Tag: 3d printing

Posted on in Uncategorized

Where things are at

Hi everyone, I wanted to give you an update on our current progress.

I’m getting really close to having a full stock of every wooden and brown piece, as well as the figures. However, these tend to sell out quickly. So, I’m often finding myself creating more Rangers and quadrupeds to keep up. Despite the challenge, I’m making steady progress towards maintaining at least one of each item in stock. I’ve spent a significant amount of time organizing and producing the individual pieces from the Armature Lab collection, so I believe I’ll soon have two of each assembled figure available.

There have been a few time-consuming custom orders through Etsy that have been both enjoyable and distracting. On the positive side, these orders inspired me to create new part designs which I’ll be listing in the storefront soon. In fact, I’ve just introduced a new paw design featuring visible claws (paws unsheathed). You can see a demonstration in this clip:

As I work towards having at least two of every wooden and brown plastic item in stock, I’m planning to focus on ivory and white pieces next. These items have been out of stock for quite some time, along with the figures themselves which haven’t been available for years—something I truly miss.

In a fun twist, I’ve acquired a new printer, making it a total of 14 in operation now. This new addition will be dedicated solely to producing plastic parts, helping to alleviate the bottleneck I’ve experienced with the ABS printers. While I’d prefer to transition to injection molding, the cost of machining for a single mold is currently beyond my financial reach. Multiple printers are a more feasible option at this point.

Nonetheless, my optimism remains high. I’ve been exploring ways to channel my skills into other areas for potential passive income. As many of you know, I have a passion for music and storytelling. In that vein, I’ll be launching my own online storytelling platform. I’ve already begun sharing original dark fairy tales I’ve created (reminiscent of the Brothers Grimm), on my YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@paulstreehousepublishing

I’m excited to expand into other genres, including fantasy and romance. If you’re interested, consider subscribing to stay updated on this new venture. Though it might take some time to monetize this endeavor, every journey starts with a first step.

Posted on in Uncategorized

Dang!

Amidst the symphony of our bustling 3D printers, I curiously singled out one and peeked into its performance stats. Now, keep in mind these stats do a vanishing act every time we play “musical motherboards” (which, believe it or not, has happened quite a few times for each of these quirky machines! 13 currently running, 2 others still needing repair).

Drumroll, please! Brace yourself for the mind-boggling fact that on this very run, this little guy has happily devoured a whopping 11 miles of filament! Our 3D printers are like unstoppable filament-hungry monsters, and I’m loving every bit of it!

Posted on in Uncategorized

Happy 4th of July!

For all those who celebrate, happy 4th of July and U.S. Independence Day! I’m reminded about how our liberty has lead to so much innovation and how many of these inventions brought the entire world closer together. As an immigrant, myself, I owe a debt of gratitude to this nation for opening its arms to me and providing the opportunities to live a life as a professional artist and inventor.

And hey, check out how even one simple guy like me can make history here in this country:

Posted on in Uncategorized

Good news! Thank God for Competition!

Welp! I have GREAT news to report with regard to my sobering news post (about our wood-composite supplier going out of business).

First of all, after scrambling online I got my hands on ten kilos of stock from the old supplier which are still in the process of being used up and will last us a fair amount of time longer.

Secondly, amidst the panic, I found a completely different company that makes an almost identical material. In fact, part of me wonders if they might actually be the same and perhaps both companies are just sourcing it from the same place and just slapping on their own logo on it (Grrr!)….

check out this photo showing the difference:

 

It’s hard to see in the photo but there is a slight (really slight) color difference. The new version is slightly less vibrant in color. Just a tad grayer.  I noticed the biggest difference, however, when burning the material and smelling the fume.  The new one smells more woody, which is a plus in my opinion 🙂

 

Ok, thirdly, this whole ordeal got me thinking, that maybe I should try to find the source of all this, and this got me looking at makers of the raw material but all roads seem to lead me to China. So I’m exploring that avenue as well right now. The last thing I need is to go through something like this again and so finding a reliable supplier is going to be pivotal moving forward. The US government (federal and state) seem to be doing everything they can to destroy the economy and local manufacturing.

I’ve been able to solve this issue for most other things with the figures (springs, adapters, screws, etc). Magnets are still high risk but our US supplier hasn’t shown any signs of instability so far.

Also, I’ve been doing some tests with the new injection molded clavicles and it’s a thing of beauty.  Finally perfectly rounded/circular hinges:

 

So all in all, this is all positive news.

thank you all for hanging in there and supporting this venture 🙂  I’m going to keep fighting the good fight and keep swimming upstream this torrential river of government bent set on destroying small business.

best wishes

Paul

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on in Uncategorized

A10-Ballerina Update

Production underway

Hello A10-Ballerina supporters!

I’m happy to report production is underway and looking lovely. Here are some pictures featuring one of the ballerina variant torsos and a number of hand and foot variants already completed.

Once I have photos and video of the two completed ballerina age groups I’ll be sending everyone  a survey so you can descide which of the two you prefer to receive and where we should ship them.

There have been a number of challenges I’ve had to overcome to get to where things are today. The injection molding of course was the largest hurdle but thankfully that has stabilized.  Resin was another challenge to be able to produce brown pieces instead of the black ones you saw in the earlier injection molding examples.

Unfortunately I’m dealing with a new challenge this month which is our supplier is out of stock of the material we need to produce the brown plastic components and assures us they will have new inventory some time in August.    I’ve run completely dry of the material myself with all the experiments and trials I’ve been running over the last couple months and so until I can get a new delivery there are a number of components I simply won’t be able to manufacture.

What this means is that delivery of  your ballerinas may be delayed by one month (September instead of August).

I’m keeping an eye on it though and will be ordering resin as soon as it’s available again.  For now I’m focusing primarily on all the wooden components and will work on getting those out of the way.

thank you all for your patience and for your support of this project.

I’m thrilled with how things are turning out.

best wishes

Paul

Posted on in Uncategorized

Armature Ten Update

Hello A10-Ballerina supporters!

Ok so there is a lot to update you on but here’s a teaser to hold you over a little longer.

This image below shows an overview of what’s been going on design-wise with the project.

On  the far right are the early models/prototypes featured in the  campaign video

Then to the left are the two variants I’ve been designing through the aid of 3d scanning.  You’ll get to pick one or the other when I send the surveys out.

One of them my daughter and the other a professional model.  Both are 1/6 scale but the woman is meant to be short and petite for her age so that the figure is still only about 8-9 inches tall.

I’ll be talking about this and more, including what I’ve learned with injection molding and getting brown resin to work in the later update.

Production has begun for all the pieces that are injection molded (pictures to come on that as well).

But now need to finish designing the 3d printed components that will be made with the wood composite material and then begin production on those.

I’m still hoping to have everything completed by the end of August as originally promised.  Thank you all for your patience.

I’ve been collecting footage and images of the process and I’m still hoping to edit it all into a nice video for the next update.

Thanks again everyone 🙂

 

 

Posted on in Uncategorized

Evolutionary step for Ranger

Very happy to announce this cool little bit of improvement being made on Ranger. See that little shiny dot on the ball joint?  That’s the end of a half inch brass rod. It extends through the ball joint into the leg.  It essentially renders the joint really strong.  Even without this the joint was already pretty strong but every so often they’d break on some customers, prompting us to send out replacements parts every so often.

The incidences of this were incredibly rare, however.  What has really been the problem is the struggle to make the femurs have good cosmetic appeal because with 3D printing there’s a bit of a balancing act that needs to take place between cosmetic quality and strength.  Reason being, that if you want a part to be strong you need to print it solid. And on top of that you need to overheat the material AND over extrude it so that the bond between the layers is VERY strong.   All these things combined lead to poorer cosmetic results.  With this little improvement which only adds about 5 minutes of production time, it will allow me to print with settings that favor cosmetic quality while at the same time render a part that is even stronger than it was before.

It’s stuff like this that makes me wish I had a time machine so I could travel to the past and whisper everything I’ve learned in my ears.

Side note: What triggered this idea was knowing that A10’s Ballerina was likely going to be suffering from this problem even moreso than Ranger. When this came up as a solution, I immediately started trying it on Ranger and it works beautifully.  Recycled a bunch of femurs just now and making all Rangers built starting today with this new approach.

www.armaturenine.com

 

Posted on in Uncategorized

Big step forward

Taking a big “step forward” in this ongoing evolutionary saga couldn’t be more literal than it is is today.

Because as of today all of our 1:6 products will have injection molded KNEES!! Which means you can also buy the knees all on their own here:

https://armaturenine.com/create_onesix.html  Just $4 for all four parts and all eight screws and fasteners (notice the special coupon code at the very top for those just buying pieces and not entire armatures).

So to be clear, for those who have placed orders that haven’t shipped yet, rest assured yours will come included with these knees and you’ll be getting  a $10 refund to reflect the new reduced pricing for all of our 1:6 products that use this part.  3D printing renders a huge failure rate during manufacturing and assembly (especially on this particular part, meaning I had to go through sometimes up to 6 pairs of knees before arriving at a pair that worked and or looked good).  With injection molding these knees now have a failure rate of near 0%.