Frank
Thank you for joining us.
This is Episode 36 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.
We burned an hour talking about everything before this podcast, yeah?
Are we going to have anything for the podcast?
Chris
We didn’t talk about our printer as much, so you know.
Andy
And it’s, we’re getting better at sticking away from the printer subject before the podcast.
That’s a good thing.
Kevin
Right, right.
We’re spending an hour talking about everything else before we actually get going is nothing new.
In fact, I think an hour is kind of short for us.
Chris
Yeah.
It’s actually pretty far for the course.
Frank
I think the idea of trying to record earlier in the day so that we have time later kind of plays into my trying this new idea of not burning more time than we have to before the podcast.
So…
Chris
Hey, this is my new equivalent of seven a.m.
so, you know, I’m perfectly on board for this.
Frank
11 o’clock is your equivalent of seven?
Actually, that tracks.
Never mind.
Chris
That’s right.
Yep.
That’s when I get up during the week for my job now.
So…
Andy
That worked.
Frank
Have you done anything during the week on your printer there, Chris?
Yes, actually.
So you guys know I printed the the joycon grips, right?
So there’s actually a couple different kinds.
There’s the kind where you can print that that’s a wheel shaped for Mario Kart for the people that want to use the actual steering mechanism in the built into the joycon, the little level thing.
Frank
The movement.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
Sensors.
Chris
You know, you can now actually move your controller and the car does go that way as opposed to, you know, the old Nintendo’s where you’d move the controller.
And if you pushed harder, it did it faster or better or something.
That’s actually a thing on the new on the switch.
Frank
Actually, they did it with the Wii 2, but yeah.
Yeah.
Chris
So anyway, so I’ve I’ve so there’s that kind of joycon grip, the the wheel.
And there’s the one that, you know, is is one of one of the half joy cons with, you know, two, two places for you to put your palms so that you can use both hands on half a controller.
Frank
Like a regular controller grip
Chris
Sort of because then there’s the regular one where you can put two joy cons in and have the full controller.
And then there’s these, these grips that I just printed out this week are so that you can clip, clip them onto the side of the switch and, you know, take the switch around with you and actually have a place for your palms to go or, you know, you can grab it and it cups, your palms, palms cup right around the grips.
Instead of just grabbing this flat, instead of just holding onto this flat switch.
Frank
Right.
Chris
So we can take the, take the switch around portably and still not cramp up your palms because you’re holding a flat thing trying to, you know.
Frank
That’s only one inch by three inches and you have to, you know, lock your fingers so that you have the right range on the buttons and all.
Chris
The switches about the site, same size as a, as a tablet, right?
Frank
The sing… I mean, for the single controller though
Chris
Oh, so imagine your tablet with the two controllers connected on the sides of it and that those are the kind of grips I printed is grips that go onto the switch while it’s, while it while you’re playing it portably.
Frank
Gotcha.
Chris
So these, so these grips just kind of clip onto the side of that
Frank
so that’s actually kind of cool.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
I hadn’t thought of that.
I like that idea.
Chris
Yeah.
So I, I, I printed up a set for my, my stepmother who really likes to play Stardew Valley and, um…
Frank
Dardew Valley, it means Starlight Valley, the Disney one.
Chris
No.
Frank
What’s the game again?
Chris
Stardew Valley.
Frank
Is it Disney?
Chris
No.
Frank
Okay.
Kevin
Proceed.
I, I printed up a, I printed up a, yeah, so, and I’m, I printed up a set for the child too.
We’re pretty easy to do and the, uh, the supports that printed off came off really, really easy, real nice, cleaned up real, really, really easy, that was pretty good.
Um, and then, so because of COVID, it has made our family much more aware of, you know, where germs exist and happen and things.
So we’re throwing a little birthday thing this weekend for, uh, a couple of my in-laws have birthdays in May and then my child had her birthday a couple of weeks ago.
So we’re doing all the family thing for them today.
And so, um, instead of a cake, like we still, we still have cake, we still serve cake.
But instead of them blowing candles on the cake and getting their spitty breath all over the whole cake that everybody’s going to share, um, we have a, a, a, a painted covered piece of foam that you put the candles in, light the candles, whatever.
And, um, I had to print a little card holder to hold this nice Pokemon, uh, display card for the, for the not-cake.
Okay.
So, yeah.
So I printed that up just last night because the, the wife was going, okay, I want to put this on, on the cakes and some, and, you know, on this, in some way, shape or form, but I, I don’t know how to do this.
And I says, well, I’ll, I’ll just get you a card holder.
And she’s like, what?
And I said, yeah, sure.
Take me 10 minutes.
It actually took 10 minutes to print and she was, she was, she was taking it back and going, okay, again…
Frank
She still doesn’t think in portals.
Chris
Yep.
She’s, she’s, she’s like, this thing is invaluable.
You just have to, you, you just have to think about using it when you’re in one of these odd situations.
Yeah.
Frank
Yeah.
Chris
So that was my week.
Frank
Cool.
Uh, Andy.
Chris
Andy.
Andy
Me.
Chris
Thanks.
Frank
Have you done anything this week?
Andy
Nah.
My wife gave my dryer a flat tire.
And so I lost my table for my printer.
And so I haven’t been printing anything this week.
Um, I, uh, I do got a project I do need to do this weekend here.
The, um, the new pumps that I put in for my fish tank, dump a little bit of heat.
They’re are 50 watts when they’re running.
And since it’s an all casted cast iron pump, it transfers that heat to the water.
And I haven’t really noticed the duty cycle on the heater in my tank a whole lot.
I think before the pump, it might have been, uh, well, seven or eight times a day.
It would kick on and raise the temperature by one degree.
And since it’s been getting a little bit warmer and things like that, this little bit of extra heat that the pump is pumping into my tank has made it so that my tank is overheating a little bit.
It’s getting to the point where the heater only runs at night, but during the day, it’ll get two or three degrees above where it should be.
And you know, overheating for fish can be really, really bad.
Frank
Yeah. That’s dangerous.
Chris
So you want to put in a, maybe a radiator?
Frank
Well, no, I mean, there’s a lot of really nice, complicated ways to do it.
I would love to have an excuse to go like buy a mini fridge so I can yank the compressor out of it and build it old refrigeration alcohol unit to pump, you know, a loop of alcohol through the tank to cool it down.
That would be a fun project, but it’s all over.
I keep on looking for a reason to use a compressor pump.
I want to.
I tried to do it with my water cooling system on my printer and I just don’t need it there.
I’ve got a problem here, but that’s overkill here.
So I’m still looking for a project to use a compressor on, but for this one here, taking off the lid off my tank is enough to cool it down.
So what I’m going to do is just take a, and make a housing for a PC fan that can just blow onto the top of the water during the summertime.
That way, you know, only uses either five or 12 volts.
We’ll see which one works best.
And then it’ll keep it cool enough.
I’m sure.
Frank
If you were to have, excuse me, if you were to have the exhaust from the pump and go out and go through, say, a copper coil or something and then back into the tank, that would probably cause it to cool off.
Andy
It would, but here’s one problem that you really got to consider when it comes to fish tanks is anything that water touches corrodes badly.
Frank
So you don’t want copper.
You don’t want copper because it’ll oxidize quickly.
Chris
Yeah, you’d have to have it, you’d have to have it pre, pre-lined or something and that just doesn’t happen with rate copper radiators, although I guess…
Frank
You could use whatever your plastic is for the tubing, whatever plastic tubing you’re using on it anyway. Just have it go through like a heat exchanger coil and exchange the temperature with ambient air.
Andy
Yeah.
I mean, there’s a lot of neat ways you could have done it.
If I was to run the fish tank water through something to cool it down, I think doing it through a straight pipe, a straight copper pipe where you just connect the tubes to both ends and then cooling down that section of copper would work much better because it’d be easy to clean.
But you’re adding quite a bit to the filtration system of the tank and where I’ve added this additional pump and all this other kind of stuff, I don’t want to make it too complicated.
However, the amount of pressure this pump can suck out of this canister compresses my filters.
I’ve never seen anything like that and I’ve never looked it up and I don’t think there’s any problems to it.
But my filter tank is like 14 inches tall and when it starts to get clogged up, the filter medium on the inside will push down until it’s all void on the top and in that first filter is just corroded with garbage and that’s sucking everything down and compressing all the filter media.
So that’s a whole other thing too.
I’m thinking one of the things I might want to try is making a lot of filters out there use a V shape in the filter media so you get more surface area and for the first filter I use stuffing fiber for pillows and blankets and things and so on that way it’s just cheap and I can throw it out but I’m thinking about making a baffle that has that zigzag shape to it that the media will then form to to give me more surface area so it doesn’t clog up so much because right now I’ve got to pull out and clean the filters like every two weeks and that’s quite a bit.
And if it’s just opening up the filter, throwing out the old one and then putting in a new one and then closing it back up, you know, so it’s not too hard but every two weeks is kind of a lot.
It’d be nice if it was a little less.
Chris
what about buying a furnace filter and just cutting up bits of that?
Oh, that would be more difficult for what I’m doing here.
I mean, the filter material I’ve got is just a bag that looks almost like a pillow of just stuffing.
And so I just grab some of this out and then stick it in the filter and then close it back up.
So it’s already really super simple and the pump holds back the water.
If I open up the filter container, the pump will hold back the water and I got a valve to shut off of it from one side.
So it stays completely primed in everything when I disconnect the pressure from it.
So it’s usually not too big of an issue but still it’s frequent.
And the amount of suction and the pump has, my tubing is doesn’t seem to be getting dirty, which is kind of cool because that’s the hard thing to clean out as the tubing.
So it’s making it a lot easier and my tank does look particulate in the water, does never seem to be an issue on a fish tank because it settles out.
But particulate is like completely absent in my tank and so the filter is doing a really good job there.
It’s kind of nice.
Out of all those situations with the heat, I think doing the fan is the simplest, most least complex way to just cool the water down a little bit.
Chris
Yeah, keep it simple, sucker.
But yeah, and you know, using an old PC fan, there’s actually, if you don’t even want to try to design something yourself, Andy, you’re going to anyway, there’s actually lots of stuff on Thingiverse for just converting a fan, you know, for making it, just straight up printing a housing to convert your old PC fan.
I know because I did one of those for the child last summer.
So yeah…
Andy
You could see my lid here has got to cut out in the back for the filter, for the filter that I don’t use anymore and then a hole for feeding.
And so it’s got two big holes in my lid and I think I’ll be able to just make a fan that can stand off from the back of the tank that blows in one hole and just lets it come out the other.
I think that’s all it would really need.
It doesn’t need to be too complex.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
I’ve got a bunch of.
Chris
Yeah, just print off the same housing I did and then you got a switch right there to turn it on and off.
Andy
Yeah.
I think I’m going to get, I got, I got some push button switches that are momentary.
It’s not the right word for it, push on, push off buttons and I’ll make one for both of my tanks that just kind of sucks in the air and blows it into the top of the tank.
And that should be enough to keep things cool.
And since it’s not, since it’s fitting into the hole and attaching it to the side of the tank, I’ll still be able to just take the lid completely off and it will just stay right there.
That’s today’s project actually, but as far as printing goes, like I said, my dryer over this weekend got a flat tire.
And so I had it completely torn apart waiting for parts to arrive.
And since I use the top of my washer and dryers where I keep my printer, my printer’s been out of commission.
I did learn something though when I was putting it all back together last night.
If everything is unplugged on your printer and you move the carriage back and forth, the printer will turn on.
It will generate enough electricity to power on the printer.
That was a bit of a surprise or more or less the driver of the stepper motor converting it into DC and feeding the mainboard.
That was kind of the surprise I wasn’t expecting.
I think that all goes back around to why Chris says it’s a bad idea to move your carriage and bed by hand back and forth.
And I will take that information and continue to do it my way like normal and just probably not do it as fast.
Chris
I was going to say if your mainboard hasn’t blown up by now, it can’t be that bad.
Frank
How many mainboards have you replaced there Andy?
Andy
Only one and it was totally my fault.
I had a what’s it called heat sink come off one of the drivers and I tried to put it on back on while the board was still running and powered on and who knew that heat sinks conduct electricity and I touched pins.
So it wasn’t.
Chris
The mainboard blowing up was unrelated to this particular fast, this particular phenomenon.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Phenomenon.
Chris
menon menon.
Frank
Phenomenon.
Kevin
Do Dooot, do doodo
Andy
Do do do
Frank
Phenomenon.
Kevin
And that’s enough of that.
Chris
Our listeners are going to hate us.
Frank
We just lost every listener that we had now granted it was on the 22 of them.
But we just lost everybody.
Kevin
At least it wasn’t a Rick Roll.
Frank
I’m afraid to ask.
I’m sure I would recognize it once.
Chris
You know the song by Rick Astley?
Andy
You’ve never been Rick rolled.
You’ve been on the internet and haven’t been Rick rolled.
Frank
I may have.
I just don’t identify it right now.
Andy
I guarantee you have.
You just probably don’t have the name Rick rolled attached to it.
Yeah.
You’d recognize it.
Yeah.
I’m never going to give you up.
Kevin
And there he goes.
Chris
I was trying to avoid that.
Now they know listeners have a different song stuck in their head.
Kevin
Any we didn’t lose from the banana.
There’s no.
Frank
We’re down to zero.
Hey, you know what?
If we’re going to start over, we might as well do it in the first year we’ve been recording.
Andy
There you go.
There you go.
Frank
That’s the barrier to entry right there.
If you can make it past episode 35, everything’s going to be smooth from there.
Andy
Yeah, like we’re going to get it together after this.
Frank
Fair point.
Andy
I do have one question to pick your guys’s brains at.
If you wouldn’t mind.
Frank
Okay.
Chris
Are you sure you really want to do that?
Andy
I use a swamp cooler?
Because we’re up here in Utah.
So swamp coolers, water coolers work really, really well.
Frank
Until you get to too hot, but that’s a whole other point.
Andy
You know, there’s like, there’s like a week out of the entire year in which the humanity does seem to get too much.
And then we end up having that one couple of days that it’s too hot in the house.
But the fact that I don’t have a high electrical bill for the rest of the year kind of makes it worth it.
And I think if we ever did put a central air into the home, which I would love to have the option of that way we could use it during that time.
But all the rest of the time still use the water cooler.
Another great thing too is the water cooler keeps the air in the home completely circulated.
So I don’t have to, you know, we don’t run the air filters and things like that in the house.
There’s no smell in the house or anything like that.
In every time I cook and burn crap, which is a pretty regular basis, it drives out the smoke very quickly.
So there’s a lot of benefits to a water cooler.
But one of the things that I, I’d recently replaced my water cooler a couple of years ago and trying to make it work better for a lot longer period of time.
One of the things I learned is to stop the build up of, I almost wanted to say heavy metals, but that’s not the right term.
A build up of minerals, minerals.
Yeah, yeah.
Is to, is to, I mean, you put water into it and then you evaporate just the water and you just keep on condensing the minerals in the water.
So it’s good to vent them out.
And so a couple of years ago, I took and on the pump itself, I ran a quarter inch line out of the water cooler down the leg, did it all proper.
So it looks nice, buried it underground over to my sprinkler box because I put a ground drain, a gravel ground drain in my sprinkler box.
And that would be a good place to, to drain the, the water into.
Now that, that eight, that quarter inch line, that’s a lot of water can come out of that quarter inch line too much.
It’d be a waste of water if you imagine it just peeing out the entire time the pumps running.
That’s too much of a change.
I want to drip, you know, get a good drip.
And so whenever I’ve changed the flap on the toilet, you always have pieces left over from the kit.
And one of the pieces is the, the, the piece to be able to control the flow that goes into the tank that you put over…
Chris
Oh the flow valve.
Andy
Yeah, yeah.
And so I had a spare one of them.
So I took that off and I put it on this quarter inch pipe so I can pinch the pipe down with it so I can get just a drip.
But I’m constantly running in a situation where it gets clogged up with whatever.
And you go out, you readjust just a little bit, it starts flowing again and then a week later, you go back to it, it’s clogged up again.
And it just seems like just adjusting and adjusting it back does, does whatever.
So I think about putting a nozzle on the pipe instead of using this attachment to lower the flow.
And I was picking your guys’ brain because if I just put a, a reducer on it to whatever size would give me a pretty decent drip that I want, do you think that would function and not get clogged up or do you have any other ideas on ways to not let it get clogged up?
Chris
I think it would still get clogged up, but I think if you put a nipple towards the air conditioner side, if you put a nipple on there for an air compressor.
Frank
Thanks for that, Chris.
This episode just became explicit.
Chris
I’m talking about connector nipples, dude.
Okay, so anyway, so you put a connector and air hose connector on right there.
And you can just hook up your, just hook up your air hose and blow it out just a little bit kind of like you do your sprinklers at the end of the year.
Andy
Oh, well, just opening up the pipe for a second and closing it down does it, but that means pulling up the sprinkler box and doing stuff like that with it too.
That’s a little bit of work.
Other things that I’ve thought about is not using the pump in the water cooler and just making a controller that every time maybe once an hour or something, I can use a parasitic pump to pump out a certain amount of water out of it at full volume.
That way I have to worry about plugs and parasitic pumps don’t really get clogged up.
So, and they’re really easy to control their flow.
Chris
So it only turns on why you’ve got the air conditioner running, right?
Andy
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So right now, and there are times where we will run at 24 seven with the pump on.
So having it run and draining 24 seven, that’s quite a bit of water loss and that uses culinary water to supply it.
So I’m trying to get a way of using a microcontroller and doing weird things to make it work the exactly the way I want because I mean, I could put a solenoid valve on it and have it just like even use the normal pump and just purge at full volume for, you know, one minute every couple of hours or something like that.
And that would do the same trick too, but that’s kind of complicating things at that point.
Frank
So Andy, there is a simple solution that there is a simple solution that doesn’t involve any of this.
Andy
Does it involve me having to do something because I want to also offload my responsibility?
Frank
So anybody who has operated a marine anything has encountered these little plates that actually are designed to attract minerals in the water.
Chris
Oh, an anode.
Andy
Are you talking about a cathode on a ship?
Frank
No, no, no, they’re actual little metal plates.
There’s no power going through them.
None of that stuff.
But what they do is they attract all of the loose minerals in the water and then you have to change out the plate like every two or three years.
Chris
It’s the same thing as that.
Andy
That’s an anode in your anode.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
In your water heater.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
I run one of those.
So corrosion purposes, but they don’t really build up.
They more or less.
Well, they they corrode stuff to them, but yeah, things like calcium build up and hard water are the real culprits.
And those won’t be attracted by the anode cathode system.
Chris
The yeah, the only other thing you could do is maybe run it through.
If you’re avoiding lime build up, the only other thing I can think of it would be to put like a filter like…
Andy
I’ve got one of those two.
Yeah, I got one of those two.
But when you pump hundreds of gallons over the course of a year into it and then condense it down to the last five gallons of water that’s in the bottom, you’re going to get build up and venting it off.
Is… seems to be an easy solution.
I just want a way to stop clogging it up and having the baby sit it.
It’s like part of my mowing routine once a week is going and making sure I’ve got flow out of that little valve.
It’s just something that feels like I shouldn’t have to be doing.
I dodn’t want over complicating it by using a microcontroller and doing extra things to get it to work exactly how I want.
You know, it was nice just having a drain hose attached to it.
And if I can get a drip that worked all the time, that would be great.
I know there’s a way to print my way out of this.
I don’t know how.
Anyway, that was my thoughts.
Frank
I’m going to have to do some research because I think I know just not what was coming to mind anyway.
So Kevin, have you worked on anything this week?
Kevin
I have.
So I printed the other half of the card tray for the nightmare chess set.
And I didn’t get around to printing any more of the chess pieces, but the king and queen, or at least what I’m planning on using as the king and queen, worked out beautifully.
But another, what else I did was last week, I was talking about the need to replace my headset because one of my kids had gotten careless with it and tugged on some things and damaged the microphone line, which was causing me to be really quiet on the podcast.
And so I replaced that and then Frank supplied me with the STLs for a clamp on headset holder.
So I printed the clamp part of that with the FDM printer and I chose to go with the resin printer for the screw part of it.
And I need to clean out the the bore of the clamp because I didn’t I thought I could get away with not using supports and it mostly worked, but there’s some dangly bits that probably wouldn’t have been there in the in the threads if I had used supports.
So that was a lesson learned.
So I just need to clean those up and it should work just fine.
And then I also printed a decorative plate stand for the wife.
We went on a cruise to the Caribbean last summer and we got a plate that was painted with Aruba on it and or well, the plate itself is just a beach with a tree on it and you can see the ocean and stuff and it says Aruba on the plate.
And I so I printed that on the FDM printer using the blue and green bicolored silk filament and it looked pretty nice.
I was planning on designing the plate holder myself and then realized I was out of my depth with that one.
And so I just went on thingiverse and found a different one and printed that and then we’re just fine.
Frank
And you’ve actually been talking about that for a little while.
So yeah.
So none of the other ideas, I guess came to fruition then for you, you’ve been talking about the plate holder for a while.
Kevin
Right.
Yeah, so I decided, you know, I was I couldn’t quite figure it out.
I’m too new at CAD software.
So I just went on thingy verse and found one that looked nice and I printed that.
Frnak
Okay, cool.
Chris
Thingiverse is very helpful.
Same with Colts3d.
They got lots of stuff too.
Kevin
Yeah
Frank
It’s actually why I use the Google because even sites that I haven’t heard of yet end up in the results.
If I’m looking for something specific
Andy
Nice.
What’s your search term that you usually use to make Google dance the way you like it?
Frank
Um, I’ll usually just the same way I do with code like the code.
I’ll start with the language is the very beginning of my search.
It doesn’t really matter.
Google doesn’t care.
But for me, I start with the language and then I start with an approximation of what I’m looking for and then I refine from there.
However, I have recently gotten into doing Boolean searches on websites.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
And with Google and being in all that, if you want to do a Boolean search, you do the word site with a colon.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
And then the URL and it will only search that site for information and it’ll crawl through everything for you and that’s been very useful when I’ve used it.
Andy
Nice.
Kevin
Nice.
Frank
And it allows you to do and/or query stuff with it too.
So that makes sense.
And it uses the existing search engine properties to what’s the word I’m looking for to generalize the words that you’re searching for and it’ll bring up lower probability solutions as we as returns on your query for number three, four, five, whatever.
Just in case you get close.
So yeah, it’s been fun.
Andy
Yeah.
You got me curious on something.
You’re just talking about Google and searching something popped into my head that is almost unrelated.
But I’m checking it anyway.
Frank
That never stopped us before.
Andy
Can chat GPT write G code to a poor 3d printer to print a specific type of model I just asked we’ll see in a moment.
Frank
Well, I know that being image creator has been kind of interesting for the odd thing.
I think that even being is done some 3d drawings.
I haven’t used it for that, but I think it probably could do.
I would be surprised if chat GPT didn’t have.
I mean, it has access to everything.
Is it still on the on 4.5?
Is it still on the two year old data set?
that three was or…
Andy
at the moment, the only one that I’ve actually purchased normal access to is chat GPT for.
Okay, so those are the only ones I play with normally.
Frank
Yeah, but here three was limited to two year old data, right?
So is for on modern data?
Andy
Oh, I’m not exactly certain where chat GPT lies in its current form.
What they have in production at the moment and turns out no, at least chat GPT four refuses to write G code.
It says that the text output would be too small to create a 3d model.
3d model requires more space than the text space limitations allow.
It’s almost like it says that it can, but it can’t.
It’s kind of what I get from this.
I could tell you, but it would take too long to tell you.
So I’m not going to tell you.
Frank
We got to figure even a simple say circle.
I say simple.
That’s probably one of the more complex things for it to do.
It would take 300 lines of G code just to do the circle.
So if it’s not, I guess if you were to ask it to give you the code in like a condensed form, like you can do a JavaScript or, you know, other languages like that where it’s condensed down to one line of code.
And separated by the semicolons and curly brackets and all that.
Then it could do it.
But then you would have to pretify the code after that.
Andy
Yeah.
Oh, it’s kind of that chat GPT’ neat stuff.
I’ll tell you that.
That’s just.
You know, I a lot of people use it for coding.
And even though that I code in a very rudimentary language, natively on a normal basis, it will still give me code related to that.
And I think that’s pretty dang cool.
And about a quarter of the time it works without having to change anything, which is kind of neat.
Frank
Well, you know this.
I don’t know if it’s anybody else has been mindful of it, but our spreadsheet, where we prioritize what our next episode is going to be working on a script for it for a couple of months, you know, just picking at it.
90% of it I actually wrote in the first day I had the spreadsheet and I just picked at it since then anyway.
One of the reasons or one of the things I was running into there wasn’t working.
I decided to go to chat GPT for and it explained it in two seconds when I was doing wrong and now it’s for lack of a better word.
It’s in production.
So that’s cool.
And that’s why the macro to archive our subjects works the way it does is because that one little thing got fixed.
Andy
Nice.
And people are worried about people using chat GPT to do coding for them directly.
And I think you actually have to know.
Be a little bit more savvy to be able to use chat GPT code in a project.
Then if you were to just write it all yourself.
Frank
I actually got in an argument with chat GPT as we were solving it.
That shouldn’t work.
The plus equals operator should be just fine, not the whatever my variable plus one.
No, no, that’s what it was.
I was trying to do plus plus instead of the variable plus one.
Andy
Okay.
And I was like, that doesn’t make sense.
Why would that work that way?
And so it was this kind of ongoing conversation with why my code apparently was just too efficient.
And the processing of the data was faster than the recognition of what the data was.
And it was getting confused.
So I had to go with a less efficient process so that he could properly do it.
Andy
And you were talking about this too.
That’s why stepping through it worked fine.
But then when you ran it straight through, it would not work.
That’s frustrating to deal with those kind of problems.
Frank
Because when I was debugging, it was thinking about everything and going slower.
But when it was just running.
Andy
Thank you GPT for being able to write to take the code we’ve written and make it less efficient sort functions.
Frank
And that’s why software engineers hate their jobs sometimes actually.
I wrote this wonderful code.
It’s beautiful.
And it does the thing.
Well, it’s supposed to do the thing.
I don’t know why it’s not doing the thing.
It doesn’t make sense.
Andy
Yeah.
That is insane house.
Some of the things people have figured out how to code.
There was one that was in a game back in the day.
I don’t remember what the entire thing was.
It was like they were taking you know, because back in the day when we would write games, you really had to use every little bit of tricks you knew to get it to function.
Frank
Because it needed to be stupid a light.
Andy
Yeah, you look at you look at like old Nintendo games and things like that.
It is amazing that they made it function as well as it did with what they had available.
But there was a situation like that.
And there’s a lot more to the story and a lot more I’m missing.
It’s got a whole name to it.
But somebody was able to pull out.
I think it was in one of the first person shooters that was really popular.
And it works so well.
I think it was quake actually that they did a math routine that involved changing a variable type to a variable type that didn’t work with the original data.
But then they could have…
But by doing that, that the way the computer handled moving data that didn’t belong in one variable type to another variable type would do the process or part of the process that he needed so efficiently.
I don’t know.
That’s a whole new thing.
I think it was quake that they did it for.
And it’s just some of the neat tricks they’ve come up with to make computers dance the way they want them to.
And in total ways that they’re just not designed to do is just awesome.
When you see stuff like that.
Frank
Well…
Andy
sorry
Frank
And there’s really so much about, especially the early games that I found fascinating.
Like a V8 occurrence of the game becoming more difficult is you play it was actually an accident.
I’ve heard something about that.
And it’s because I can’t remember the name of the game now.
It’s the one where you’re, huh?
Yeah, space invaders where the whole game was programmed and it had to process the whole line coming at you at once.
But after you got past the stuff, it didn’t need to worry about it anymore and so it let it go.
And because it was processing all of that at the same time, it was going slower.
But as you got closer to the end, it only had the process what was ahead of you and what was on the screen.
So it was faster and it was more complex and harder to play.
Chris
You should have shot where I was going, not where I was at.
Frank
Yeah, so it just kind of naturally became a part of every game after that.
Andy
Yeah, that makes sense.
So I looked it up real quick while you were talking.
It wasn’t quake and it was the inverse square root algorithm that somebody came up with.
And it wasn’t changing variables.
It was using a bit shift to do the math in a very, very weird way that was super, super, super efficient and allowed them to to process to do this.
I think it had to do with the rendering of something, if I remember right, the rendering of the images themselves.
Something like that.
Either way, it was just stupid, efficient compared to doing it the proper way.
And it’s just that was the one of the last times in newer systems when I saw developments of people using weird ways to make, you know, super efficient code.
Chris
I don’t know what’s the computer equivalent of putting compressed air in your intake.
Andy
Well, just like Frank was talking about a couple of podcasts ago, when we came up with that little idea of, let’s see who can, you know, find the all of the primes from one to an absurd number with, you know, who could do that the fastest.
And it wasn’t, it had nothing to do with coming up with the code to figure out all the primes.
That was the easy part.
The competition was tweaking the hell out of it to see make it go fast.
Yeah.
Frank
Well, can I add a function in the middle that will make this process quicker or can I remove this part of this function?
Okay.
Your spaghetti code doesn’t have separate functions, but you get the point that I’m trying to make.
I was using different processes altogether to multitask.
What are you talking about?
Frank
Okay.
And I was using more modern coding practices, which is distributing each individual process itself to its own function.
Yeah.
Modularizing my code.
Andy
The neat part, we both went totally different directions with the problem using totally different languages.
And it was still like a neck and neck thing with who was, I don’t even remember who won in the end.
Frank
We got to the point where we realized that my machine could go, no, it was your machine.
Your machine could do higher numbers.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
Because what we were effectively doing was just filling up our RAM with all these stored values.
And so it was less a challenge of who could do a higher number because that’s how it actually started was who could find higher primes quicker to who could do it faster because we reached that limit.
And I think that once we started tweaking it for speed, we at some point were like, now we need to set this code up to run on both of our machines and take an average because my machine is going to act different from yours.
Andy
Yeah.
But since seeing people do that anymore, don’t get me wrong.
If we probably looked up routine specifically designed to do what we were looking for, we would probably come up with something that was even more efficient than what we were coming up with.
Frank
I don’t know.
Andy
Because I mean, somebody out there is going to find a great way to do it and that’s going to become the norm.
You know, that’s going to be the code used for that particular routine.
That’s what you’re going to find on GitHub.
Frank
Well, and so the great thing about those coding challenges is you get thousands of devs who are doing the same basic thing.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Across, you know, one of the sites that I use for stuff like that, you know, they facilitate 30, 40 languages.
And so you’ve got thousands of devs across 30 or 40 languages coming up with their own ideas.
And when I’ve gone through and looked through them, actually it starts looking very similar for each language.
Like this is because one of the requirements is that it has to be done within a certain amount of time.
And there have been times where I’m paring down my code to make it so that it runs faster.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
And by the time I get it pared down, it’s like, oh, this other person, I wish I would have thought of that.
You know, yeah.
But there’s only like two or three variations.
By the time you get to the more complex things that is trying to solve.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Because within each language anyway, because it’s just the best way to do it.
Andy
Yeah.
That’s neat stuff.
That’s neat stuff for sure.
Kevin
So Frank, have you done anything with your 3D printer this week?
Frank
I have.
I do want to make the point that last week we were talking about tools and measurement tools specifically.
And I never once said anything about feeler gauges for measuring stuff.
Chris
Oh, yeah.
Andy
And that’s one of your major tools that you use.
Frank
And that was another point we kind of talked about it when Kevin leveled his bed instead of cramming.
So I think that is probably a good idea for us to use the term tramming from now on to distinguish it from leveling.
And when you tram, you’re setting the bed level to the rest of the machine instead of level to the ground
Andy
agreed.
Frank
Okay.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
Tramming is just truing up a plane to another plane, right?
Frank
I haven’t looked up the definition.
I just know that it’s the appropriate term in the machining world.
Chris
I just call that parallelism.
Frank
Anyway…
Andy
That’s some kind of weird religion that Chris is coming out with.
It’s called a fine.
A fine adjustment that ensures correct functionality function or alignment.
Frank
There we go.
So basically you tram your you tram your wheels on your car when you get a little wobble at higher speeds and you tram your 3D printer when you start digging into the plate.
Chris
I guess you could also call that an alignment.
Andy
Bet there’s a lot of words we can cram into that.
But I like tramming.
That’s a good definition.
And it’s a machining definition.
So it fits.
Chris
We’re not confusing it with you with aligning our wheels or…
Frank
And I did see…
Kevin
Or Dungeons and Dragon’s characters.
Frank
I did see where there was somebody.
I don’t think it was Kevin.
I think that you’re tramming issue was something different.
But I saw where somebody leveled their bed plate to the ground.
Andy
Got a spirit level out there and thought they were.
Kevin
Yeah, I watched a video about bed leveling and the guy.
And that’s where the concept of it’s not actually leveling was introduced to me.
He said that he had watched somebody pull out a carpenter’s level and put a bed to make sure that the bed itself was level.
And he was like, that’s not.
That’s what you want because…
Frank
that hurts my heart to watch that kind of stuff…
Kevin
your bed is level to the ground.
Yes, but is it level to the nozzle that’s the important thing.
Frank
And that’s where the parallelism comes in as an important detail to tramming.
Andy
Yeah
Chris
Yeah, the, the, the, the plane across which your machine moves needs to be parallel to the bed.
Frank
So yeah, that’s really just where my research has gone.
About a week and a half ago when I was having the issues with my nozzle, killing itself, not killing itself power cycling.
One of the things that I did to try to resolve it before I realized it was a temperature issue was I totally messed up all of my settings and Cura.
And one of those settings had to do with under extrusion.
So I’ve been fighting that ever since I got my other issue resolved.
Chris
It’s okay Frank. Lots of adult men have trouble with under extrusion.
Andy
Have you thought.
Oh, my God.
Hey, have you, have you thought about starting over with the default cura profile.
I only say that because it fixed all of my problems.
Frank
I kind of did that in the process of messing with all my settings.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
And that was before finding the problem with the heat block.
So anyway, I’ve been trying to figure that out while I’ve been trying to print off a gift for my brother because his birthday is coming up tomorrow.
Actually, I should make sure to give him a call.
And then when I was in the pantry… my wife has a wire shelf that she had put up so we could have two layers of cans on that one shelf.
And the shelves that were installed in the pantry are also wire.
So I just originally had taken some cardboard strips to put under the legs to give them something to hold, you know, hold them up on.
And one of those shelves had fallen down.
And I’m like, you know, this is a fix that worked for four years since we moved in.
I now have a 3D printer.
I’m going to print some feet that will not allow this to fall through anymore.
And that was interesting with under extrusion for the part, but I did manage to get them both kind of worked out at the same time, which was nice.
So I did the feet and I fixed my printer and I actually printed off, um…
My brother is a big fan of the senior evil here, no evil speak, no evil statues.
And so I found some frogs that I could 3D print that have the they’re doing the actions for you.
So I printed that off, I still need to I think I’m going to put a little more work into it, maybe print them down, send them smooth, make them look pretty and give them that for his birthday.
Andy
Nice! that sounds like a good gift.
Frank
Yeah.
Andy
So you did manage to fix the under extrusion problems with the printer for the most part.
Frank
There’s still a few places that seem like they’re under extruded, but it’s not a whole like a whole half of a layer or something like that.
I printed a bunch of calibration blocks and benches to get to where I am and I just I don’t know how to fit like it could still be an issue of the plastic itself at this point because everything else is so intermittent that I don’t think it’s the printer anymore.
So…
Chris
You know, I did have a, yeah, I did have a role of plastic do that to me over the over the Christmas holiday.
And I knew it was just that particular role because I’d use the same settings for another piece of plastic and everything printed fine.
So I think it was that I bought some cheap stuff and that happened to be some of the some of the stuff you get when you go cheap.
Frank
And I was I am a little disappointed I guess is the correct tense for that because this is the stuff that I absolutely loved like two months ago and maybe I just need to put it back in my dehydrator for a little while to I was about to say you know what you might could do is put it in the dehydrator again to…
Chris
Oh, I had a thought though for rehydrating or for re.
Frank
Conditioning.
Chris
Yeah, reconditioning for reconditioning your plastic.
What if you had a little bowl of some sort of light light oil in there with it like say WD 40 or something you think that would be helpful.
Frank
I don’t know.
Andy
You know what?
A while back when I was fighting my wet noodle problems with putting TPU inside of a Bowden system.
One of the things that I wound up attempting is I made a little case that clamshell case that would clip around the plastic.
And I put a sponge on the inside there and soaked it with a little bit of cutting oil and put and then clamped it around the plastic before it went in trying to make it slippery on the outside of the plastic is it went through the Bowden tube and that cost a lot of problems with burning the oil off in the head itself.
I could have been the oil I was using.
Chris
Yeah, cutting oil is quite a bit heavier than what I was thinking because like because because like you guys.
I don’t know if you guys ever clean your dashboards and whatnot in your car, but you know.
I use Armorall like to reinvigorate the plastic in your in your car and I’ll use that on various plastics through the house also to help reinvigorate them.
So I was thinking maybe something like Armorall could help you.
Re-condition your plastic to and it’s not like putting it directly on your printer…
Andy
Yeah, your just using the vapor from it right.
Chris
Yeah, the vapor from it inside of the evaporator chamber.
Frank
That’s an idea.
I hadn’t thought of that.
Andy
Yeah, I don’t know.
That’s the neat one.
Chris
I was thinking about I was thinking about doing something like that when I can’t when I can buy a dehydrator for myself for my plastic.
I was going to have a little a little glass cup or something like that in the middle that you jump a little bit of Armorall or WD40 or something more lightweight like that into it.
Frank
Yeah, I don’t know that I like the thought of WD40.
I think it still might be too heavy but like air tool oil.
I think I’d be okay with yeah or the Armorall.
Chris
Like I said, I know Armorall is made specifically for reinvigorating plastic.
Frank
Right!
Yeah, it’s definitely an interesting idea.
I don’t know.
Well, so I haven’t done anything besides those two little projects.
I say little I spent many hours trying to figure out the under extrusion issue.
But yeah, that’s it.
So we did have a topic this week.
Chris
We did?
Kevin
Believe it or not.
Frank
Yes, we could always put it off until next week.
We’ve been doing this for a minute, right?
Andy
I think this is a topic we got on hand is isn’t a super detailed one either.
We just got to explain why you don’t dry your socks with your printer, I think.
Kevin
Well, I mean, the topic being did you have you use the printer for the purpose you bought it for what you had in mind when you got it.
I mean, the short answer for me there is yes, yes, I have.
Andy
I have printed plastic with my printer.
Yes.
Frank
It helps it from my part.
I didn’t have.
I don’t know a commercial specific idea for it.
I just wanted to be able to make stuff, right?
But you know, some people buy it and they think, well, I’m going to use this when my carpentry shop or I’m going to replace all of the stuff in my house with plastic that I designed or whatever.
So yeah, I can see it being a valid question in that respect.
I just I don’t think that I had a specific purpose in mind for its use.
How about you, Chris?
Andy?
Did you have a specific purpose that you bought your printer for?
Chris
You know, I did I kind of I kind of envisioned it being used to like upgrade my my gaming experience, you know, because you guys know I I’m collecting all like all the classic consoles.
So I wanted to be able to make accessories and upgrades and things like that.
I mean, I initially the thing that made me want to buy the printer in the first place was that I’d bought a Raspberry Pi and I realized all the fun things you can do with raspberry pies and printing different cases and things for them.
Frank
Not the least of which is, you know, eating the pie because I like raspberry pie.
Chris
You should try raspberry pinapple pie.
That stuff is delicious.
Frank
I do tend more towards apple pie, honestly, but raspberry is pretty good.
Rhubarb was made kind of tasty.
Chris
You know, they made an orange pie.
Andy
Yeah, I’m like, it would be very good.
Frank
It’s no worse than orange cake.
Andy
Unless you’re into like that sell hurting thing.
Kevin
Then you could always like brush your teeth before eating the orange pie.
I bet that would be awful.
Kevin
Orange mint pie.
There you go.
Chris
No, actually, adult sensory syndrome is a thing where people go out of their way to feel, and have, like, the most sensory sort of things they can get their hands on.
Frank
I get sensory overload when there’s more than four people in the room.
So I’m okay.
Chris
Yeah.
Well, sensory overload doesn’t meet doesn’t act necessarily correlate with sensory seeking because some sensory seeking people will still have sensory overload with other senses.
So like, yeah, anyway
Kevin
Anyway.
But I’ve ended up using my printer for more…
Frank
That’s twice I derailed Chris.
That’s awesome.
Chris
So I ended up using my printer for more than I initially intended, which is not a bad thing, but I’m trying to think of like the most surprising thing I ended up using it for.
I guess like the most the more surprising thing was that I ended up using it for home improvements like IE the the hairbrush holder and the cover plate, you know, things like that.
I didn’t ever anticipate, you know, 3D printing a 3D printing a cover plate.
It just kind of just kind of came in.
And again, because of the podcast, we’ve had other ideas where you can use your printer to rehydrate, or I mean, recondition, try to recondition your plastic, you know, that’s another use I hadn’t envisioned for my printer.
There’s printing toast.
Frank
Why does this feel like it suddenly turned into a things not to do with your printer part two?
Chris
Andy touched on that and I just had to make that joke.
But seriously, yeah, I’ve used it for more than…
Frank
Not that we ever really stick to a topic anyway.
Kevin
Well, and I’ve also used my printers for more than I had initially envisioned when I got them, like, and I’ve made no secret.
My whole goal was to print pieces for playing games.
Yeah, I’ve done that like mostly many figures.
That’s why I went with resin initially, but then there’s it became clear that my resin printer doesn’t… isn’t capable of printing large enough things for like some of the scenery or like the dice tower.
So I needed to get the FDM for that purpose.
And that’s largely what I’ve been doing with the FDM printer is printing stuff for games.
And I mean, there is the the tube rack that I’ve designed and printed a couple of but so there that’s an example of stuff that I was like, hey, I’ve got this thing.
I might as well use the one to make the other.
Chris
There’s that that decorative plate holder you were just talking about too.
Kevin
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I was going to try to figure out a way to make to print one of those on the resin printer, but um no, because I got the FDM before that request came through.
So yeah, I had the FDM and then the request came through and I could definitely do that with with my FDM printer.
Yes.
Andy
I think that why even bought my printer and I think it all started of not being able to construct the shed that I wanted to build.
You know, because I don’t know what I’m doing.
I don’t know code very well, but I don’t need to follow code with the shed.
And so I remember looking around and finding some software that could help me design a wall and at least show me if I just have a picture of what to do, how to lay out, you know, the 2x4s and stuff like that.
And I could accomplish something and that led me to learning solid works for that method.
And then that occurred me that I could build not just these super square shapes of wood.
I could build intricate things and how fun it would be to get into CNC machining.
But if I could take out of the printer and make something I wanted to, you know, to build with it.
And so that led me into looking into CNC stuff for a little bit.
I did get too far until I ran into 3D printers.
And I’ll tell you what, when I got my 3D printer from what I envisioned it would be, which is always going to be better than what you actually think it would be.
Everything I thought I was going to be able to do with the 3D printer, building replacement stuff for stuff around the home, you know, and just being able to have the option to make a model and make that model real and have that model be whatever you need it to be.
And the one thing that’s been awesome, it is done exactly what I envisioned would be awesome if it could do.
And that’s the amazing part because that never seems to happen.
3D printers have just been absolutely ridiculous how capable they are.
And the negatives, the things that you can’t really do with them, that list seems to have been pretty small.
But like, okay, when I go to design something, I have to design with stuff in mind.
Like, if I’m going to make some kind of bracket, I need to think about what forces are going to be on that bracket and make sure that core aligns well with my layer line direction and things like that.
And some things like that that you got to consider, but all of those are so little compared to it being able to so closely still accomplish the taking it out of your head into a model into the real world and having it be a one for one thing pretty close to it.
And that just blows my mind that it’s it’s capable of doing that.
Right now, I’m looking into getting an SLA printer because Kevin showed me that he can do watertight things and stuff like that that I actually can’t accomplish with the printer right now.
And I’m sure it’s going to be the exact same thing.
I’m going to be just just capable as I can with the FDM except for scale.
And you guys know I print small things anyway, so that might not necessarily be a problem.
I don’t get my waterproofing option, which changes everything for me too.
And that’s going to be wonderful to have.
I’m looking forward to that.
And then even a little bit down the road here too, I want to get into a small, you know, cheap 300 or300or500 CNC machine that I can do aluminum with.
And that’s going to open up another world that I bet will be similar to the experience with 3D printers.
Printing is just it is like it reminds me back when I got my first welder.
And I’m one of those idiots that have a welder that probably should not have a welder.
Chris
And you mean just do not have a got this particular guy behind it.
Andy
Yeah, there you go.
But just the world that it opened up being able to do stuff like that when it came to the welder.
The printer is so much even more than that where it’s changed.
It is 30% of all the tools I use in my home are now my 3D printer.
And that’s a huge addition to your capabilities.
And the getting used to using CAD is developing that skill to be able to use the 3D printer better has left me an entirely new skill with the CAD.
And I’ve seen like it started with constructing, you know, like 2×4 level kind of stuff, which quickly moved into other small stuff and then is come back all the way around and you’ve seen my models of things that I’ve made that I’ve modeled, you know, in CAD.
And that’s a concept for things like the slide I made out for my kids outside for my kids and things like that and just the world that that opened up through the printer using tools that you use on the printer.
So I’m definitely getting exactly what I dreamed of out of the printer and you never get what you dream out of something.
Chris
Sounds like he’s got more, more than what you expected.
Andy
Totally, totally, it’s been wonderful, absolutely wonderful.
Frank
I don’t know.
I think that that’s a good high note to leave this on.
Does anyone have anything else to add?
Kevin
I don’t.
Frank
Chris.
Kevin
Did we lose Chris?
Andy
He’s very still.
Oh, no, he’s there.
He’s typing.
He’s showing us for this.
Chris
I was giving you static.
Frank
He’s vegetating because his brain doesn’t know how to follow you up there, Andy.
Andy
Yeah, well, if you haven’t got a 3D printer, you got to learn, you got it when you get a 3D printer, you got to get into CAD.
Because that’s what makes the 3D printer something of just being able to print other people’s models to being able to do whatever with it you wanted to do.
Always get into.
Frank
Yeah, so you decided you needed to procelite the religion of CAD, huh?
Andy
Yeah, I think that’s that’s what makes the printer such a valuable tool.
You don’t need to utilize 20% of the printer.
What you bought it for is in CAD.
Frank
Utilizing the full extent of what the tool can do that makes sense to you.
Chris
That’s true.
You know, it’s like it’s like buying an air ratchet, but only using it to tighten things down.
If you if you figure out CAD, you can learn how to loosen stuff up too.
Frank
Or carve it.
Anyway, yeah, all right.
Well, I guess now’s as good a time as any to call it.
We’d like to thank you…
Chris
call it ugly.
Frank
Sorry for calling you ugly or thank you for calling me ugly.
Why would I thank you for calling me ugly.
Anyway, not me.
We’d like to thank everyone for listening to the very end.
Chris
The very, very, very end.
End yeah.
Frank
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For individual feedback, you can email us at Franklin, Kevin, Andy, or Chris at amateur 3d pod.com.
And that’s Kevin, not Kevin, because my brain and my mouth don’t always agree with each other.
Chris
We got a new nickname.
Kevin
No, no.
Frank
The music in this episode was written by Kevin Buckner.
And open AI’s whisper completed the heavy lifting for the transcripts, which you can find linked in the description.
Our panelists are me, Franklin, Christensen and my friends, Kevin, Buckner, Chris Weber, and Andy Cottam.
Until next time, we’re going offline.
Kevin
Keep your FEP tight.
Chris
Andy said duty cycle.
Andy
CAD can be scary?
Duty cycle.
Frank
Cad can be scary with a question mark.
Andy
Yeah, I don’t know.
I had something there till Chris said. OW!
Chris
Duty cycle.
Frank
Andy just decided to flash himself.
Andy
That caused a pain response.
That was weird.
It was bright, but I wasn’t expecting that.
Frank
That wasn’t a phone.
Was it?
One of your LED flashlights
Andy
Torch.
Yeah, it was one of the powerful, powerful ones too.
Frank
I didn’t realize you were English, Andy.
Torch.
Chris
Oh, he flashbanged us.
Andy
Yeah, you know, I don’t vocabulary well.