As of this writing, I am doing what I usually do around this time of year: assessing the state of my various projects and trying to decide what I can actually finish before Dragon Con (which is now less than 3 months away). Unless I make a lot of progress soon, I am faced with the prospect of having nothing working at all this year.

(BTW, I realize that I’ve not yet posted a followup after last year’s cons. I started writing it, and then got sidetracked partway through as the style I was using petered out. I still have a draft that I may publish eventually.)

One of the things that Mr. The Wombat suggested during LCTC was the idea of having little Artie and BBL-BBQ action figures in packaging similar to the Kenner 3.75″ figures from our youth.

I’ve encountered the idea of custom figures before but I hadn’t considered doing it for my Hardware Wars robots. Though in fact I know someone out there has done a custom 4-Q-2 figure.

I have arting skills, I have a 3d printer. Naturally, I have to do it…

So it’s been nearly seven months since Dragon Con 2018. As I described back in From The ground Up, I meant to update long before this. In fact I wrote a large chunk of this post in September, to capture some of what happened at Dragon Con while it was still relatively fresh in my head. Then I promptly forgot to finish and post it.

Still, anyone who has read the last few years of posts knows how this tends to go … right after Dragon Con I get distracted by Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years in quick succession.  Last year was no exception.

To make matters worse, my post New Years droid plans were almost immediately derailed by a couple of real life upheavals, and I just haven’t had the mental space or time to do very much. I’ve just been trying to tread water since early January.

I just took a break to attend another con this past weekend, however, so I thought it was well past time to catch up.

So it’s been nearly nine months since Taking Stock, and seven months since Dragon Con 2018.

I meant to update long before this, and in fact I wrote much of this material in July, shortly after the last post.  But I got distracted with trying to get Artie working in time for con, and I’ve been no less so since I returned.

When owners of the Wanhao Duplicator i3 (or its relatives, like my Monoprice Maker Select) want to build a DIY enclosure, a popular method is to start with an IKEA Lack end table.  Add a base, some combination of sidewalls/doors, and a bit of optional PTFE tubing to guide your filament inside, and you have a decent enclosure.