Frank
Thank you for joining us.
This is episode 35 of Amateur 3D Podcast, a podcast by amateur printers for amateur printers, where we share our thoughts and experience.
Our panelists this week are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Andy Cottam, Kevin Buckner, and Chris Weber.
And I need to stop opening my mouth and making predictions about earlier recordings because we’ve gone so far as to record the day before we normally do it.
Kevin
Right?
Chris
Yes.
But we all have some important plans tomorrow.
I know Andy does.
Kevin
I don’t.
I don’t.
Frank
Well.
And I requested an earlier recording because I’ve got a full day tomorrow.
So yeah.
Chris
Kevin’s the odd one out on this one.
Kevin
For once.
Andy
How dare you have some kind of plans.
Podcast should come before everything.
Frank
Except for my wife has been really good for six months and avoided making plans on Saturday.
So I figured, you know, the occasional allowance was appropriate.
Andy
Well, I agree.
Chris
When I announced to the wife that we were going in the evening instead of tomorrow morning, she goes, she gave a small squeal of glee because she, for some reason, doesn’t like Saturday being interrupted like that.
And I’m like, it’s the perfect time for everybody.
I don’t know what you’re getting at.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Now you’re making me wonder if we need to reschedule permanent.
Chris
No.
No.
Andy
I couldn’t keep this particular schedule up.
This is…
Frank
Well, no, no, no, I’m not saying this schedule permanently.
Just give Chris a better allowance for time because apparently we’re interrupting Saturday for his wife.
Chris
If you put it on.
Andy
You mean we’re going to start giving him options now?
Really?
Kevin
Well, my wife,
Chris
There’s, there’s no, there’s no time on Saturday you could do that would still be okay with her.
It’s just she, she gives, likes to give me grief.
Frank
I’m just trying to be accommodating.
I’m sorry.
Kevin
My wife, the morning time is better because she’s like, okay, we’ve got the morning that we could do stuff, but then you’re at noon.
You have to go beyond the podcast and that’s just right in the middle of everything.
So I don’t really want to make plans for the morning knowing they’ll be interrupted for you to do your thing at noon.
And then so she’s like morning or evening would be better because then you’ve got the rest of the whole stretch of the day that you think, so I’m like, I mean, yeah, but I feel like we’ve got plenty of time afterward.
Frank
Personally, I wake up at the crack of dawn seven days a week.
So I can go earlier and be just fine with that.
Kevin
I used to sleep until nine or 10 or whatever.
Now my body wakes me up before seven o’clock every day.
Frank
I actually set an alarm seven days a week.
It only took me three months to get on the schedule, but now that I’m on it, I wake up before my alarm anyway.
Andy
But yeah, that’s sleeping in because during the week I got to be up at 3.30.
So six o’clock is that sleeping in body doing its normal thing on the weekends.
Frank
And I really don’t have to do anything until nine myself.
Chris
Bright eyed and bushy tailed freaks!
Frank
Chris, you only get away with saying that because we all know that you’ve had trouble waking up before 2pm since high school.
Kevin
It’s going on longer than since high school.
Frank
That’s as long as I’ve known him.
Andy
I’ve got memories of this kid showing up to our sign language class with a diet, what is it, Diet Coke, was it?
Chris
Yeah, yeah.
Andy
Did the teacher have a Diet Coke and she’d let the attendance thing go?
Chris
I was her regular supplier.
Kevin
I would totally take advantage of that, too.
Frank
Speaking of regular suppliers, Chris, have you done anything on your printer this week?
Chris
This thing.
Frank
For our visual listeners, would you rather that Andy talk about it because he designed it
Chris
He should explain this?
Frank
And worked on his own.
Kevin
So my question is, is that the only thing you’ve done this week, Chris?
Frank
As a supplier.
Chris
With the printer, yes.
The child’s actual birthday party with all the friends and things is tomorrow.
So I’ve been helping the wife arrange all of that and get it all going.
Frank
Okay.
Andy
Good deal.
Frank
Okay.
Andy, since our supplier has basically pointed at you and said, hey, he should tell us what he did.
What did you do this week?
Andy
I managed to have a stable internet connection for the podcast this week.
I think that should be celebrated.
I’m sorry.
Frank
Insert MoneyPython’s crew going, yay.
Andy
So I apologize for just disappearing off that last podcast.
That was a, it happened a lot quicker than I was expecting it to.
Frank
And then it was absolute too, like you were gone.
Andy
Well I did wind up coming back, but it was an uns, like it just wasn’t stable.
So I just decided to just stay out and not try to come back in again because I had a different, I wound up, you know, I was on T-Mobile for that original recording and I came back on Verizon and that was more stable, but I was leaving the city on the train and that was only going to get worse.
So I decided not to try to read, attempt to rejoin.
So because then we just would have been fighting my internet connection and hearing me and stuff.
So it wouldn’t have been worth it.
I think it worked out good.
Frank
And I think we rolled with it pretty well anyway.
You, uh, you got through what you did on your printer before you went on vacation.
Andy
That’s good.
I’m just the only reason why listeners tune into the program is just to hear what I’ve done.
So that’s good that that’s stuck.
Frank
That’s 90% of the podcast.
So…
Andy
so anyway, my, uh, I don’t know if I could talk after that one.
My fourth grader has requested from his teacher to do a report like in front of the classroom kind of report.
He really wants to do one part of his degree.
Now he is, I love that.
I love it.
He wants to do it on black holes.
He asked for the big trif…, for me to pick up a big trifold board forum and all that other kind of stuff.
He’s been running the printer, running pictures off and taping them up on the board and writing out a script and stuff.
And he’s been doing really good with it.
One of the things he brought to my, brought it came to me to ask is if I could print 3D print some like trinkets that he could hand out in his class of black holes.
And after the explanation about them being infinitesimally small and all that other kind of stuff, it wouldn’t really work out, nor could I ever match the gravity involved.
Um, he, uh…
Frank
That would be problematic on a good day anyhow, something as big as those prints are with the gravity that a black hole would have would be terrifying.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
So he, he reconsidered his thoughts and decided a model would be okay.
And so I sat down with him to let him design a model and that’s mostly me working the computer and him giving me the measurements and what he wants done.
And what he came up with is, is, you know, back before interstellar, we, our concept of black holes were a little different.
The interstellar version of black holes was still known, but it wasn’t popular.
And now if you look at black holes, they all look like the interstellar black hole, which is more accurate, but if you’ll, if the listeners got a chance to Google it, you’ll see what I’m saying here.
Um, if you were to look at those pictures, you would think that there are two separate accretion discs on the black hole, one 90 degree to the other.
And that’s only the appearance of it, not actually what’s happening.
Frank
Because it’s bending the light.
Andy
Yeah, exactly.
But my son wanted to make them physically do those bends.
And so we did, and I made them promise that he would have to include that as part of his script, that that’s not what they actually are, but it’s just how they appear.
And so we wound up doing that.
So we got some glow in the dark plastic, made an accretion disc, pretty much half of one of those black holes, and then printed a little black PLA ball.
You could stick in the middle of it and then glued them together and they, they look like what you Google is a little black hole.
And then he’s taken those, you know, washer like discs and colored them with crayon and stuff to kind of break it up and make it look a little bit better.
And it turned out pretty good.
He’s pretty happy with it.
And he gets to pass them out to the class.
So that’s all I did.
I, I spent maybe that’s all it was like 20 hour print, but it was only like 200 gram.
No, it was like 150 grams of plastic.
It wasn’t very much at all.
Frank
It was flat stuff though.
Chris
So I printed two, yeah, I printed two of them and it only took like 40 minutes.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah, it wasn’t bad at all.
But, but they turned out pretty good.
And he’s enjoying that.
And then right before the podcast here, I sat down with the kids and we printed up an adapter so that you can screw two, two liter bottles together so you can fill one with water and make a, you know, a tornado effect.
I’m sure our listeners have seen those in school where, you know, two, two liter bottles, you swish it around.
Frank
Only since the nineties though, they were all over in the nineties.
I never knew where you can get them, but I, I saw them.
Andy
We made one of those and a bunch of smaller discs that you can insert into that fitting to restrict the hole so it can go slower or faster.
And, and it got to sit down and experiment with the kids on, you know, what, what’s the optimum sized hole to make it work the best and stuff like that.
And then the kids thought it would be fun to put stuff in it to look like boats so you could see the boats get stuck down it.
And then the two liter bottles ended up with like half of their toys stuck in the bottle because they thought that was funny, but good learning lesson, I suppose.
And that’s all I’ve done with my printer this, this last two weeks.
I’ve been in vacation for most of it.
So…
Frank
fair.
Chris
Man.
That thing sure beats duct tape.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
A little less messy too, even though it’s not, I mean, I, it was a FDM printer component.
So it wasn’t watertight.
I didn’t try to make it watertight.
So we just played with it in the sink, but it was mostly watertight, mostly.
It was dripping all over the place, but only dripping.
So it was still okay.
Chris
Well, that’s cause you didn’t make any TPU gaskets.
Andy
No, no, no, I didn’t.
Just Joshin’.
Andy
No, you’re fine.
Yeah.
I think I printed it out of PETG just cause it’s what I had currently loaded into the printer.
I didn’t want to fight the printer.
So I just used what was there.
Frank
Kevin, have you done anything this week?
Kevin
I, I have, but before I get into that, you could, you could get those tornado tubes at the planetarium and you still can.
Frank
Oh, there was one place I heard you could get them from the, the little toy vending machines for like, you know, when you, back when you could put 50 cents in a toy vending machine and get one of those little bubbles.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
Um, but I still couldn’t never find them there either.
I never thought of going to the planetarium.
Kevin
Yeah.
So anyway, uh, the first thing I did this week was, um, uh, while my son, he’s getting excited about, uh, running a D&D campaign and, um, for his birthday, my mom had given him a set of, uh, little tiny tavern decoration things, um, that actually were 3D printed at he, we realized after he, um, opened it up, we could see the layer lines and everything.
Anyway, um, made me say, well, you know, I, I actually thought they were, my mom was going to get STLs for him to print based on the picture that she sent me.
Uh, but anyway, I, I was like, okay, well, I’ve got all these STLs that I have access to.
So you’re welcome to look through those and see if you want any of them.
And then you can print whatever you want that I have access to.
That’s not a problem.
Well, as he was looking through everything, I noticed that there was a little extra thing that I hadn’t noticed before, and that was, uh, miniature holder.
So you could put the miniature on the holder and paint it.
Frank
Okay.
Yeah.
Kevin
So I printed two of the handles for that holder.
I did one with no supports on my resin printer, and I did one with supports on the FDM printer.
That’s the first time I’ve ever done supports on FDM and, uh, it wasn’t an onerous experience other than that for some reason it, there, there’s a little neck around the top and for some reason it put a support around that and I kind of broke the top off when I was trying to remove that support, but I glued it back on so everything’s fine.
Um, I, I can’t figure out how to tell it what supports to add and what supports to not add if I’ve got supports enabled, uh, but
Frank
With your FDM?
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
Cura requires a, uh, an add-on to choose where supports go.
Kevin
Ah, okay, that would be why I couldn’t find it.
Um, so I, I did that to kind of experiment with FDM supports, but also to show the difference in resolution because I had printed the test file that came with my printer.
It’s the little Chinese cat holding the scroll thing.
You see him in the restaurants all the time and, and my wife had looked at that and said, oh, I think you can, this gets as good of resolution as your resin printer does.
And I, no, no, no, no,
Frank
when it, when it’s printed at 0.1 millimeters and it’s solid, it might.
Kevin
Um, even then it’s, it’s not, it’s, because mine’s 0.05 millimeters by default.
So I did this and say, look, you can see a difference in the resolution here and it, it certainly is true.
It’s like the, the one that was printed there, it had a little loot studios logo on the handle and the one that was on the resin printer was like looking at an HDTV and the one that was done on the FDM printer was more like an SDTV.
You can still read it, but it was a little fuzzy.
Chris
At least, at least it wasn’t a VCR.
Kevin
Yeah.
Um, then the other thing is that I decided I would finally get around to designing parts for the nightmare chest set I want to print.
Okay.
Uh, so I got up and got into FreeCAD and the first thing I decided to do was I was going to make a drawer for the cards to go in and I got all the measurements I needed for that.
And I decided the best way to do it would be to make space for four stacks of these cards.
Let me just divide them up evenly and print them up.
So this would be drawer was, was a little too big for my printer.
It’s dimensions ended up being 138 millimeters by 240 millimeters by 31 millimeters with a print volume or print area of 220 by 220 millimeters, 240 was just 20 millimeters too long.
So I decided, okay, I’d have to print that in two parts as much as I would prefer to print it all in one part.
So I got those two parts designed and I’ve got one of them printing now and as I…
Andy
Have printed the large piece yet because is, can you cock it up on its side, even though that would cost you support material, you might still be able to get it in a single print.
Kevin
I’m already printing the path of it.
Okay.
I just divided it in half
Andy
Oh, okay.
Kevin
And so I’ll print it in two parts and it won’t be a big problem.
I’ll just glue them together…
Chris
Especially because you can use the UV stuff, right?
Kevin
I could.
Yeah.
I think it actually works better because unless I can put it in my curing station, the little handheld blacklight I have doesn’t work all that well.
And so the way I’ve designed it is there are going to be eight notches that will fit into eight tabs to give more surface area, but then everything else is just going to be right up against each other.
Chris
Oh, okay.
Notches and tabs.
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah.
And then as I was talking to my wife about it, I was explaining the concept that I have in mind and I’ve got this chess set that I got in Mexico that is like a little box that has a lid you lift up and there you see the pieces inside the box under the lid, but then if you close the lid, that’s where the chessboard is.
So it’s like it’s going to be a similar concept to this only with drawers because I don’t really want to have a lid on it because then I’d have to print hinges and stuff and then I thought, well, wait, or I could just print a little lip on the bottom and then just lift it straight off and then I don’t have to worry about drawers.
I can just put trays in there that you can lift out to get the cards out or the pieces out or whatever.
And then you’ve got the cards and then you just put the lid on it and then you play it.
So that’s now what I’m planning on doing.
But I’ve only designed the parts that will hold the cards.
And then for the other thing, my son was looking a few weeks ago for interesting chess pieces knowing that I’ve got this project in mind.
So he was looking for that.
And then, but I said, well, I’ve got all these STLs through my subscription to Loot Studios and I backed a bunch on Kickstarter and I’m like, I know there are going to be some in there that will make a great fantasy chess set.
So I found, I’ve identified some pieces that I think might work for the black side and I’m printing the would be king and queen right now.
It’s got a half hour left on the print.
But basically, I’m concerned about the wings though, because the king that I have in mind is this vampire lord in his human bat hybrid form.
So he’s got the big wings and then the queen I have in mind is a succubus.
So she’s got the wings.
And I’m not sure if those are going to give him the way of the other pieces or not.
Andy
Sounds like a neat moddle.
Kevin
Yeah.
And so that’s what I’ve done.
Chris
Nice.
So on the slid you’re talking about, is it going to be one of those slide off lids or it’s just going to be a pop on, pop off lid?
Kevin
Lift on, lift off.
Chris
Oh, okay.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
That works.
That’s the way my good chess set is done out too.
You just lift up the entire lid to get to everything.
That’s neat having the trays in there though.
Kevin
Yeah.
Chris
So I’ve got a nice chess set out of, it’s basically a wood table the size of like maybe half a coffee table and you take the lid off and all the pieces and things are on the inside and then you put it back on and that’s great.
But our travel chess set has the board itself folds in half over a hinge with all the pieces on the inside.
Andy
I used to rock one of those when I was in junior high school all the time.
Is it a wooden one?
Chris
The travel set is plastic but the one, my nice one with the tabletop that comes off and has the pieces inside the table, that one’s a nice wood.
Andy
That’s cool.
I used to have like a bifold wooden one back in the day.
Another one I got, it’s one of those dual ones where it does Go on one side and chess on the other.
Frank
Okay.
Andy
So it’s kind of a cheaper one but because it does both but the pieces are still cut to be really detailed so it looks nice.
But if you tore off the top you’d probably find that it’s probably pressed wood or something like that.
It still looks nice but it’s probably not real.
Frank
Yeah, mine is definitely got a veneer.
It’s like a particle board, what is it, MDF or whatever?
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
And it’s got a veneer and it looks good but it obviously is not heavy enough to be made out of any substantial wood for how thick it is.
Kevin
One of the things I’m considering doing is getting just a little thin sheet of steel to put in the bottom of the board and then have the plastic pieces on top of that to make the board itself.
I’m going to have to print those, the check pieces each individually due to the color restraints but have that under there and then put magnets in the base of each of the pieces.
But I’m only going to do that if these fantasy pieces I have don’t work and then I end up having to design my own pieces and then they’d be more like a Staunton piece which is the general generic chess piece you think of when you think of chess.
Frank
More common shapes.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
Okay.
Yeah.
I play just enough chess to not have a clue and know that I don’t have a clue at the time of playing the game.
Chris
It’s a horsey, not a knight.
Kevin
When I was a teenager I was absolutely obsessed with chess and when my kids were old enough I started trying to teach them and my older son was just completely uninterested and my younger son was interested but he was like six so I’d play with him.
Frank
You didn’t want to play him so often that he lost interest because you kept beating him?
Kevin
Right.
And so then we did find a good solution for that.
We got a set called No Stress Chess and that also uses cards to change the game but not the same way as Nightmare Chess.
The cards are the chess pieces and the way you play it is you draw a card or this is the bare bones basic.
There are several layers and it’s all designed to teach people how to play but you draw the card and that’s the piece you move.
Frank
Gotcha.
So it seems like the strategy would be more randomized.
I’m assuming there’s more to it than that but you’re not really planning strategy.
Kevin
Right, because you don’t know what card you’re going to get and if it’s a card that you, if you draw a card for like a knight and you don’t have any more knights then you draw another card until you get a card that represents a piece you do have.
Frank
That would be interesting.
Kevin
And then at the next level up you have a hand of three cards and so then you get to pick which card you play and then the next level up from that is five cards and you get to pick which card to play and then the very top level is turn the board over and just play chess.
No cards.
Frank
That is, that’s interesting.
Andy
That’s a good way to be able to teach them how to play it so they understand the moves and all that without it actually being a skill game at that point or much of a skill game.
Kevin
Right.
I mean at that point it’s, for a lot of it it’s, if you’ve got, the only, the biggest decision you have to make is if you draw a knight card which knight do you move?
If you draw a pawn card which pawn do you move?
Frank
Yeah.
That is fun.
Andy
That sounds good.
What have you been up to, Frank?
Frank
Oh boy.
Chris
How about 6’3″?
Andy
That’s a story.
Frank
Okay.
Chris
He’s up to about 6’3″ I think, yeah.
Frank
I kind of alluded to it last week but didn’t really talk about it a whole lot.
My printer started power cycling in the middle of last week.
Andy
Oh yes, I was eager to hear this story.
Frank
And I was concerned but it was intermittent so it’s like maybe I can still do this and not worry about it.
But then it started to stop at a specific time, you know, in the print.
So I decided to stop trying to print what I wanted to print and designed a quick little post that is 15 millimeters across and made it I think 10 or 15 tall and just had it print for time just to see when it would happen and it power cycled.
And so I let it cool down to ambient and then I tried it again just to see if I could reproduce it and it printed the whole thing.
So I hate intermittent problems.
They suck.
Kevin
They’re the worst.
Frank
So I ran it off again.
I let it cool down to ambient and just ran it off again, right?
And it power cycled and my printer has an option where if the power cuts out and it comes back on, you have the option to resume the print because I do my bed adhesion with temperature.
If it cools off too much, then I might as well just restart.
So when I’ve come back and the power cycled in the middle of the night, the print’s gone.
It’s not going to stick.
So I haven’t used the start over button or a continue print button… option… until this was happening.
So I tried it and the print bed got up to temp just fine and it switched to heating up the nozzle and it power cycled again before it got to the desired temperature.
So my thought was, it’s got to have something to do with the nozzle or the heat block.
And then I remembered about a week before, maybe two weeks ago, I came back in the morning and the print that I had running had turned into a giant blob at the bottom of my carriage.
And I did my best to clean it out, but I didn’t disassemble anything or whatever.
I was like, you know, maybe I should have disassembled the thing.
So guess what I did?
I disassembled the whole thing, cleaned it out.
There were little chunks in the exhaust that blows on the nozzle and some up by where the wires are that go to the heat block and all that stuff.
Too big a deal, but you know, and so I think that what it was is it was just adding a little extra insulation in places that it didn’t like it.
And that was causing it to work harder and power cycle.
And the reason I think that that would have had to be it is ever since I’ve reassembled my carriage and have been printing almost nonstop for two days and it hasn’t power cycled once.
Chris
Okay, knock on wood.
Andy
That could that could be you.
It could be shutting down due to a thermal issue and just not reporting it.
Frank
Well, and it doesn’t report the I’m pretty sure it was a thermal issue specifically with the heat block, but it wasn’t reporting any errors.
It was just power cycling.
Andy
And you’ve got like a, you don’t have, you don’t run Marlin on yours, right?
You’ve got something.
Frank
Yeah, it’s got the Marlin on it.
It’s got the Marlin on it, but it’s, it’s a, it’s a very rudimentary, um, stupid users version of it.
And I haven’t replaced it because I haven’t felt the need to.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
It’s got the OEM stupid users one on it.
Andy
Okay.
And then by default does like whenever I have a thermal problem, it usually shuts everything shuts down all the heaters and then throws up an error message and then beeps and won’t stop until you power cycle the printer, which is good because it thinks there’s something seriously going wrong.
So Marlin’s always had good thermal protection in my opinion, not just the random reset, but it’s, it’s open source.
So anybody could grab Marlin and do whatever the hell you want to do with it.
So who knows, you know
Frank
And it’s possible that the Creality, we don’t know how smart our customers are going to be.
So we’re just going to do the same thing for them approach was if it’s not going to explode, don’t report on it and just turn off.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
As anybody thinking of the, of the little blinking problem button or problem light blink.
Andy
It’s on.
It’s off.
It’s off.
It’s not blinking, boys.
Frank
So yeah, that’s my epic for the last couple of weeks.
Chris
Well, you said something about power cycling and I’m just imagining a guy going down the road on his bike being all annoying about it.
Frank
I thought you were going to go the direction of a power or a battery powered bicycle because those are a thing now.
Chris
That’s a power cycle isn’t it?
Frank
It really is.
Kevin
I have a powered bike also.
Of course, it’s got a gas engine on it.
Yeah.
Chris
A gas powered bike, that gas powered cycle.
Frank
Most people call that a motorcycle because it’s got a motor on it.
Kevin
Uh-huh.
Chris
Well, so do electric bikes.
Frank
They do.
Yeah.
Those are technically motorcycles.
Try saying that to somebody with the single patch on the back of their leather vest, though, they’ll probably not appreciate you calling those motorcycles
Andy
It’s dual wheeled unicycle.
Get it right.
Chris
They’ll be like, they’ll be like, I’ll accept a Vespa before I accept that.
Frank
It’s got a motor on it.
Kevin
Actually, I mean, there was a time I was looking into the possibility of joining BACA and one of the chapter leaders for the local chapter rode a Vespa.
Andy
Awesome.
Kevin
Of course, I mean it’s BACA, it’s not Hell’s Angels, so there’s that.
Frank
Yeah.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
I’m going to have to filter that out because we don’t want to accidentally mention them who should not be named.
Kevin
Okay.
Frank
I’m kidding.
I don’t care.
They don’t care.
I guarantee.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
So once I got my printer back up, I decided that I was going to finally knuckle down after avoiding the project since I got my printer a year and a half ago, almost, and actually design a respooler.
So I have designed the spool that I’ve been kicking around designs for for a year now.
So it’s a little more user friendly.
I’ve got an idea for the frame that it’s going to go on and the gears is going to be a hand crank thing, but it’s going to be easy.
There’s just going to be a bigger gear on the crank than there is on the spool and it’s going to go real fast.
Chris
Well, can you just design it so that it’s like a regular hex so that you can like put your drill on one, put your drill on it if you want to and use a hand crank if you want to.
Andy
This is a project he could design gears on.
You think he’s going to pass that up?
That sounds like an awesome project.
Frank
That too.
And you know, honestly, I could, but I want something that I don’t have to decide if I want to walk down to the garage to grab the motor.
Andy
No, that’s, that’s true because and getting a respooler is…
Frank
Because I live on the second floor
Andy
they’re important to have.
I mean, I got mine right here.
I made a long time ago, but it’s one you clamp in a drill just like Chris was talking about.
But they’re good to have one on hand when you do got a spool that’s all messed up or whatever or breaks or something and you need to put it on a blank spool.
So…
Frank
Well, and the other part of that is I think I’m finally going to knuckle down and I’ve already designed my own version of the splicer that you showed off a couple of weeks ago there.
Andy, I’m just going to play with it and just because I’ve got a couple of spools of colors that I haven’t done a lot with, I figure put them all on one spool and use them for prototypes and free up some of my space.
Andy
The one I made didn’t work as good as I was hoping it was going to make going to work.
It was just easier to put them together manually just by hand and then trim it up.
But I would really have to sit down and play with it to figure out how to do it, right?
Because it only seems to be effective about half the time.
A lot of the time I’ll come back to a print and it had come apart at the splice and I just don’t know if I just not heated it up enough or didn’t trim it enough or what.
But it’d be interesting to sit down and actually watch some splices to go through that way and get a hang of it, but I’m not the best at it at the moment either.
Frank
And I’ve seen some videos about it, but I can’t help but think that if they had, like if they cut it at an angle, it seems like everybody cuts it flat and then they’re melting it so it wouldn’t necessarily continue at an angle anyway.
It would just melt the thinner part faster than the fatter part, but I wonder if there’s some way to get it so that it’s longer and then you’ve got a little piece being pulled by the big piece and by the time you get to the full width, it’s worked its way in instead of being a big issue.
Does that make sense?
I didn’t word that very well.
Andy
The only thing I can think about is like in my experience in splicing together ABS piping for work when installing underground conduits and stuff, when you’re using the splicer, you melt them together very similarly to the way you would do it with a printer or with printer filament.
But if you push them together too hard, then you get the cold plastic against cold plastic and the adhesion is much more poor.
That’s the only thing I could think of as might be happening is when you’re pushing the ends of the filament together, you’re actually pushing them too hard and you’re getting cold to cold pressed too hard together and not any of the good melted plastic is actually bonding to anything.
So that’s the only thing I could think of.
Frank
I did see this other video where this guy took some shrink wrap that was just the right size for his filament and shrunk it on and then warmed it up right where the ends were and he didn’t actually shrink it on.
He just warmed it up right where the ends met and it ended up shrinking the whole thing.
So it was tight.
There was nothing to clean up.
But he destroyed the wrap when he pulled it off and it’s like, why would I buy a bunch of shrink wrap just to take it off two seconds after I put it on?
I feel like that would get preventatively expensive real quick because I splice so much freaking filament anyway.
Chris
That stuff’s not really that expensive.
You can get big big old rolls of it for just a few bucks.
Andy
Did I ever make you one of those big things of shrink tube?
No.
I normally made Chris one.
I just made a 3D printed or a reel of a bunch of different sizes.
I just bought a bunch of shrink tube in bulk and then loaded it up and handed it up to friends.
I don’t know if you were one of the ones I’d given it to.
Frank
No, I must not be that greater friend.
Andy
Yeh… well… I put up with you.
Kevin
Well, he did air quote the “friends” a couple of weeks ago.
Frank
See, there’s that.
So I was thinking, because the Bowden tube is designed to resist heat, I was wondering if there would be some way maybe to use it, like take a piece of it and cut it in half long ways so that it can still separate after you’ve melted the pieces together and still make a form.
But I haven’t gotten that far with my thought yet and I would still hesitate to use a lighter flame to melt it just because it’s harder to control.
So if I’m going to do that, I need to get it set up with my wood burner / soldering iron to get that in.
So that’s the design down the road.
Maybe I’ll figure it out and I’ll let you know.
It’s a fun way to do it.
Yeah.
And if it works, the Bowden tube is already the right size for the filament anyway, right?
Andy
So it’s a little bigger than the filament.
If you were to use it to mold filament, it then wouldn’t fit really well inside Bowden tube because it would be the exact size of the Bowden tube.
Frank
Yeah, but in my mind, it would require less trimming and shaping after you got it out.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
Or you can just buy a little bit of whatever material that Bowden tube is made out of and drill it to the right size.
Kevin
Oh, now you’re thinking with your logic brain, Chris.
Stop that.
Chris
Ouch.
Sorry.
Andy
One thing you could do is like PETG does not adhere to molten PLA well and vice versa.
So you might be able to make a separate one out of PETG and a separate one out of PLA and then use the different filaments.
Use them for the opposite one, yeah.
That way they don’t really adhere to each other.
Frank
Well, and the video I saw the guy was talking about, this turned into an episode about slicing weirdly.
Andy
It did.
Frank
But the video I saw the guy was talking about how once the PLA has been printed and is at room temperature, it’s cool enough that you can put the molten plastic in there and it won’t stick.
Just because the form needs to warm up quite a bit to be at the same temperature to melt.
And by then the molten plastic is actually cooled off quite a bit.
So…
Andy
You could always make sure that too by printing the rig solid or with quite a bit of plastic.
That way it’s more to heat up there too.
Frank
There’s that.
And mine’s pretty thick.
It’s only four millimeters thick.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
Thin.
Mine’s pretty thin.
That’s what I meant to say.
Because words.
But yeah, got off on that tangent and actually our topic this week was supposed to be measurement strategies.
Andy
Calliper.
Okay, we’re done.
Frank
Yeah.
Kevin
He’s not wrong.
Frank
Use your callipers.
Chris
Get some nice callipers.
Kevin
That’s also true.
Because I got the cheap little callipers that came in that set of accessories I was talking about a couple months ago.
They’re just this plastic crappy thing.
But they get the job done-ish.
But I wanted to measure the depth of the boxes that the Nightmare Chess cards are in to see if I could maybe use that as a starting point.
I ended up not doing that.
But then I realized that these, the callipers don’t really work very well as a depth gauge.
Andy
Does it not have a depth gauge on the bottom of it?
Kevin
Right.
Because the little part that you extend down is two millimeters offset.
So whatever reading you get on it, you have to subtract two millimeters from to get your actual depth measurement.
Andy
Oh, that’s really stupid.
Frank
What’s the point in having the depth gauge if it’s going to be offset like that?
Kevin
Right?
Andy
It seems ironic to have a bad designed calliper.
There just seems to be something wrong about somebody who would design a calliper doing it poorly.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
Some people just want to watch the world burn.
Andy
That’s true.
Chris
I’m a design a random calliper.
No matter what hat, what you try to measure and you get a random number.
Frank
I think we have our first product that we can design and build and it’s a random calliper.
Chris
A calliper randomizer
Frank
or maybe…
Andy
more accurate than some of the projects I’m trying to do.
Frank
Because with the veneer callipers, it’s got the measurements in at least with millimeters.
Well, no, mine’s got the SAE on the other side, but it’s got the ticks.
So you can accurately measure.
Andy
To tenths of a millimeter.
Frank
Hundreds of a millimeter.
Andy
Is hundreds.
Yeah.
You’re right.
Chris
But callipers can’t measure everything.
Frank
I should look it up.
Open it up and look.
No, it’s tenths.
Andy
Is it tenths?
Frank
Still, no, it’s hundreds because there’s ticks in between.
Andy
Okay.
Kevin
Chris, that’s a pretty bold claim.
How about you back it up?
Chris
Yeah.
You can’t use callipers to measure everything.
So you might need to know an ovaloid shape.
For that, you’re going to want, oh my gosh, some flexible sewing measurement tape.
Andy
Yeah.
Kevin
A measuring tape?
Chris
Yes.
Andy
No, no, that’s right.
Like the sewing ones are overly flexible.
Kevin
They’re still called a measuring tape.
Frank
Right.
Kevin
Not a tape measure, a measuring tape.
Frank
Yes.
Chris
Well, people do get those confused.
Kevin
They do.
They are different things.
Frank
That’s weird.
There’s no reason for them to confuse.
Chris
But yeah, there’s different tools for different measuring things.
As a guy that works in inspecting, you have to understand that there’s different ways to measure.
You can still use the same tool to get a couple of different measurements.
That’s fine.
But if something seems a little off, you need to know how to measure it in a different fashion to get correlating numbers.
Frank
Or at least measure it in such a way that you can calculate what the radius should be, for instance.
Kevin
Ew, math.
Frank
Eh.
Chris
Oh.
Frank
It’s only, you know, half of the job.
Chris
Math?
Math is more than half of my job.
Frank
Well.
But it’s a good portion of measuring, at the very least.
Chris
If you can’t math, Google will do it for you, though.
Frank
Except for, I’m pretty sure that Google uses Warframe Alpha as much as, is it Warframe?
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
Or is that the game?
Chris
Wolfram Alpha, yeah.
Frank
No, Wolfram Alpha.
Because Warframe is the video game and Wolfram is the calculator.
So…
Kevin
Yeah.
Kevin
And at first, I thought you said Warfarin, which is the drug.
Frank
There we go.
Speaking of reducing the confusion.
So anyway, I don’t know about you guys, I tend to measure from the outside in.
Does that sound like a good strategy?
Andy
I think so.
I think it’s the most basic measurement, except when it’s obvious to measure the inside.
Frank
Yeah.
I mean, okay, I guess it really depends on what you’re measuring, right?
Because when I was doing the second wheel for the mechanical clock that I basically started on with my 3D printer, I measured from the spindle and the different spools along the spindle.
Before I got to the major sprocket for the second counter, so basically went inside out for that one.
Chris
And that’s another thing.
What if you’re measuring gear teeth?
You’re going to need a protractor.
Andy
Well with gear teeth, it’s not the diameter, it’s the number of teeth and size of tooth.
Chris
Right.
That’s also, then again, yeah, that’s math because you divide by 360 for how many teeth and yada yada.
But let’s say you’re not doing a gear, but you need an angle.
You’ll need protractor.
So…
Frank
yeah.
Andy
I don’t think I’ve ever used a protractor.
I mean, I agree with you.
Don’t get me wrong.
I don’t do things right all the time.
Frank
It’s a good tool to have.
In fact, there have been a couple of times where I thought it would be nice to have a protractor and just figured something else out.
Andy
I think for stuff like that, I have a tendency with complicated geometry of just taking a picture of it from far away, as flat as possible, and then importing that into your CAD software and then setting its size to known easier measurements you can take of the item.
Mr. Fancy Pants importing into his CAD.
Frank
And there have been several times where I’ve done something similar where there are things that you can measure and you can measure the relationship between those things and constrain it that way rather than calculating.
Like when I was doing the Dremel tool fillers, there were some places where I was not equipped to measure certain geometries, but I can measure other things and that would constrain the part that I couldn’t measure.
Chris
Yes.
So using other geometries to make deductions on what it ought to be.
Yes.
Andy
That is good.
Frank
But that’s one way a more robust CAD program is nice, whereas if I remember right with FreeCAD it wasn’t so capable, like you had to be more specific about the things that you were sizing.
Andy
I think you could with FreeCAD.
If you restrain, let’s say you’re doing a triangle, you restrain, let’s say, the base of the triangle completely and the length of the legs and that left the top part floating.
I think then you could measure the distance between that and then constrain that measurement.
So it’s kind of like a backwards way you could do it, but FreeCAD is something else.
Frank
Yeah.
Well, and we go back to…
It’s free and it does the job okay.
Andy
Yeah, it does okay.
If you’re doing just the basics, it’s fine.
When I was learning it, I made a dozens of things with it, what was just the basics.
Once you just get used to restraining everything, then it’s fine, doesn’t seem to give me any problems.
It takes like twice as long to make something in, but still it’s free.
Frank
Well, and I still, I’ve said this before, I still constrain everything in Fusion 360.
I don’t have to, but I do.
And actually half the time it’s complaining at me because I’m over constrained, but I got to the point.
Andy
I went right back to my bad habits too.
Yeah.
I went right back to my bad habits and only restrained the things I need to restrain.
Frank
Well, when you’re comfortable with your bad habits, are they still bad habits?
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Ignoring, you know, like addiction and all that stuff, which is very much a bad habit.
I mean, genuinely bad habit, like spaghetti code and not fully constraining your professional stuff.
Andy
I’m just going to name all of my flaws at this point, right?
It’s my spaghetti code.
Frank
You just gesture to all of me.
Andy
So, you know, it is a problem though, when you go in and are learning how to do something, you can either learn how to do it kind of or learn how to do it properly with industry standards.
And if you’re ever going to do anything with it, start by learning the industry standards.
If you’re just doing it yourself, fine, be an Andy, spaghetti code the crap out of everything.
But if you’re ever going to go into an industry, start with the standards because going backwards is so, you know, and catching back up is so difficult.
Chris
Your code is the worst I have ever run, but it runs.
Andy
That’s my whole world right there, Chris.
Frank
There is the point where I would say, even if you’re on the fence, if you know for certain, you’re never going to do anything professional with your code or with your printing designs or any of that stuff.
If you are committed to never doing anything professional, yeah, sure, go the, the Andy route.
But if there is any chance, the minutest possible, you know, black hole sized miniature chance that you could do anything professionally, learn good habits.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
We’re also talking.
Frank
You will thank yourself in 10 years.
Chris
We’re also talking about things that are not possibly safety related also, potentially safety related.
You want to make sure you follow industry standards and or have a professional.
Frank
You mean like, yeah, don’t touch your hot end while it’s running?
Kevin
Right?
Chris
Yeah, I was in 3D printing, you know, it goes on again, goes along the lines of don’t print things that are going to be structurally important.
Frank
Don’t don’t actually depend on the trailer hitch ball that Chris printed off of his printer.
Chris
Yeah.
And don’t don’t don’t play with the power supply while it’s still plugged in today.
Andy
Today, I had to fix part of my bus, a support for the main bus door that pulled free from the frame.
I don’t know how, but it tore part of the frame and it’s like 16th inch sheet metal.
Still impressive.
Either way, had to get the welder in there to patch it up.
And I have you guys know, I was saddled up, ready to start running a bead.
And I realized I should probably disconnect the battery.
Chris
Good move!
Frank
He’s Learning guys… it only took him 40 years to realize that it saves money to do stuff like that.
Chris
Yeah, disconnect the power before you play with it.
Andy
Yeah, I got thinking kind of wish Frank can see me now, man.
Chris
I’m so proud of you, dude.
Frank
I’ve been, I’ve been called paranoid before.
I just call it reasonable, you know, doubt if there’s a chance that I could end up electrocuting myself.
I at least hesitate before I do it.
Hint hint. Nudge nudge.
Andy
Yeah. 110 will give you the tingles unless you get it good, then it’ll put you make your flat line.
So it’s no matter how comfortable you get with that stuff, just do it right.
Frank
So actually, there’s a story, I can’t remember if it was a Mark Twain story, or if it was a Robert Heinlein story, because he liked to quote a lot of Mark Twain, it could have been either.
But he tells the story, there is a story about this kid who really liked snakes.
And he always handled them like they were poisonous, even though he thought they weren’t.
And he picked up a snake and he identified it or he thought he’d identified it, but he treated it like it was poisonous the whole time.
And then when somebody else saw it and was able to properly identify it, they said, oh, that’s a, I guess it’s venomous, not poisonous.
That’s a venomous snake.
And the kid’s like, oh, I’ve been playing with this snake for six months.
I didn’t know that it was venomous.
But because he had been handling it like it was venomous anyway, he never got bit.
Andy
Yeah.
That’s a good strategy to go by, that’s for sure.
Frank
So yeah.
Andy
I like that.
Kevin
If we can, I’d like to go back to the discussion of CAD, because I’m very new to it, but you keep using the term constrained, and I’m not really sure what that means in regards to CAD software.
Frank
So, Kevin, we actually have an episode about CAD software.
No.
Kevin
Yeah.
And I listened to it and I still don’t know what constrained means.
We probably used the term quite a bit there.
Chris
It’s an alignment, right, is where you want to start.
Frank
A perfectly, think of a shape that’s perfectly constrained as a shape where you know where everything in space is.
Okay.
So, if you’re doing a square, just a regular square on your zero plane, your zero X plane, for instance, or Z, sorry, your zero Z plane, you put a square on there and you can still move it around anywhere on that plane.
It’s not fully constrained.
But if you find, do like a…
Chris
You tell the computer that I want Y to be parallel with the sides, it will keep it from rotating on that plane.
Frank
If you do a construction line from opposing corners and put the midpoint in your point of origin for the plane, it won’t move anymore.
And so, your square is then perfectly constrained.
Chris
Sort of.
It’s still only half constrained at that point, or are you talking a midpoint for all four sides?
If you’re talking a midpoint for all four sides, then yes, it is.
If it’s a midpoint for only two sides, then it can still move up and down, and it is not constrained in that field of origin.
Most of your squares from any…
Frank
I mean, you can do an unhorizontal and vertical square, but still the lines that oppose each other on either side are going to be parallel.
So whatever angle you set it at, they’re going to be parallel.
So if you set the center of the square as your point of origin, then you have to choose which angle the sides are.
And then it’s not necessarily a square unless…
That’s what I’m saying.
Your square is actually going to be…
When you first draw it, the corners are going to be at 90-degree angles.
Chris
Yeah.
So that’s what I’m getting at, is you would set a midpoint, and a midpoint from all four sides would constrain it.
A midpoint from only two sides would only constrain it, and it would still be able to move in one direction.
Frank
Like with Fusion 360, I don’t remember if FreeCAD can do this.
I think it can, but you can do a center point square.
So you choose where the center point is, and then you drag out, and it just makes a perfect object, from that center point to that corner.
So all of the sides are constrained.
All of the corners are 90-degree angles, all of that stuff.
So if you choose the point of origin as the center, then wherever you drop the other corner, it’s going to be fully constrained with those dimensions.
Andy
You both are right.
I think Frank goes into the idea of when you generate those objects, it comes with built in constraints already.
And you’re talking about just like if it was a shape, and adding the constraints manually.
Frank
What is it?
A rhombusoid or whatever?
Chris
Right.
And so that’s the problem you have…
Andy
A square is a bad thing to start with, because there’s so many constraints on a square.
How about a line?
Like with a line, you’ve got two points, and the distance between those two points.
That gives you three different variables that you can change to make that line do anything you want it to do.
If you tell one point that it is somewhere, like if you set one point to origin, then you can take that other point to go any length, any distance away from origin, close at any angle or anything like that.
But if you then tell that line that it can only be one unit long, then at that point, you can only, it has to stay one unit long, but can still point in any direction.
And so if you take that line and say, I’m going to constrain that line to, let’s say your x-axis to make them parallel, then at that point, that line will become fully constrained because there’s no way to move any of the components, because if you do, you’ll be violating some kind of constraint.
Frank
The thing that sucks about that is you can reverse it accidentally.
Chris
But that’s the thing is if you use that line as constraint for your x-axis, what happens then is that you can still rotate around the y and z-axis, we’ll still be able to rotate around a whole full another 360 degrees, which is why you need more than just a point and a line sometimes.
Well, a triangle will completely constrain all of that.
Frank
What’s the word for this?
Where you expect the worst…
Kevin
Pessimism?
Frank
That’s one word for it.
I’m thinking of something else.
Anyway, so Chris is assuming that you start with a plane and your CAD program completely ignores that you chose a plane to start with.
While, when you’re creating a drawing in your CAD program, you choose your plane, you draw your shape.
As long as the shape itself is constrained, it’s constrained to that flat shape and it’s just a drawing.
So once you finish your drawing, you extrude it and you still know where everything is.
In the end, this is a super long explanation to say a fully constrained drawing is just one where the software, because that’s what matters, right?
The software knows where every detail of the drawing is in space.
Chris
Yes.
Frank
And you do that by telling it this point is this relationship to the point of origin or these lines or this relationship to this XY detail from the plane that you’re working in.
Chris
Sort of.
Andy
You get wobbliness if you don’t.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
So I don’t know of any CAD programs that work in the fourth dimension.
Chris
I’m going to pop an example here.
So I got that STL file from Andy today for the little black hole thing, right?
Well, when I went and just took his STL and popped it right into Cura, my Cura was 180 degrees out from whatever Andy had had.
I actually had to flip it 180 degrees to tell the software, hey, this is where it should be, not this is, but because it was already constrained as a shape, it just took the whole shape and flipped it 180 degrees and I was able to print it.
Andy
Well, that’s more with the base plate of Cura is the, what is it, the XY plane and the base plate of my solid works is…
Frank
Whatever you choose for your primary.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
Well, basically what it was was Z plus and Z minus four different.
Frank
So there is the bit where a more complex CAD software as long as your part is constrained to itself.
Your CAD software doesn’t necessarily care where in space it is.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Does that make sense?
Chris
Yep.
Frank
So as long as it works with the other moving parts or the other dimensions of itself, it can create the STL from that part where free CAD requires that it knows where in space everything is before it’ll let you save it as an STL.
Chris
Yep.
Andy
It’ll let you not do it, but it seems to just jumble things up to piss you off.
Frank
Oh, and, and, and that’s when everything, that’s when you think that everything is fully constrained.
Andy
So, If you can’t tell, this is a hard one to explain for all the three of us who know what we’re talking about.
We all know exactly what we’re talking about, but oh my God.
Frank
It likes to give you some interesting geometries occasionally, though
Andy
Especially where you get that changes the surface they’re actually attached to.
Frank
When you get into some a little bit more complex stuff like threads, it’ll do a thread and then halfway through do a thread that takes up all of the available XY space at zero height and then finish the thread and that gets weird.
Andy
It gets goofy when you don’t constrain everything.
You just got to have no options of any kind of movement in your drawings that isn’t detailed.
Each point, each line has to be told how long it is or where it should exist or what it’s parallel to or tangent to or whatever.
If anything is left open, then it’s unconstrained and can move on its own and it does.
Frank
Yeah.
It’s a good one to learn on though.
You learn how to find all the things that are not constrained.
Andy
Yeah.
Definitely.
So, back to measurements.
Has anybody used any tools that we haven’t talked about for measuring?
Kevin
Well, I used a plain old ruler.
Chris
I use a coordinate measuring machine, but that’s for work.
Frank
I have actually just purchased a metric tape measure.
Andy
Oh, really?
Frank
Yeah.
Because I like the idea of designing stuff on my computer and because I do so much in metric, I don’t want to have to remember to go in and change the dimensions to SAE just for something I’m going to do in my wood shop.
So, if I design it all with metric and then have my metric tape measure, I don’t have to do the conversion.
Kevin
There you go.
Andy
Yeah.
You know, I do still use SAE for projects like those.
I talk about assemblies a lot and one of the beautiful thing, and I think I’ve shared this kind of stuff with you guys, when it comes to assemblies is I can sit down and just quickly make a 2×4 of a certain length and then I can use that 2×4 in an assembly to build something and essentially make your own like IKEA instructions on a project.
And I think I’ve shared a picnic table and a slide for my kids and stuff like that that was all designed inside of SOLIDWORKS first in an assembly and all those particular models were all SAE just because it’s a little bit easier to use with the tools I have at hand, you know, with a normal SAE tape measure and whatnot.
Frank
I suspect that the rest of the world calls a 2×4 a 40 by 100 probably.
Andy
Be a little bit easier for them to understand because, oh my gosh, 2×4 is not two inches by four inches.
Chris
I think they just probably call it a wood stud.
Andy
There you go.
Frank
Well, except for construction workers everywhere, I guarantee you have to talk about materials by dimension.
Andy
I tell you what though, sitting down and designing stuff that way in an assembly like that made actually building it.
Oh my gosh, so much easier and everything came together exactly like it should have.
Even like weird cuts where I made funky angles along, you know, like 2x4s or stuff like that, I was able to measure cut properly and fit into place without any problems.
It worked out all so well.
Frank
So actually the crossbeams in my desks, I designed them with the four legs and then supports and then to prevent wobble, put some in at angles and I actually designed like mapped out in CAD the space that those crossbeams were going to go in and their thickness and figured out what angle to cut them at to fit in there perfectly.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, yeah, just like that.
Frank
That was a nice thing to have because then I didn’t have to do all kinds of geometry to figure it out.
Andy
Is it like you can sit down with your material list and say, OK, I need to get these pieces cut down to here and here’s two of these that have this funky angle with it or whatnot and then do all that kind of stuff and then sit down with all of your product.
And I even took and painted all mine at that point too before assembling it and then just put it together just following the instructions.
I love that.
Chris
It’s your own, it’s your own personal IKEA.
Andy
It is.
It really feels that way too.
I’m sorry.
I’m getting excited.
Frank
Except for thinking about it.
Ideally, we can design things that are more structurally sound than IKEA, nothing specifically wrong against IKEA except for they use the MDF on everything.
Andy
True.
Very true.
Frank
I mean, if I’m going to get stuff like that, I might as well be buying it at Walmart for half the price.
Andy
Very true.
So one of the tools that didn’t get brought up so far that I found useful for profiling is a comb tool.
Frank
Oh yeah.
Chris
Yeah.
And you can 3D print your own in the first place too.
They’re freaking awesome.
Andy
One odd thing about it though that I like to use it is taking the comb profile and then sitting down in the CAD software and making construction lines for every tooth of the comb and then measuring each tooth of the comb individually and then constructing my line that way.
Chris
Well. Well, when you make the comb, can’t you actually just put measurement lines on the comb?
Andy
I guess so.
I use the needle comb so I can have 15 or 20 measurements per inch or something for particular profiles.
And I wouldn’t be able to print something with that kind of detail.
That’s one of those things that I think I want to buy.
Frank
That’s a little high resolution.
Chris
Yeah, I gotcha.
Frank
For the comb, that’s a little high resolution for markups.
Chris
For a rough comb, that’s a good idea.
For a fine comb, it’s not.
Gotcha.
Andy
Yeah, the only time I’ve used it that was the biggest help was measuring the profile of a piece of trim because it was an old cut of trim so it didn’t really fit anything and just taking those lines and then just using a spline to connect them all together with error and it worked out beautifully.
And I would have taken trial and error a couple of different times to be able to get that.
And I couldn’t photograph the edge of it or anything like that to be able to take those kind of measurements.
So comb tool was really nice for that.
I think that’s the only thing I’ve used it for though.
Frank
The next time you run into that, if you remember, take the profile with the comb and then take a picture of the comb.
Andy
Oh, that’s a beautiful idea.
Chris
I mean, Frank’s full of them today.
Frank
I have the occasional idea.
Andy
Oh, that’s a really good idea.
Really good.
Thank you.
Frank
I mean.
Aandy
Walked away.
Frank
It goes with the, I’m not the one focusing on the project and so it’s easy to comment about.
Andy
You always see stuff different.
That’s why it’s always good to ask somebody because you’re always going to get stuck on focused on something else and missing the obvious that somebody else can see, but you will never see.
Chris
That’s the epitome of keeping it simple and getting an outside perspective from on occasion.
Frank
So there’s a mildly amusing process that a lot of programmers, especially the ones that have read this special book, it’s called The Pragmatic Programmer and most programmers today have read it or at least heard about it.
But there’s a point in the book where they talk about this issue of being able to work through a problem and quite often you get to the point where you’re stumped and you call over another team member and you describe the issue to them and you go, oh, I just realized what my problem is and you’ve never got any feedback.
andy
Yeah.
Been there.
Frank
So what they do in the book is they say, get yourself a rubber ducky.
Put it on your desk.
Kevin
I was just going to bring up the rubber duck.
Frank
Put it on your desk and tell your problem, describe the problem the way you would to your coworker, except for you, describe it to the rubber ducky and save yourself from interrupting them and preventing them from doing whatever project they were on and maybe it’ll help you find the answer.
And it’s become kind of a big deal in the community where you’ll see people with the rubber ducky on their desk.
My wife has got some stuffed animals that she tells her problems to when she’s at work and she swears by it.
So yeah.
Andy
That’s a good tactic.
Frank
The next time you’re doing something and you run into an issue, pull out your Crescent hammer or whatever and describe the problem to your Crescent hammer.
Andy
Actually I’ve got a machinist for that.
It’s kind of nice.
Frank
You don’t call it open AI, do you?
Chris
I just barely switched to a different shift and at the moment I’m all by myself operating three machines.
Frank
He was all by himself…
Chris
I was making a program this week for the machinist and I was having some difficulty getting the machine to understand the geometry I was trying to input and I was trying, so I was saying, okay, I’m not getting a number for this one detail that you need my input on.
So I’m going to tell you what is going on here and I was going blah blah blah so it’s constructing this out of these various points and yada yada and I was like, oh, I know what’s going wrong after I explained it for a little bit and I’m like, and I don’t like the solution because that means the reason the software is supposed to be easy means that this part is not easy and I have to do it the hard way.
Frank
Well, there’s that.
Chris
I did it the hard way but once the program’s set up, you just put a part on the machine and hit go and it gives you all the numbers you want to know.
So well, in the end, there’s a psychological reason that the rubber duck approach works and it’s because it forces you to change your perspective, right?
Because when you’re focusing on the problem, you’re not looking at the peripherals.
You are focusing on, I took this step and this step and this step and now I’m down this hole and I don’t know what my next step is.
But when you force your perspective to the bigger picture, you have to back out and work through it and you go, oh, this whole path was, it made sense but the path I meant to be on was this one anyway.
And it’s hard to do when you’re down in the hole.
Andy
yeah
Kevin
yeah.
Frank
Whenever it works, however you get yourself to do that and break out, power to you, man.
Andy
My extruder came with some small rubber duckies.
I’m gonna have to grab one of them, set them aside, call him Frank and tell him my problems.
Except he won’t yell at me, which will be nice.
Frank
I haven’t yelled at you in like a decade.
Andy
No, you don’t yell at me.
Frank
But I’ve wanted to a few times.
Don’t get me wrong.
Andy
I needed it.
Frank
I have, however, gained a level of self-control.
Andy
That’s what you can deal with that.
Oh, I love you Frank.
Frank
A little level.
Andy
You’re so awesome.
Frank
A narrow level.
Sometimes you irritate me to within a hair’s breadth of your life.
No.
Honestly, no.
I think I’ve made this point a few times though.
We’ve all known each other so long that it’s obvious we’ve known each other for like 20 years.
Kevin
Right.
Andy
Yeah.
Especially when you’re reaching that age where it’s hard to make new friends, you’re kind of stuck with the old ones.
Frank
I guess it depends on who you talk to.
Some people say that you can never make enough friends.
But uh…
Andy
I found it.
Frank
And then COVID hit and some people intentionally made fewer friends.
Yeah, no kidding, right?
And we’re happy to do it.
Chris
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Frank
Anyway, I think that…
Chris
Yeah, we’re hitting like an hour, almost hour 20 now.
Yeah.
Kevin
Anyway, I was going to say that is the exact function of a rubber duck.
Just to answer Arthur Weasley’s question.
Frank
I don’t remember that question.
But… no, the more I think about it, the more I do.
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
It’s been a minute since I’ve read the books or seen the movies.
So, yeah.
On that note, since Arthur Weasley has joined the podcast, does anybody like Voices?
Do you want to try to imitate Arthur Weasley?
Chris
No.
Frank
No?
Okay.
I’ll do the outro then.
We’d like to thank everyone for listening to the very end.
Chris
The have a very quacky end.
Frank
Yeah.
That one.
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The music in this episode was written by Kevin Buckner.
Open AI’s Whisperer completed the heavy lifting for the transcripts, which you will find linked in the description.
Our panelists are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Kevin Buckner, Chris Weber, and Andy Kottam.
Until next time, we’re going offline.
Kevin
Keep your FEP up tight.
Chris
It’s over, you ducks.
Andy
What do you think, Duck Frank?
We need to come up with something else.
Kevin
Expect Bragg print photos from me shortly, because the vampire and the succubus turned out awesome.
Frank
Good deal.
Andy
Nice.
Kevin
Oh, yeah.
Frank
I wonder if succubus is going to offend anybody if it’s in the podcast.
Andy
Those look good.
And the wings turned out, it looks like, right?
Kevin
Yes.
Yes, they did.
Andy
Awesome.
Chris
I was going to say, succubus is what I tell Andy when his bus isn’t working.
Andy
Succubus.
I’m definitely going to get an SLA printer.
It’s gorgeous.