MSRaynsford

When this 3D printer was new and dialled in (and I realise I haven't blogged about that yet), I received several requests from my war gaming friends to ask if I was able to produce miniatures. The process isn't new to me though and I know that 3D printers can really struggle to produce the same level of detail as the store bought models, the injection moulding process really does a good job to create super fine models. I dutifully downloaded and tried the heroforge sample models  anyway, cranking my printer up to 0.15mm resolution and I have to say I was still impressed with the result. There is a lot of support material generated with each print and all of this is very time consuming to remove, plus there are lots of delicate parts to be careful with while doing it. The print took about 6 hours and it probably took me 30 mins to get the tweezers in and remove all the supports. In doing so I snapped off the bottom of her torch and had to glue it back on. Otherwis...

Something that always stuck with me during my various business studies classes was this idea of 'mass customisation'. The juxtaposition of the two terms definitely stuck in my mind and I was reminded of it today while making the next batch of these spell slot trays . I don't mind which colour the wood gets stained, which font goes on the top or even what scale the trays are (because normal dice only come in a small range of sizes). I can make a quick adjustment to the design in under a minute, cut a tray out in similar time and each person gets something that is custom to them but still 'mass' produced by me. In general I have a bunch of escape room work completed which I'm keen to post up here (with obscure photos) I just need to get clearance first. Then I've got some ranges of boxes with artwork to share while I'm working on the next projects.

Another custom request for Caverna. The original game comes with lots of wooden tokens for carrots, wheat, wood and stone etc, but the food tokens are punched from cardboard. I was asked if it was possible to make a set of wooden food tokens to go along with all the other wooden tokens. I used a mixture of line artwork and engraving to produce this effect. This is definitely a nice project, because at just 16mm diameter I can make lots of these from my scrap materials.

That didn't take long, once I had listed the Water Expansion trays I was asked to also do the Mini Expansion trays . These expansion look like fun for the original game of Caverna, I may have to acquire a set even if it's just so that I can take photos of populated trays.

I've had the basic Caverna building trays up on my etsy store for a long time now and they sell relatively well. I had a custom request to make a matching tray for the water expansion . I drew the files 6 months ago and showed them to the customer who never responded so, having done all the work, I received no money for it and never actually cut a tray. I figured I should finally get this one listed on my etsy store too because if it's not up there then nobody will know to buy it.

I recently backed the Terraforming Mars Turmoil expansion on Kickstarter. I've had player mats for my own version of the game for quite some time but in todays update they showed us what the official version of the player mats would look like. I didn't want to wait so I made my own copy this evening.

My Caverna Gaming Trays sell moderately well on Etsy , it makes a big difference to the game being able to pull all the buildings out of the box without having to set them up every time. I hadn't considered the fact that the game would be available in other languages. As a custom request I produced a German set of trays that will now go on sale as a variation in the store.

Custom initials on Carcassonne backs I was asked a few weeks back if it was possible to put some custom initials onto the back of the Carcassonne tiles instead of the usual letter 'C'. Since the tile set redux  everything is layered up into engravings and line artwork so it was a moderately simple thing to do. First I had to remove the existing 'C' and fill in the engraving gaps so that I could produce a full tile with no letter. Now I'm able to produce any letter I want by subtracting new letters from that completed back. I'm fairly happy with the results and am going to offer them as an option in the web store . 

A lot of the time I just make what I'm asked to make without delving into the details. These gaming tokens follow along those lines (Although I have been promised the rules at some point). They're cut from 9mm poplar ply to make them nice and chunky and I even managed to find 18 different colours to try for these sample sets. Each game requires 4 sets of 12 so I ended up making 4.5 sets for sample.

With my Kickstarter campaign ready and waiting for approval from Kickstarter I can positively say that my new puzzles are going to launch any day now. With the puzzles so close I can also announce that there will be another set of four puzzles based on the Peano curve and variations of it known as the Wunderlich Curves.  Curves 2 and 3 are very standard puzzles compared to the original set of four, I simply found the repeating sections and subdivided the puzzle accordingly, it makes them just as tough as the originals to solve. The Peano curve and Wunderlich Curve 1 were quite a bit harder to create and I had to wait for inspiration to strike. The repeating section on those puzzles is obvious but it was hard to find 13 different ways to split the puzzle without making it too simple. I'm sure you'll appreciate the solutions I found and enjoy their fiendish new complexities. My extended family were subjected to timed testing a few weeks back and nearly all of them ga...

I made a second hive set  for a friend, this time I used Indian Rosewood dye  for the second colour. I like the colour in general and think it will make a great addition for my puzzles and other items. In this case though the colour is a bit too subtle (after sanding) and I would have liked something stronger. It's another nice set complete though and a gift for a friend.

I've been meaning to make a set of Hive Game Tiles for some time, it's quite simple to learn and it's very portable. I intend to introduce new people to the game too so I thought it would be quite useful to have a brief movement hint on the back of each tile too. These tiles were cut from 9mm Poplar ply, stained mahogany for the red tiles and then sanded a coated with some acrylic lacquer. The first red tile was sanded back a bit too hard but once I made all the tiles the same I quite like the look. The insects are engraved and then outlined, the text is just a low power cut using a Hershey font. ( svg here ) Each tile was sanded to within an inch of it's life using 800grit wet and dry paper, this makes some really fine sawdust that snuck into all the gaps of the tile. After becoming light headed from blowing the sawdust out of the gaps I realised that I now have an airbrush/compressor that can do that for me. I took a video of all the process too beca...

I finally dialled in my new laser cutter this evening, I had some minor issues with the bidirectional engraving lines not quite lining up. I also spent some time testing out speeds and powers to see exactly what it's capable of, now I just need to figure out how to take better pictures in the evening. The tile on the left was cut on the old laser cutter (100W glass, 600x900mm) and the tile on the right was cut on the new machine (30W metal, 300x500mm). Both tiles are actually very comparable, the 100W obviously makes deeper and darker lines. The engraving colours are close enough and with a little more effort could be identical. The 100W slightly breaks through the sheet on the corners where the head has to slow down to change directions. There are more cut marks on the underside but that's because the 100W honeycomb is filthy. Even with these two tiles being so comparable there is one hugely significant difference. The old laser cutter cut the tile in 2 mins 13...

This is a set of wooden templates and tokens for the game 'Grasslands' . The game itself looks like a lot of fun and I like the idea you can get started with any old die cast toys. I loved the new mad max film and this looks like it fits right into that genre.

I had a request about 3 months ago for a set of tak . The design isn't very complicated so when I actually remember and finally got round to making it this evening I thought I could at least make it look like it took a while to build. I rotated the grain for each tile on the board so it has a slightly different shade for odd/even tiles. The diamonds were cut separately, painted and then inserted on the diagonal. The tak stones themselves were made from 9mm ply which allows them to stand up and a quick capstone was made by stacking 6mm ply. ( svg here )

I made a mistake while cutting the last set of Carcassonne tiles , I had a magnet too close to the tiles and it didn't cut cleanly. Unfortunately the files for Carcassonne have all the tiles split into two sets and all the tiles smushed together, there is no easy way to recut a single tile. This means it's time to redo the whole set and correct all the other things that have been niggling me. The original files were drawn in 2013 and over the last 4 years I've learned a lot more about inkscape so can do things better. The new file will use layers to allow me to easily turn parts on and off, and more colours which can be set up as operations in Lasercut. Several people have asked for tile sets without the grass, these tiles are generally used as guest books at weddings, no grass leaves more areas to write on. Roads and buildings never quite touched the edges of the tiles. It was close enough not to worry about but I knew it wasn't 'perfect'. L...

My web stores have been down for some time while I've been working on other projects but I'm finally bringing out some new products (and old ones back up to speed). I've been working on a lot of game trays for the different board games we play. These Caverna  trays hold all the buildings in their appropriate places making it quick and easy to set up the game. Next step is to rejig my older meeple trays to better fit the box. You can now purchase them through Etsy if you so desire.

Due to sudden interest I've just made these available on my Etsy store  I'm also able to supply customised version of any size, colour, numbering. Just email me, msraynsford+website@gmail.com The digital version of Tigris and Euphrates keeps track of how much power each token has connected to it. I wanted to make similar counters for the physical version of the game, they needed to be the same size as the existing tokens but able to display the numbers 0-19.I've made gaming counters previously and I didn't really like the deep recess down to the numbers so I went back to the drawing board when designing these.  The top layer has to be as thin as possible so it's made from 0.8mm birch. The magnet has to be stuck into a layer underneath and the numbers have to be drawn on a ring attached to a third layer to bring it back up to the same height. The tokens were painted in the appropriate colour and then engraved lightly which left the wood slightly stained...

While looking up the original monuments for the Tigris & Euphrates game I discovered the game is due to be released again with slightly different monuments. I made a series of Aztec style monuments for the game instead. The walls for the steps were made using 0.8mm birch and the steps from 6mm poplar ( svg here )

With a range of new pieces all that was left to do was play a game. The counter tokens work surprisingly well you just have to remember to modify them each time you lay a new tile but it quickly becomes habbit. The aztec temples go well on top of the existing tiles and quite literally add a new dimension to the board.