Adventures in 3d Printing

I was lucky enough to receive from my lovely wife a Monoprice Mini Select v2 3d-printer for my birthday.  I remember very clearly sitting in the library in college around 1992 and seeing in a magazine an article about one of the first, if not the first, massive, multi-thousand dollar 3d printers and thinking, "In 20 years, I'll have one of these in my home."  Well, I was a little off on the timing but I couldn't be more pleased with this machine.  It just works and with a sale was under $200.

Now, it's not going to be producing any miniatures -- it has good resolution but the texture isn't there for miniature people.  But it works darned nicely for terrain!  Here's some wattle fencing I whipped up the other night.  Total design time -- 2 hours.  Time per print: 1 hour.

And yes, 3d printing still involves lots of experimentation and things do go wrong.  At the front is a perfect print and at the back is where the extruded plastic failed to adhere to the base and just made a plastic cobweb!