Other What currently makes your life awesome?

[Desperately resisting making the obvious joke intensifies]

 

a mammoth 18 hour session in the craft room to get my latest work ready for the IPMS show this weekend. my spine feels like mush but got it done. didnt win anything in the contest much tothe disbelief of my team mates but i'll take their approval any day of the week.

be a long time before I paint that much white again.

 

Very tidy sir!

 

Normally i only wear nytrol glves with airbrushing but this is the only time ive ever worn them during asembly as well, White is so easy to sodding dirty its unreal.

 

Trying my hand at making custom dice with epoxy casting resin.

I have never touched this stuff before in my life. My mixing technique sucks. I had tons of air bubbles before I even poured the resin - the mould is in 2 pieces, so there’s nowhere for bubbles to escape as the resin heats up while it cures. The mould itself will never make usable dice because it leaves indentations on at least two of the dice, so even the perfect casting will have unbalanced dice. I used way too much dye and f’ed up the nozzle on the bottle, meaning I had to throw it out because it could no longer be sealed.

I knew all of this when I did the first test casting on Tuesday, and I completely expected to see complete garbage to come out of the mould. But on checking this morning, I got something that actually resembles dice. They’re still sh**, but I’m pretty damn pleased for a very first attempt at even a test casting.

Hard to get a decent photo because way too much dye made them quite dark.



Lessons learned:

• Learn to mix better
• Don’t shake the bloody resin bottles before mixing ‘cos it’ll be full of bloody bubbles before you even start
• Less dye next time
• Putting the mould in a plastic box to contain fumes sounds like a good idea, but is a pain in the arse if you have to use half a roll of gaffer tape to try and seal it
• Ventilation is a requirement, not a suggestion
• PPE is a requirement, not a suggestion
• A respirator is a requirement, not a suggestion

Seriously. I cannot emphasise PPE and ventilation enough, this stuff is nasty and it reeks. The resin I’m using is advertised as having zero VOCs and being non-toxic, but that only refers to the fully-cured end result. I couldn’t smell a thing through the respirator when I was working with the resin (those VOC filters were a good idea!) but it took hours to ventilate my office afterwards. Before I try this again I’m going to re-arrange in here so that the “working area” is near the window. And I need a box that’s at least “somewhat air-tight”, because I’m now out of gaffer tape…

 

I can vouch for the nastiness of pouring resin. I used to work at Games Workshop in Forgeworld back in the late 90s and whilst we didn't the casting ourselves, I had to unpack all the deliveries into the warehouse (well I say warehouse, it was more of a large broom cupboard...) and opening the delivery boxes was horrendous as the resin fumes had time to build up during transit as the resin was still doing its final curing during shipping. Was very much a doors open and mask on time.

A vacuum chamber would be a very good investment if you are planning on doing this long term, even just a small bucket style one with a small pump would work to get the air bubbles out of your mixed resin before pouring. Also watch out for humidity, water is lethal for good pours as it makes the resin foam. We had a guy I worked with who did resin stuff during his degree and for one project he had to make something that was a non-food item, but looked like it was made of food, but was resin, so he made a mould of a pair of pliers and added a drop or two of water into the resin so the finished item looked like it was made of cake due to the foaming.

 

It’s also useful for creating your own silicone moulds. Exactly the same reason: remove any air bubbles from the mixed material before it cures. A lot of dice-makers make their own masters and silicone moulds to avoid any potential copyright issues. This resin has a 30-40 minute working time once mixed; to be on the safe side, I cut that down to roughly 5-10 minutes to mix and 15-20 minutes to pour. More than enough time to pop it in a vacuum chamber.

I’ve also read that curing in a pressure pot is good for getting crystal clear results with resin. Apparently it compresses any remaining air bubbles to the point where they’re invisible.

Many times in the past I have: spent a (relative) ton of money on stuff and equipment for a hobby, got frustrated because I’m not instantly good at actually doing the thing, told myself I clearly need to practice more, promptly forgot about the whole endeavour, moved on to something else… and eventually threw away all the stuff after a few years of lying idle on a shelf. I now know this is 100% an ADHD thing, so I am making a concerted effort to not go mad with it right at the start .

For the time being I’m happy enough to concentrate on technique and practice. I know it’s gonna turn out crap to start with and that’s fine. As a wise man once said: “Dude, sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something”

 

Had another attempt at resin dice.

Still full of bubbles, but I expected that. Still amazed that I get anything even vaguely dice-shaped out of the mould!





Next time: warm the resin first, warm the mould, and use a heat gun on the mixed resin. I still do want a 1-piece mould - I've been keeping an eye on one on Etsy, but I've got a few questions for the seller first.

 

The bubbles inside look kinda cool (awesome blue too), the problem is that bubbles mean the chance of one being where you don't want it to form such as the corners and points.

With the VERY limited experience of pouring resin that I have, I always found that bubbles never floated out in time. Be careful of heating the resin as well as that will likely shorten the curing time but it should also thin the resin enough that more bubbles will float out.

Nice clarity though and the details are looking pretty sharp.

 

Vacuum chambers seem to be all the rage in the bubble-removal world.

And I also agree with @Almightyrastus : dat bloo, boi!

 

The problem was the “A” part - it was full of bubbles already before I even started mixing. Thought it probably not a good idea to heat the mixed resin with my other half's hairdryer , so I'll pick up a heat gun after payday.

Part of the reason I want a 1-piece mould. In both casting so far the bubbles have made their way to the top of the mould, but because it has a lid there's nowhere for bubbles to escape to.

It’ll also reduce the working time before it starts to cure. But tbh I had mixed and poured the resin within about 10 minutes last time, so that’s not gonna be a problem. Officially the curing time for this resin is 24-48hrs, so in both cases I've left it roughly 36 hours and it's been fine.

Yeah, it's really quite a nice colour actually, it'd look great when properly polished.

 

After a bit of trial and error getting GPU passthrough to work on my Proxmox server with the A750, and getting the Win 11 VM up and running properly (took a few attempts with errors found on start-up), I now have a fully working GPU accelerated Win 11 VM using 12 Epyc (7551p) cores, 16GB RAM, 2x 512GB NVME ZFS Mirror* and an Intel ARC A750....

*Hits around 3GB/s sequential read in AS SSD.

Typing this post right now on the VM...

Messing around with it right now and its performing in line with expectation given the underlying hardware. Not far shy of a Ryzen 1700x. No, not going to set any performance records but as a proof of concept (Remote based CAD VM's at work using up to date Epyc/Threadripper) it is working well.



(7980 points vs ~ 8800 on the 1700X)



Heaven @ 1080p Ultra, Extreme Tessellation, 8x MSAA - mid 50's FPS wise



Steam seems to be pinging one core hard on the Epyc with overall CPU usage in line with what I see on my desktop R5 7600.

Now I am got this one sorted it will be a case of getting the full Win Server DC setup so I can mimic what we use at work and bring the "CAD" VM into play.

Really chuffed with the results tbh.

 

Got issued a new ID number in finland. Name's still pending as that pile of papers is on the desk of a nameless, faceless, contactless gubmint lackey

 

Now to just decide what to play first.

Fancy a RDR2 rerun although there's no patch for PS5 but I recently picked up Burning Shores for HFW so that'll probably first play.

I'll be wanting to check out AC Valhalla's upgrade too.

Looks like some of the older titles also look better on the PS5 even back to Tomb Raider and the likes although I've not looked into it too much TBH.

Black controller is here, black Razer charging dock by Thursday, extra nvme waiting to go in - just the black covers to hunt down after then it'll be done.

 

Is that like The Fat Controller?

 

I got the Premium Sub with PS and i think they have a great catalog of games. Enjoy

 

I'd held off buying the insulated cover for the rabbit hutch thinking a combination of materials under the rain cover I could probably do a better job insulating it myself.

Now the weather is on the turn, I'm slightly paranoid it's not really good enough and I should have just got it. Just my luck and its out of stock, contacted the company direct to see if they had a rough ETA for new stock and they said they wouldn't be back in stock for a while as demand was high.

However, was pleasantly surprised to have them point me in the direction of another company with a similar product that was in stock! Ordered next day

 

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They're obviously thinking of the bunnies instead of their profits. Be sure to send some more business their way!

 

The exact same thing happened when we went to buy an insulated cover for our original hutch (the same make as yours) - they didn't have any in stock but told us where we could get a compatible product elsewhere. Good people.