Building a computer... And you can too!

We've had some down time in our other gaming endeavors and Terraria just released a huge patch Lately when I run anything on my old alienware (2009) it sounds like it might die, and is pretty laggy.

I decided i needed a new computer and both BF and Brother told me I need to build it. I was on the edge of annoyed and flattered.. and maybe apprehensive. I just want it, I want it quickly, and I don't want to worry about the fact that I built it so it might be shitty.

Unfortunately the best advice was just "you can build a computer for half the price" and they know I love saving money. I don't really know a lot about parts. What parts do I want/need, which will be best for my computer usage? Reddit has an amazing community, a series of subreddits devoted to building your own computer and joining the PC MasterRace (vs mac, or gaming systems)

I personally perused the /BuildaPC for a while and then /BuildaPCForMe. This second community is convenient and the main basis for my computer build.

They have a template to fill out where you document what programs you use a lot, what games you play, any weird things like "I like having USB plugins on the front panel" or "I have a dvd drive I am going to add" or "I need convenient support for two monitors" (all things I listed) and you add a budget. Mine was $600 (I didn't *think* I needed the OS, I was going to use my copy of Windows 7, but I'll get to that) I also knew I had a little leeway in case I decided to upgrade here and there.

My original answer came in from /u/HAThating101

CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 1500X 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor	$188.88 @ OutletPC
Motherboard	MSI B350M GAMING PRO Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	$78.88 @ OutletPC
Memory	G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2800 Memory	$55.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Kingston SSDNow UV400 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$42.99 @ Amazon
Video Card	Gigabyte Radeon RX 570 4GB Gaming 4G Video Card	$168.99 @ SuperBiiz
Case	BitFenix Nova ATX Mid Tower Case	$26.99 @ NCIX US
Power Supply	EVGA 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	$20.98 @ Newegg
Wireless Network Adapter	TP-Link TL-WN781ND PCI-Express x1 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi Adapter	$12.89 @ OutletPC
Case Fan	Kingwin CFY-012LB 40.0 CFM 120mm Fan	$2.99 @ Amazon
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$609.58
	Mail-in rebates	-$10.00
	Total	$599.58

I made a couple changes - I bought my case from Amazon, it was $10 more expensive, but I saved $15 in shipping. Super Biz didn't have my video card, so I added it for an extra couple dollars from Newegg. (however, again I probably saved the shipping amount) I actually decided to go with an rx580 instead of the 570. it was $30 more and a higher processing power.

Anyway long story short, i bought those pieces and put them  together in the right order.

Short story long: wtf.


Heads up, AMD Processors don't support installing Windows 7.  It shuts down USB support when trying to install the OS. Drop $100 on Win 10, USB For days.

The best option was to get an adapter  Nope, wait.  Your keyboard will only work with the ps2 adapter if your keyboard originally was wired to connect by ps2. So unless your keyboard is already USB but came with a ps2 converter the adapter won't work!

The OTHER option was to get an old school ps2 keyboard for one use. Cool cool cool cool.  What do you mean amazon only has them for $75+?

So I ran my ass down to BestBuy and bought Windows 10.

I also ran into some issues with using the wrong screws, so my motherboard had too much give (like i guess it should have enough give so it doesn't snap, but not enough to ever wiggle or touch anything it shouldn't be touching)

So every time I did anything, like plug things in, my video card would turn off. I don't want to use the word short out, because that still scares me.

I took everything out and balanced out the screws. spent like a day installing drivers and thinking i got the most updated one.

I am pretty sure i'm all set.

The only thing messed up now is Terraria has a glitch in which my character freezes but the world around me keeps gong, and i can see everything going. ALL MY DRIVERS are updated.  Why!?!

We spent all the free time for a week or two playing Terraria. whenever the snow storm event (world storm event) if I am in the snow biome, my character just sits there. No one can hit me, I can't move.. for 15-20 minutes.

but it will unfreeze eventually. When I was hosting the server it sucked, because i couldn't just log out and come back, or else we lost any progress, and sometimes the loot, if we had recently put anything in inventory. So I would have to wait it out. When Brother started hosting, I could just alt-f4 and gtfo.

We finished all the bosses in Terraria and now I'm using the computer to update my character sheets and maybe start some campaign notes on my wannabe campaign.

Broken Token advertisement.

Good morning!

As you know, I love boardgaming. Modern boardgames come with tons of cards, dice, & carcboard, plastic, and wooden pieces. When I started collecting the "cool" thing to do, or really most popular thing, was to store all the components in baggies. This is well and good when you have one or two types of tokens. But the more games I get, the more complicated everything is, and there are often 15+ separate components. This means the time it takes to set up and put away is longer, and often kind of messy. Does my old organized soul some harm to see all those pieces scattered everywhere and getting dropped off the table!

There are people that post these amazing foamcore custom inserts, with separate compartments for everything. They are amazing, but foamcore is the devil, and I have no skill or patience for it at all.

Then a few years ago a company popped up called The Broken Token. I love them! They laser cut sheets of 1/8" baltic birch wood and acrylic. You  pop them out of the thin sheets and assemble the neatly designed insert that fits the box perfectly. Of course they have a limited amount of games they have designs for, but their library is expanding all the time - The first time I shopped there, they only had a handful of game box designed, and now they have boxes for over 70 unique games.

The first Broken Token insert I bought was for my Dominion collection. I got a hell of a deal on the base set and the first 8 expansions, plus all the promo cards that were available at the time. Using 9 separate boxes is crazy, and there werent a lot of one-box solutions, so I bought a wooden artist case from Hobby Lobby and the Broken Token dominion insert, then, for dramatic flair, I woodburned the logo for the game and designed my name in matching font. The bummer of this is that I had to print and cut out all those dang dividers, it took forever. At the time, and to this day, the Hobby Lobby/Broken Token combo is the best storage solution. And there still isnt a reasonable/affordable solution for the inserts. I also made one for Nameless Roommate #1., who actually still has his, but hasn't put his collection in the box yet.

There's a lot of room to rearrange things and set it up how you want, which has pros and cons. it leaves room for expansions (or did when I bought mine, but there have been two full expansions since then.) On the other hand, a couple things are kind of awkwardly placed in the box, like coins and place holders. 9/10.. I would still buy it again, I feel like there is a bit of room for improvement.

The second broken token I purchased was for Dead of Winter by Plaid Hat Games. It fits snuggly in the box and perfectly accommodates all the pieces with compartments large enough to get your fingers in and pick up pieces unlike some of the alternatives, like Plano storage units. It also is perfect for game play, because set up is just taking some trays out of the box and choosing which scenario to play, instead of opening 50 baggies and dumping pieces all over the table. Perfect, 10/10, would buy again.

I inherited my third insert when I bought an old friend's Android Netrunner collection. it suits its purpose.. Adequate. Also I wish there was a better solution for all the tokens that came with it.. I have a 3d printer solution in the queue for my printer, but I don't play very often, so it's low priority. Honestly, I would give it a 5/10 for personal preference. There is enough give in the box that it allows the cards to slip under the dividers when the box is in motion/on its side. I would buy this, but only if I had bought all the inserts for my other games first, this might be on my list for "completionist" reasons.

Then Plaid Hat Games announced a sequel to Dead of Winter: Dead of Winter: The Long Night and it had even more pieces than the original! I contemplated buying the original DoW insert, but put it off for a bit. That's when they announced the Long Night specific design - which was great because it had a bunch of different things that needed to be sorted 4 different types of character/monster standees and 5 or 6 extra item types. 8/10 - there are a couple issues with how the stand up figures fit into their designated areas. I had to keep the cardboard separate from the plastic stands to make the trays fit flat. Also, there are some modules and I feel that there a couple extra card slots would have been nice for storage.

The only downside is that they *are* made out of wood, so it adds some weight to the box. The flip of that is that is adds sturdiness to the box. The newest insert used some acrylic for card dividers, I am not sure if that changes the weight or not. I do, however, wonder if there is a future in 100% acrylic inserts. I know I am working on printing a passable substitute for Eldritch Horror (which they don't support yet.)

So I have 100+ games and 4 broken token inserts, and an ever growing wish list as they release new ones. They are pretty fairly priced, the pinserts are in the $20-$30 range. I just have a lot of games to Token, and sometimes that is something I would rather spend on a discounted game. I have a pretty good wishlist going, and maybe when I'm rich I will review the rest of them :)

Printer Scaping

So I started a print and noticed more rattling than normal (rattling is not normal, but I keep tools on the table so they jiggle and shake and clink.) I work from home for my 9-5 (or more like 2pm-11pm) and stop getting calls at 6pm, so I set my printer to print while I am working (it's in my general home office area.)

I started noticing the rattle and then noticed this screw poking out on the arm. Of course it is one of two screws holding the grooved belt in place - the one that allows the arm to move forward and back. Miraculously, there was no slippage on the print on that axis.

About half an hour later I hear another rattle/grindy sound and look at the print, a screw on the bed's belt has also come loose, but this time there was some definite slippage. I had to scrap the whole print and didn't have time to set up a new one, as I was actually working.

The moral of the story is to do bolt checks more often. The more printing you are doing, and especially high speed printing, the bits and bobs rattle loose. This print, I only lost 30-40 minutes, but I would have been mad if it had been a longer print. It was just an alternate train holder for Ticket To Ride, I have three of the other kind, so I just wanted to test it.

Here's a pic of the slippage. Kind of hard to tell with the black on black... but in the upper left corner, you can see the raft, and then the printed part starts. The shiny triangle on the left and the strings on the right are where the toothy belt failed for a bout 3/4 inch and the print shifted to the right.

TL;DR: PSA - Remember to just give a quick twist to your screws.

Rickuh-rickuh-RepRap

A successful print! this is a spool holder (Printrbot Simple Metal Spool Holder designed by in_the_garage on thingiverse) it has the printrbot logo printed in it, and it fits perfectly on top of my simple metal Printrbot.

This is a vast upgrade from the two tin cans I had my spool resting on before. Images later. Why is a spool necessary, you might ask? Well, if I take my roll of filament and place it on it's side, yes the printer will still pull it.. sometimes. However, it will get "tangled" usually just super tense and kinked up. This isn't great as it will affect the flow and can cause failed prints. I have found that if my printer has too much resistance from the feed it will just stop. if it keeps going with affected flow, there is a possibility that it will compromise your print.

 I tried standing the spool up on its own, but it would fall all over the place and cause the same problems as the above solution.

The two tin cans in a box was my "clever" poor people workaround. I had two recycled cookie tins full of pens. i put them in a box so that they would always be lined up and contained, and then put my spool on them.

It was a pretty good idea, and decreased my percentage of botched prints. But it didn't eliminate it, and I still ran into issues with weight and balance. Sometimes it would be too heavy, and it would strain a bit, towards the end of the roll it would be very light and the roll would jerk around and flip out of the container. This is both noisy and can have the same effect as just leaving it on its side, as sometimes it would do just that.

I knew I needed a good spool holder. I tried a one piece, solid in red ABS, and like all of my ABS I send through this printer, it was cracking and warping before the print was over. It held out for a couple prints, but the jiggling in combination with the weight caused it to snap. So I decided to print a sturdier, larger spool holder. It is pretty nice, and you can tell there is basically no resistance when it is printing.

When I get to the end of my current spool I will update on how it handles at the end when the spool is lighter.

Let it go. . Let it gooooo

Last night I printed a piece from the eldritch horror and it came out beautifully. I print using "rafts." Basically a raft will print out a couple layers of pla and the print the piece on top of that. The raft is supposed to peel away from the piece easily.

However, this is not usually how it happens. I end up pulling out the bladed tools and using too much force, slipping and cutting myself.  (No joke, I have many scars on my thumbs and pointer fingers from stabbing it with the blade items.) I have been playing around with the settings for my raft. In the program I use, I have it set to set down a wide base, do a quick layer to fill in some space, and then do one full, normal row of filament It is flexible, but strong, and doing it this way helps the bottom of the print look smooth... when it doesn't stick, that is.

Last night, however,  this piece peeled off almost perfectly. there was one snafu in the corner, but dispatched easily. The post got some attention on instagram, so there are other people out there who feel my pain.

In the picture to the right, all that gray junk in the upper right corner is from my chiseling hack job. I guess it is better to have less. the top is mostly missing layer or two.

Programmed to be Wild Part 1: Intro to Design

I often open up my programs and don't even think twice about how they help me make my printer work. The recreational 3d printing community is a cool crowd. They are really supportive, and like many in this new generation, they are all about open information. Hiding information behind paywalls is a thing of the past. The information is all out there for us to learn, you just have to know where to look, or how to look. In that spirit, there are many free or open source programs out on the web for the many stages of 3d printing. The main stages for me are design and printing.

For design, I usually use Google's Sketchup, because it is simple and best of all - they have a great free version. It's easy to teach yourself: there are all kinds of free resources out there - like Youtube... If you have any aptitude for software, it's remarkably intuitive. I use this to design or try to make edits to other people's designs. Most of my designs are very loose prototypes with the two neatest ones being a deck box for Magic: The gathering, and storage bins for Ticket to Ride, neither printed or tested yet.

For finding files to print that I don't have to design myself, there are a ton of links. The majority of my prints, so far, have come from makerbot's Thingiverse. I have only posted a couple pictures of prints - the polite etiquette is this: If you use a free file, upload a picture/rating/comments to let the maker and other users know how it worked out. The best thing is that sometimes the prints don't work right on certain machines, or some users don't know how to edit the files to work, so people with the skills will create "remixes" that will work as intended. I have used the remixes of a few files - the Voronoi elephant, for instance, originally had rounded feet and trunk, but the remixer flattened them so it will stand up properly - most important for printing.

Though a quick google search can tell you that there is no shortage of sites with free/open source .stl files (the files my printing software uses), I thought a quick round up of honorable mentions would be nice.
Pinshape has a lot of duplicate stuff that I have seen on Thingiverse.
My Mini Factory has a ton of cool fan art, jewelry, scans of sculptures from the real world. Categories such as Accessibility, Fan Art, Props and Cosplay, and Scan the World. I could definitely get lost looking at all the neat files they have. Not many Board game Organizers
YouMagine has some standard stl files, a few board game organizers - but you have to look for the right terms. Fashion, Toys, the standard 3d garb that on the big sites.
The Guys at 3d Printing For Beginners have compiled a pretty decent list of 3d model repositories, if you are looking for some good resources.

The Bronze Age - Product Review

I bought some antique bronze filament from blackmagic3d on Amazon.. originally I intended to print a bust of Teddy Roosevelt for my aunt. however my first attempt of printing another project (my cursed deck box) waste 30% of my .5kg roll.

Of course I had to try reprinting it today because I want a bronze/gold deck box! so along with the successful(!!!!) print and the lid for that box, I've used .4kg. I an not sure I'll have enough for Teddy.  I would like a matching life counter, so I guess I will see how much filament Teddy will take up and if it's less than 100g I'll move forward. or else I'll print the life counter.

Wouldn't that be so neat to have a life counter to match my deck box?

To the review!

When I opened it, I was a little underwhelmed, but I liked this filament the second it started printing. I really enjoyed watching layer upon layer going down. I was worried it would look bad or blotchy, but just like the PLA I used in the past, this has gone down even and beautifully. The low percentage of infill I used caused a cool shadowwy ghosting of the details on my deck box. I wish there was a way to melt down and recycle my unused of wasted plastic so I could make more prints. I would love to buy another roll and print stuff that should be gold/bronze!

I am not sure if it is this specific PLA or happenstance, but i had the cleanest separation of raft from object so far - I may have evened out my attack method on it, but it could also be the PLA itself.

I recommend giving it a try if you have $20 and 500g of prints that need to be bronze!

Thingamabobs? I got plenty! Tool Talk

Before I bought my first printer I asked the fine printer experts on /r/3dprinting what kind of tools were needed in the craft.

I collected a list of probably 50 items that I started looking into. I asked around, asked my dad about brands and what is a waste of money.. (for instance they have digital calipers on Amazon for as low as $8.50, but a decent tool usually runs for about $100. My dad happened to have an old set in his shop and gave it to me. Along with a power drill. . But that's another story. I will say that my tool investment went from about $50 on nail clippers, tweezers and a woodburner to probably $500 between Christmas and my birthday(March) that year.

I bought a bunch of tools that seemed affordable and relevant, and honestly I still haven't used some of them. A square tool, micrometer, Allen wrenches(most things that need them seem come with them so far), a dremel, gap measure feeler, soldering tools (however I do use a wood burning tool for art, so I didn't need to purchase that.

Your mileage may vary. I haven't tinkered a ton with upgrading or anything, and I'm sure once I start my own Reprap(lingo for home built 3d printer, usually made with bits and bobs, and printed parts) I will use more of them. I also have used the calipers mostly to design my own items.

They spend a lot of time in my old toolbox that I salvaged from my dads junk pile. That said here are the tools I use the most:

• Exacto knives
• Metal palette knives - I use them to slide between the bed and plastic layers and break stuff apart so they need to be solid.. I would try these I used the cheap ones meant for painting and they work but they break easily, I'll probably upgrade next time.
• Carving Knives - 3D tool set A - Basically exacto knives that are a bit stronger, and the set has straight, diagonal, curved and 45 degree angle blades for easily carving out pieces of the plastic.
• Sandpaper/polishing cloth to smooth things out
• Isopropyl alcohol to clean up  my printer bed
• Needle-nose pliers - to grip and pry things apart. also to hold things in place when I need a better grip than allowed with tweezers
• Painters tape/kapton tape - I stick this directly to my bed so the filament sticks better, and i dont scrape up my bed when prying the prints off. I also use glue on top of the tape for most prints.
• Disappearing purple glue sticks - spread out over tape on my bed to give the filament something to bond with.
• Scissors
• a digital food scale -to measure how much filament I've used
• tweezers
• nail clippers
• pencil/pen/sharpie
• Rag and Water for cleaning glue residue off of things
• Tacky glue for gluing snapped off pieces like on my voronoi elephant