A Vast Underestimation

11.30.2025

I previously mentioned that I started (3D) printing the Heroboard modular board for Heroquest. It's also been the project to help dial-in the new printer. As such, it's not 100% optimum printing and cranking through everything. Additionally, I don't really know what the minimum I need to print for the game is, as I've yet to actually play it. I do have a "this should cover everything" list to print, which is what I'm working off.

Within that list, I'm working in phases. The first are the under-tiles, the bases that magnetically lock everything together. Effectively, the foundation. After that are the side-walls for those tiles, to cosmetically cover the magnets that aren't being used. Next up is "hallway" floor tiles. These I'm printing as individual floor tiles as the rooms are pre-joined with however many spaces a room takes up. These phases are done! I've got stacks with 502 under-tiles, 103 side-walls to cover the exterior of those under-tiles, and 168 hallway floor tiles. This took the better part of 2 months, to include bad prints as I needed some settings tweak, usually due to garage temperature and/or humidity.

Remaining are 22 room floor tiles, pre-configured based on the original game board. All of this will need walls and doors/doorways, which make up the next two phases. Here is where it makes a difference in not knowing exactly what I'll need, but instead making sure I have a worse-case usage covered. With my current high-quality print settings that use a 0.2mm nozzle, to print the remaining floors, doors, and walls will take just under 94 days if the printer runs 24/7 with no hiccups.

That's a lot of printing. Realistically, that's closer to 6 months than 3. Plus, there's other things I want to print & play around with.

While painting the Heroquest minis was my 2025 project, I thought that was originally going to include printing out the board, too. Now, at the end of November, I think I will claim my 2026 hobby project to be having the board ready for Xmas 2026. There will likely be uninteresting pics along the journey just because pics make these posts more interesting.

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I'm Alive Update: Nov 2025

11.12.2025

2 months ago I posted about finishing painting the Heroquest core set. You think in 2 months I'd have something else to post about. Well, it seems I vastly underestimated the scope of the next thing I would work on.

I mentioned Jer getting a Bambu printer and alluding to a printing project for dungeon tiles. Now I have a Bambu printer and will allude to a printing project for dungeon tiles.

I succumbed to peer pressure from Jer and Keith and (re)joined their cult of FDM printing as the Bambu A1 prints really good quality and, most importantly, is easy to setup and print each job. One of the things I've had to get past since my original foray into FDM printing is that it's ok to waste filament. Part of the aforementioned ease of the Bambu is self-cleaning and calibration available before each print job. Add in how easy it is to switch hotends, such as the fine resolution 0.2mm, and printing is easy! Dialing in those fine print details is a little more work, mainly because of how easy it is to set up those print jobs and each little tweak might make a difference I pretend I can see.

The big issue I ran into after paying attention to the first couple of batches of prints was that the corners of my prints were warping upward. Searches told me this could be either too hot (bed) temps, too cold temps, or other stuff I chose to ignore. My fix went the direction of a colder bed, lowering the hotend temp after the first few layers, and adding brims. This seemed to work fine! Until the outdoor/garage temp dipped below 60, them some random prints would either start spaghetti printing at some later point, or not adhere to the plate. This seemed to be an obvious "not hot enough" problem, so I returned to hotter temps and kept the brim. 3 days of this and things are printing ok when the garage temp drops to 47 °

Pics of random printed pieces isn't much too look at. Over the last 2 months I've printed some Sci Fi shuttle parts - about 4 times between scaling issues and refining settings. The dungeon is from Heroboard, using the larger 123% scale (larger than they recommend) and lots and lots of magnets. I've just started printing hallway floor tiles, which at the resolution and rate will take minimum of a week if the printer ran constantly. After that are room tiles (11 days minimum) and walls/doors (don't know). While my 2025 hobby goal was to paint the Heroquest minis, I secretly wanted to have the dungeon printed and together too. That latter ain't going to happen.

I've got another batch of Cyberpunk minis primed. Soon I'll have some pics of those trickling onto the site.

Permalink 3D Printer HeroQuest rambling

HeroQuest - Core Set Good Guys

09.16.2025

The wrap up to this year's painting goal of finishing the Hero Quest core set can now be checked off. The 4 good guys and evil dungeon master stand-in are now painted. As an extra challenge, I tried to stick close to the card are for each one. I think all of these qualify for a decent tabletop quality paint job. Zoom in a little and you can tell where there's still work that needs to be done better.

With that, the overall Hero Quest project isn't complete. Magnetically linked 3D printed dungeon tiles are still on the to-do list. Will they get to-done by the end of the year? Dunno. I've been playing with some new 3D printing - BambuLab A1 FDM printer, even though I've got 2 resin printers (still in their boxes) that have been sitting around for up to a couple of years. Originally the dungeon tiles were intended to pawn off on Jer and his fresh Bambu printer. Should I join in on the printing there?

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HeroQuest - Core Set Bad Guys

08.24.2025

My project for this year is to paint the HeroQuest core set. Along with that is working with Jerry on 3D printing the board, but that's a bullet for another time. The interesting part of this project is that I have no idea how HeroQuest plays. I just like the idea of a boardgame from the 80s (barely), that I know I would have loved back then, being re-released 30 years later. I like the idea of getting together with Jer and Keith for a good old fashioned game night and having upgraded and pimped out pieces. Maybe it'll happen?

For the last couple of months I've been working on the bad guys from the core set, using the character cards as the template for how to paint the minis. Sometimes I've veered a little far from the card art - see the Orcs, mainly - but I also have to stick to paint approaches that work for me.

After these, there are 5 more mini figures to paint. 4 heroes and what I think is the main bad guy, which I can't find an image/painting reference for. I guess I'll need to Google that later. The core set also has dungeon furniture and whatnot, which is included in my "paint the core set" memo. 3/4 through the year - I should be able to finish this.

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Not Yet A Moonbus

08.15.2025

For a while now, I've been working on a Moonbus model from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's somewhere between 1/50 and 1/55 scale depending on where you read the details, and that's a close enough match to 28/32mm scale games to work. As my sci-fi base has had a bit of a retro theme, the 2001 future as seen from a 1968 movie kind of fits in. It was back during my trip to Georgia and the Hobby Town USA of Kennessaw back in either 2018 or 2023. It is indeed sad that I don't know how long the model has been sitting on a shelf. I think 2018, because along the way an Amazon sale came along where I purchased 2 more.

The reason I purchased 2 more - after trying to glue together a couple of models, it's somehow much more difficult to get pieces to line up now vs when I was 12! I'm accepting that the first time I glue together any model I'm going to screw it up. Thus, I decided Moonbus #1 would be the practice, make mistakes Moonbus. And I was right! I was focused on sub-assemblies and how to optimally paint some parts before gluing things in place, and then another round of painting with masking, etc. I was focused so much so that a key interior part(s) were not glued in before the out part that locks them into place was glued in. But this was practice, and that's ok. I continued on and by the end noticed some gaps that were going to need A LOT of gap filler to correct.

Lessons learned, and on to Moonbus #2 where I remembered that I needed to insert inner walls first, and not leave a big gap on the other part. The gap was on the main outer walls, and there's no good "clamping" point because of the angles, but I did my best. To counter this, when I glued on the front cockpit I managed to not set it flush/straight. Those side outer walls I was so focused on not having a gap - now where the cockpit to join flush I instead and a huge, measurable gap on one side and an overlap on the other. Between sanding options and actually going forward with using some styrene strips to fill the counter gap, I gave up and admitted it was beyond my current skills. Well, on to Moonbus #3 that I happened to have.

For #3, I repeated my corrections and tried to do better. There were still some wall gaps, but I can backfill those with putty filler. Somehow that damn canopy will not go on flush - curves and edges just aren't cooperating. Things are together, but it still feels hacked together. Maybe I need Moonbus 4. And 5?

As it is, I'm at the "I need to practice painting" stage, and I have plenty to practice on. The truth is, after fighting this model for over a month, I need to take a break. Now I have the hobby table cleaned off and ready for a weekend of a return to painting HeroQuest minis. Hopefully I won't get overly frustrated with that...

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