'paint' pictures?

Best,

Chris

talk to autowiz :-)

What are you using for multicolour: prusa mumu, mosaic palette - or something else ?

Thanks for the response.

Um. None of those! :)

I think I may be reinventing the wheel but it's a good learning curve.

Who is Autowiz? I suspect I need all the help I can get but now up to #4 in my sequence of trial prints. I've managed to get hair-thin lines even with a 0.4 nozzle. A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words so I hope to have something to show for my efforts maybe tomorrow.

Although there are loads of stl files on Thingiverse for 'The Royal Game of Ur' none are coloured like the original in the British Museum. That's my goal! As I said, 'fly before you learn to run'! :)

Chris

you do know you can just change to a smaller nozzle ?

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Originally Posted by curious aardvark

you do know you can just change to a smaller nozzle ?

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Yep, but I think that's cheating. :)

Anyway, here's the latest effort. (Hope the link works.)

Lines slightly wider, colours a bit less saturated. And out of focus, but you can't have everything!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vlque1tgd0o8v01/Ur_Left-half.jpg?dl=0

so how are you doing the multi colour ?

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Originally Posted by curious aardvark

so how are you doing the multi colour ?

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Short answer:
Separate stl files for each colour and leave the print on the bed between colour runs.
In that example each colour is just one 0,2 mm layer each and laid one after the other. 0.3 mm Z-hop-on-retraction turned on to hop over layers which are already there.
The order is important as I rely on the 'squish' to create really thin gaps for subsequent colours, although not in that example.

I would like to make each colour two layers thick to improve saturation but that causes adhesion problems. I can get round some of that by making sure that each colour after the first is laid adjacent to an existing layer but then my very thin lines are screwed. I'm working on it....
Final layer is an 0.8 mm white laid on 0.2 mm over the whole thing as the red and green are slightly translucent.
That gives me a 1 mm 'biscuit' which could be expoxied onto say a box. (Haven't tried that yet but it may be a fun way to go.)

If anybody wants to play I'd be happy to pop the eight stl files into my DropBox. That'd be cool as there are certainly some tricks I haven't come up with and I'm really very much a newbie at this stuff.

Software used so far. Just Tinkercad and Cura. Being a real cheapskate I only use free stuff! :)

wow - that's pretty impressive.
I don't have that kind of patience :-)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...Game_of_Ur.jpg

I'd have been inclined to make a basic frame (looking at it, probably wood or lasercut acrylic - although it would 3dprint easily enough ), print the board on thin card normally, with ink, laminate it and then glue the laminated and trimmed board onto the frame :-)

But your way is way more complicated and nerdy :-)
Also very impressive !

Not a game I've ever heard of, going to have to find out the rules now.

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Originally Posted by curious aardvark

But your way is way more complicated and nerdy :-)

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Yep, I'm very much a nerd! :) But then, I LIKE the fiddle-faddle of trying to coax this bit of Chinese kit to impress me!

I suppose one could grab a bit of wood, carve it into shape and then paint it up to look like King Tut's game-board. But then I'd have to post in a totally different forum!

BTW. There's a bit of an argument over the rules as, after all, the game is 5,000 yeras old. I quite like the Brit Museum's rules as even I can follow them. I'll find you a link to a man who has proved that Darwin was right, "All evolution results in erudite b*gg*rs with enormous beards, just like me." Mind you, anyone who can read Babylonian cuniform and translate it is allowed to look distinctly weird. :)
Long version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=WZskjLq040I
Shorter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHjznvH54Cw

Tomorrow I'll upload the Tinkercad file which has all the various stl files embedded in it for others to play. Very much a WIP as I need to design the counters and dice yet. Finkle says that the dice are tetrahedrons but that's a real pain. Luckily there are examples which use sticks blackened on one side as dice which is a million times easier for me. May be the way to go?

Best,

Chris

OK. 13Mb stl file with job as it is currently.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yndin6qwcb...r_WIP.stl?dl=0

If anybody does decide to give it a whirl I'd be very grateful for comments and ideas on where to go with this.

Some notes:
Slicer settings. 0.2mm nozzle height and standard O.4 mm nozzle. As I said, Z-hop enabled; I've set it to 0.2 for these thicknesses, it'll need to be higher if we can get the two-layer version working.
I slice with a skirt to help purge the previous colour filament. Works well for all colours except the blue that I use which seems to need much more purging so the gold that follows isn't contaminated.

Strange layout of the individual stl files is because I find that the file selection on the Ender is a real pain when there's more than a couple of files to choose from. So I Have A and B directories on the TF card with 1, 2, 3 and 4 sub-directories to hold the gcode files.

My order of printing. Black, White, Green, Brown, Red, Blue and Gold. Then the final white 'cover' print.
Don't forget to peel off the purge-line, skirt and 'register box' between each colour.
I don't have much of a stringing problem but I do use a soft brush after the first black print to make sure that the following white print is nice and clear.

Enjoy,

Chris

what's hard about a tetrahedron ?

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Originally Posted by curious aardvark

what's hard about a tetrahedron ?

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Werl.... Tinkercad has one but it's oriented in a strange way so I'd probably find it easier to recreate from scratch. But the biggest problem will be to colour two of the vertexes differently from the other two. Tingiverse has an Ur game with tetrahedron dice but they just have recessed dimples for the coloured tips. As you know I'm trying to avoid using acrylic paint to get round problems with colouring these things so, although I could nick those dice, they're not going to cut the mustard for me. Also, if you watched the longer video i linked to earlier, the tetrahedral dice are a pain to pick up off the board; sticks would be easier to play with I think.

I think the idea of using sticks blackened on one side will do the business and are actually found with some Ur sets so are not too far from the original design.

The playing pieces are yet another little conundrum. I'd like them decorated top and bottom; maybe a black set and a white set, each decorated with inset gold dots. I reckon we're talking about five or six stl files but that's something for me to look forward to! :)

Best,

Chris

well depending on how youy want to do it.
make a solid tetrahedron, with recessed panes, then print 3 coloured triangles and glue them in.

The base tetrehedron colour would be the colour of the bottom face.
Otherwise you have some fairly dodgy bridging on the base - although it does depend how large the 'dice' are.

I'm shocked you'd wimp out on something like the dice :-)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by curious aardvark

well depending on how youy want to do it.
make a solid tetrahedron, with recessed panes, then print 4 coloured triangles and glue them in.

The base tetrehedron colour would be the colour of the bottom face.
Otherwise you have some fairly dodgy bridging - although it does depend how large the 'dice' are.

I'm shocked you'd wimp out on something like the dice :-)

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Me! Wimp out! Wash your mouth out with soap! :)

I'm tempted by your idea of gluing 'biscuits' into the sides but that feels a bit like a cop-out. I can use the now well tried business of laying multiple layers to create a solid coloured die but, because the tips would be maybe ten layers deep, that's pushing twenty gcode files. Currently I'm working on the stick dice just to get a playable game up and running. Possibly #2 will have the tetrahedral dice but the difficulty involved with handling that shape will still be there. As they say here in Portugal, vamos ver.

The playing counters are coming along nicely. The white ones are no trouble at all but the current black ones will need a white infill to get round the translucency of my white filament. I'm toying with the idea of ordering one of those packs of filament samples for 3d pens just to get a whole range of colours to try out. A typical colour layer needs just 10 cm of filament off a i kg reel and having loads of colours may be fun anyway. The snag, of course, is that I have to order from Amazon, (very few 3d printer suppliers out here in the sticks), and Amazon takes over a month to deliver 'non-essential' supplies. Maybe this project will have to go on the back-burner for a while.

But I'll press on with the stick dice and post sample stl files as they get developed. There's a tiny adjustment needed to the interlock on the right-hand set I linked to. Nothing major but I'd like to get a good fit there before moving on to the box that will eventually form the base of the board.

Anyway, having loads of fun here. I'll be back with more news if/when the project progresses.

Best,

Chris

Hello to you too!

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Originally Posted by EvaaWilli

Hello to you too!

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Hi there!! :some sort of wavy hand smiley goes in here but I have no idea how to do that.:

Have you tried printing any of that Ur stuff yet? I hope, later this evening. to upload the Ur_bits stl file to DropBox. That has the stick dice and the playing counters. It even has a tetrahedral die especially for a certain Curious Aardvark who practically challenged me to design one! That I haven't printed off as yet as I really wanted to get this lot into a playable game before venturing too far.

Let me know how/if you're getting on.

Best,

Chris

Hi there folks.

Here's the last bit of the UR game.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q7jlzl3eba..._bits.stl?dl=0

This has the counters and two versions for the dice.

Counters: Don't forget to make the Z-hop distance at least 4mm to clear the already-printed counters when you come to slice the top layer- Otherwise no real bother with these; maybe choose your most opaque filament for the dots.

Dice:
Tetrahedal ones. I can't find a way to print these at all. Using the two stl files I have included simply knocks the smaller 'pips' off because the nozzle is too blunt to lay the first layer abutting the existing layer. It would be possible to print by laying one layer at a time and changing colours as you go but that would a) need about thirty or forty separate stl files and b) would be both boring and very nerdy!
I've given you a set of four plain tetrahedra to print and then you can just paint the tips of two vertices a contrasting colour. But this, to my mind, is cheating! Any ideas how to print these pesky things?

'Sticks': These are what I will use. Easy to print and examples have been found from antiquity so we're OK on that front.

Another reason for not using the tetrahedral dice is that I plan to make a drawer in the base to hold the bits. The counters and flat dice will fit into a neat 10mm thick base but we'd need something about 40mm thick to take the tetrahedral dice. Ugly to my mind.

That's IT for this project folks. It's been a lot of fun and I really hope that someone will give these models a whirl and make improvements to the prints. Thanks for your time.

Chris.

Hmmm. What now? A brilliant blue butterfly box? Maybe a better dog-tag for Jack my mutt; the one he's wearing is brass and nasty! I'd quite like to explore the idea of using svg images so a photo of a blue butterfly may be the next project. After all, I now have four different shades of blue to play with! :)

Hi Chris,

Welcome to this forum and nice to meet you. i am here to gain knowledge about multicolor printing with the help of you.