Frank
Thank you for joining us.
This is episode 52 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, Chris Webber, Andy Codham, and Kevin Buckner.
And today’s episode is brought to you by… Four White Guys.
Andy
Hey, at least we’re all back together.
Chris
Shameless plug
Kevin
Indeed.
Andy
How’s everybody doing?
Frank
It’s good.
Kevin
It’s better than a sharp stick in the eye.
Frank
Yeah, that one.
Andy
That’s good.
I glad you enjoy doing the podcast here, Kev.
Kevin
Like I said.
It’s better than a sharp stick in the eye.
Frank
Well, when the bar is so low, you almost have to wonder…
Chris
Look, I’m not going to shame Kevin’s kinks here or nothing.
Frank
That’s a first.
Kevin
I appreciate that, Chris.
Anyway, so 3D printing, eh?
Frank
Oh, yeah.
I guess we should talk about that.
We just spent an hour not talking about it.
We should probably get there, huh?
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
I’m sure we’ll manage to derail this train pretty quick.
Frank
We do.
Kevin, did you work on anything the last week?
Kevin
Yes, yes, I did, actually.
So I mentioned on the last episode that I had some failures with the sitting Twi’lek and that I was going to try some things, and I did have some success with that.
I got a successful print off of…
Andy
Oh, well, that looks great.
Kevin
One.
And I did take some pictures of it and share it on the Facebook group.
And then I also started printing the black and white squares for the chessboard for the nightmare chess set that I’m going to be making.
And then I went into Titancraft’s community section and saw that there are so many other options that I hadn’t even considered when I was making the succubus princess.
And so then I, like, you can add parts as a new thing and then attach it to places where the software doesn’t really want you to put it.
And so I had complained earlier about not having skimpy enough clothing for the succubus.
So I found that they’ve got some skull-shaped shoulder pads and stuff and just a moment.
And for the visual listeners, I’m going to share my screen here so that you all can see what I have done with that.
Frank
Of course, I have to watch the stream.
Kevin
I was able to do kind of what I did in Blender to a different extent, though.
So I made the skull bra and the band for the bra and the band for the garters and the garter holders are Santa Claus belts that I was able to shrink and manipulate the size and shape of and attach to the appropriate parts of the body.
And then this was, here was a belt of some sort or a pants or something that I was able to make look more like lingerie, just through manipulation of the size and shape of things.
Frank
Let’s be honest, though, the real Santa Claus, as in the one, the one based on Krampus from the far north in Europe would appreciate this.
Kevin
Yes.
And then I ended up sharing this on the community also because I was so proud of what I had done with it.
Frank
Yeah, that looks really good.
Andy
Yeah, that looks great.
That looks really great.
That blended right into the model.
It looks like it was supposed to be there.
That’s cool.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
You’ve got a talent, my friend.
Kevin
Thank you.
And so that’s mostly what I’ve done.
I also ordered some supplies to make my own guitar pickups.
The magnets and copper wire should be getting delivered today.
And my goal is to 3D print the flatworks part of the pickup bobbins.
And I’ll probably end up trying to design something to modify my wife’s sewing machine to get it to accept the bobbin so I can use that to wind the copper around it.
Andy
Oh, that’s a good idea.
Kevin
But I also need to design the flatworks.
But I need to first figure out how to punch holes, like cutaway things in Blender because I haven’t been able to figure out how to do that.
But it’s also a basic enough shape that I might just do that in FreeCAD because I already know how to do that in FreeCAD.
Andy
Yeah
Frank
Import the file and just cut it out?
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
It could work.
Kevin
So I would just basically be making an elongated oval thing for the top and bottom of the flatworks and then getting the, I think it’s a five millimeter diameter cylinder and cutting that out at half inch intervals.
And there you go.
Andy
Nice.
Chris
Software-based Play-Doh.
Kevin
Exactly.
Frank
Yeah.
Andy
Wow.
Frank
That’s in Blender right there.
Kevin
So that’s what I’ve done.
Frank
That is cool, dude.
I look forward to seeing how that comes out.
Have you done anything this week, Chris?
Chris
No.
Kevin
For shame.
Andy
How dare you.
Chris
Yeah.
Me working swings and catching up with chores I didn’t do last weekend because of… stuff.
Ended up with jet lag almost all week and I didn’t do anything else.
Andy
No, I’m sorry.
You got anything planned coming up?
Any projects that you got on the docket that you’re thinking about?
Chris
I’m looking at a few Halloween ideas.
It is time to start printing up things for Halloween.
I shared with you guys the eyeballs I found on Thingiverse.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
Yeah, those were pretty cool.
Kevin
Yeah.
Chris
Yeah.
So I got this crazy cool idea to make a floating eyeball lava lamp.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
It does sound fun though.
Chris
Yeah.
So I’ve got a fish tank lava lamp with these little mechanical fish in it.
So all I’m going to do is take out the mechanical fish or maybe I’ll leave the mechanical fish.
I’m not sure, but I’m going to put some eyeballs in it.
So I’m going to see how well a solid printed eyeball does if it moves up and down in the distilled water properly.
I also found at Spirit Halloween that they’ve got these jelly-like eyes that should do fairly well if my printed ones don’t work out.
Frank
Am I misremembering that lava lamps and that sort of thing tend to get real hot?
Kevin
They do.
Chris
Okay.
So this one is not.
It is a ornamental lava lamp.
So we have a real lava lamp.
It gets hot and the globs move up and down.
Frank
Yeah.
The temperature is what makes the globs move in the first place, right?
Chris
Yeah.
Right.
So the one I’m talking about actually is a ornamental kid’s toy.
It’s meant to be…
Kevin
The actual term for it is a motion lamp.
Frank
Gotcha.
Chris
So anyway, it’s got these little mechanical fish in it and they’re just buoyant enough that they’ll on their own naturally float from the top to the bottom again and the little fins will kind of move forward and back based on that.
Frank
Okay.
Chris
And all you do is put distilled water in it so that you don’t end up with gunkies as the water evaporates and that’s it.
It’s got this regular little cap on top that you put on it and when you flip the lamp on, it’s got just a little LED in the bottom that illuminates everything.
Frank
And all it does is cast light.
It doesn’t warm it up like the old 60s lava lamp.
I was just worried about dropping plastic and fluid that gets hot.
Chris
So this is not the case with this particular toy.
Frank
Right.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
That does sound fun.
Kevin
The stuff, Chris, it’s okay.
You can say it.
We went to the Metallica concert on the 9th and it was great and that’s also why I took Monday off was because I knew I would need recovery time.
Andy
Yeah.
I’m glad to see that you guys got back home safe and all that.
Chris
Oh, man.
So Kevin has the CRZ hybrid.
The gas mileage on that thing is incredible.
Andy
Is it?
Kevin
It is, yeah.
Um…
Frank
Better than a metro?
24 hours, 24 hours of driving and 30 bucks of gas or 90 bucks of gas.
Sorry.
90 bucks of gas.
Frank
It might actually be better than a metro.
Kevin
It was 90 bucks down to Phoenix and 90 bucks back.
Basically, it was, we were averaging about 30.
Actually, I, it was actually less than $30 every time we filled up, but needed to fill up three times because it’s got a kind of a small gas tank.
I never put more than seven gallons in at a time, um, but we were getting pretty close to 40 miles to the gallon
Andy
Impressive.
Frank
So for context with our, uh, non fuel economic listeners, my truck, uh, freeway miles.
Like when I drove to the Redwoods and back, I think I averaged 17 miles a gallon and it has a 25 gallon tank.
Andy
Yeah, we’re, we’re really good with gas mileage.
My bus gets 18.
So what’s, I don’t know what’s going on there.
Frank
Um, probably a three ton vehicle with it.
My truck is not small and your, your bus is not small either.
Andy
Yours this is a little bit nicer, just a bit nicer than my, my bus though.
Frank
The way I look at it is at least I’m self-aware enough to recognize that I should be embarrassed.
Andy
Yeah, that hasn’t hit me yet.
Frank
This is my daily driver.
Andy
Yeah, it’s nice.
It’s good.
That bus, that short bus has got a 50 gallon tank.
It could be hard to fill up sometimes.
Kevin
Wow.
Frank
The nice thing about working from home is I only have to fill up my truck once a month.
Andy
That is nice.
So, um, Chris has got the eyeballs.
Was there something else for Halloween that you were working on or?
Chris
No, still, still looking.
But I, I decided that I need to kind of curb down the Halloween decorations because we, we have quite, quite a bit already.
Frank
Speaking of self-aware enough to know that you should be embarrassed.
Chris
Yes.
We’re going to, I’m going to try to curb it down to one nice new decoration every year.
And I think the wife is kind of following suit.
So she, her, her contribution this year, she found it yesterday at the, at the grocery store.
This, it’s, it’s this, it’s a little dragon that is the, the, the bones, just the bones, but it’s got this little switch on the bottom where it opens its mouth and screams at you a little bit.
Frank
Okay.
Andy
That’s cool.
Frank
Kind of like the singing fish, except for not.
Chris
Yes.
Frank
Does it move too?
Chris
The, the, um, the dragon, just the jaw and eyes light up green.
Frank
Still, that’s a, that’s a fun little Halloween addition.
Chris
Yeah.
So she, she’s got hers and I’ve got mine.
And then I think that’s most likely all we’re going to do this year as far as additions go.
So…
Andy
That works.
Now Halloween is kind of a big thing you guys do.
So that’s, that’s pretty awesome.
Yeah.
Frank
So Andy, you work on anything this week?
Andy
Um, I, I did, um, most of my, my, uh, projects has, has been on my, my fan that I keep on talking about.
I’m nearing the end, thankfully, um, last week after the podcast, I was able to get in a couple hours of working on it and I got my entire menu structure down now, uh, completely finished off.
So now my little fan controller has got, um, options to be able to set all of the polling variables for like polling, how often it checks temperatures, checks the light sensors, stuff like that, all editable and saveable inside of the e-prom on the chip and recallable when you restart.
Um, I’ve got the screen off controls working completely now.
So now it would, you can set it a timer for how long the screen should stay on.
Um, once you’ve pressed the controls or the light levels within the room that keeps the screen on, uh, which that is all working pretty good.
I’ve got some temperature controls.
I got the temperature control system on it working.
So now it’s now regulating PWM signals based on the temperature inputs and doing all the correct ramping and heuristics and all that kind of stuff.
Um, I made one temperature correction where it does it linearly.
Now the temperature readout on this is on a curve and I can’t really do curves very programmatically reasonably on these, uh, these controllers.
It’s just too much calculations.
Frank
Not enough RAM?
Andy
Yeah, but there’s nothing more annoying than having like more thermostats.
Like if you got a wall clock that tells you one temperature and then thermostat tells you a different one, that’s kind of annoying.
Now like on my and upstairs, I’ve got two different kinds of temperatures because my thermostat reads the air temperature within the room.
So it changes very fast to different air conditions, you know, and gives you more of what you’re feeling, but then the wall clock kind of more tells you the temperature that’s like in the house itself, you know, where the temperature would be if you shut off the fans and stuff like that.
So it’s both usable, but if they’re both, if you got a fish tank where you got more than one thermometer, like I got my heater in there and it’s got a digital readout that tells me the temperature.
But then I got the original thermostat on the front there that I haven’t taken out yet.
And they do read about a degree different and it drives me nuts.
And so with this project here also being a digital one, I wanted to be able to make it so they’re reading the same because if they’re within half a degree of each other, they’re both accurate.
But if they’re reading differently, that’s going to drive me nuts, you know.
So I want to be able to make sure I can control the, you know, adjust the temperature.
And I don’t want to go in and have to reprogram the curve every time for figuring out the temperature if I want to just adjust it a little bit.
So I did put in a linear temperature tracker and only one point.
And I think I might actually raise it to three.
That’ll make more sense a little bit.
I’ve got an option in here where I can set the temperature.
The tank is currently reading and set the temperature of what it should be reading at what it thinks it’s reading.
Does that kind of make sense?
And it will adjust that linearly through the whole thing.
It’s not an offset.
It’s actually adjusting it linearly.
So it’ll compensate a little bit better.
But I think having an offset in there as well might be a little bit useful.
And it would only be one entry, one variable and stuff like that.
So I might, after I’m all done with this, I’m sure I’ll go back in and tweak some things.
And that might be one of the things I’m going to tweak is also being able to adjust an offset for it.
And then to do it linearly, I need a start point and an end point as well.
And I just set them, I think it was like 50 degrees and 100 degrees where my end points are.
So that when you’re adjusting the temperature linearly, you know, it’s at 50 degrees, it’s back to your adjustment is matching the actual read.
And 100 degrees, it’s matching your adjustment to the actual read.
But in between there, it’s, you know, making that fine tuning adjustments.
I’m thinking it might be a good idea to put that kind of adjustment on either end as well.
But then I might be over complicating it because I don’t really need that.
So I might just put an offset.
Frank
You over complicating it? say it ain’t so!
Kevin
I refuse to believe that Andy of all people would ever over complicate anything.
Andy
So, so I got the setting, the temperature menu, the structure down.
So you set the lowest temperature, which is the start temperature for the lowest fan speed.
And then the highest temperature for the highest fan speed that you can set.
And then the heuristics in between, because when you’re ramping up to a temperature, you want to hold the cooling or the warming on a little bit longer before it shuts off again.
And to do that within the ramping structure.
So you got one ramp that goes from a certain range to a certain range.
And then the heuristics offsets that ramp.
And then so the when it’s going on to the ramp, it uses the initial ramp.
And if it’s coming off of the ramp, it uses the one that’s been shifted.
And so that gives us that gives me a heuristic value that I can set there too.
So we got that all done.
I went in and got the fan controls done.
So the PWM signal it’s putting out to the fan.
A 10% signal might not be enough power to even turn the fan.
And so I don’t want the fan to turn on at zero if zero actually doesn’t start turning the fan.
And so I’ve got a minimum and maximum that you can set the fan speeds for, that it relates that to the ramping.
And I may actually consider the initial startup to toggle it on full power for just like a quarter of a second so that I can get lower fan speeds.
Because a lot of the time you can’t get it going at that low, but it can maintain a speed at that low.
And that’s something that Marlin does on our printers that I noticed.
When you set an unusually low fan speed at the very beginning, it is full power for just a quick blast and then it drops down.
Excuse me, it doesn’t do that automatically.
But that is one of the things that I like to change on those when I’m using an exceptionally low fan speed.
That way, the first layer fan control speed, that way you can start the fan and then run it at a lower speed.
So got all that done for both tanks.
All these is doing two tanks.
So everything’s kind of doubled up.
And at the very end, I wanted an info and debug screen, like a separate screen that wasn’t the menu, that can just show me the active variables and their readouts at run time.
And when I was getting ready to do that, I thought, I’ve got an entire menu structure here that I don’t need to actually have them do anything.
But I could use the menu to display all of my variables, even though clicking on them doesn’t do anything.
So I’ve got all my variables imprinted on there.
You can see them changing live.
And I was showing the camera.
They’re much easier to read than what the camera’s picking up.
It’s a little bright for the camera.
Frank
I had that suspicion, but I wasn’t going to say anything about it.
Andy
Yeah, it’s actually really nice and crisp in person.
So anyway, so that works.
But that takes a lot of memory.
So if I’m getting close to running out of the programmable memory on this, I’m at like a 90% right now.
And I still haven’t done the graphs yet.
So if I need more space, that’s going to go.
That whole menu structure showing me the variables is almost a full kilobyte of programming space.
And I could use that elsewhere.
So I’m going to leave it in.
And at the very end of the project, I’ll either add more variables or take out ones that I don’t really need to know.
There’s a lot of stuff duplicated.
Like I’ve got it showing me the polling variables.
But yet you can go into the polling menu and change them where you could read them from there.
So they’re just not as convenient with all at once.
But last night, I got it set up to be able to do the graph almost, or at least the graph screen.
So if I click the graph screen, it will move over to where the screen that it’s running the graph on.
And the only part I really got is the different menu structure, the different icons.
Frank
We’re still looking at the graph.
There’s no icons on there.
Andy
Yeah.
Oh, that’s weird.
I could see it in my camera view.
Chris
So all our visual listeners can see it.
Frank
Oh, you…
Oh, you mean the little icon in…
Kevin
Oh. In the upper right corner…
Frank
Gotcha.
Kevin
Yeah. Okay.
Andy
Yeah.
So I’m going to do the graph with there’s an icon up in the corner that you can select.
Like exit is a selection, stretch the graph.
So you’re like zooming into the graph, as well as panning along that zoomed function.
And I’ve got four variables that I can graph.
I got the temperature for take one, take two, and then the fan speed for take one and take two.
So I got four separate items in there that you’ll be able to toggle on and off.
So seven little icons right there.
You could flip between and select.
And then I’ve also got it so it’s recording the data.
And I’ve got a lot of RAM left over.
I switched to a chip that’s got six kilobytes of memory.
Yet I’m used to building on only two kilobytes of memory.
So I’ve got some spare memory to use.
So and I can’t be too… waste too much of it.
So instead of doing, I was originally thinking that I can get away with a storing the temperature using only nine bits of data.
That’ll give me 512 options.
And if I’ve got a precision of one decimal, so 70.4 degrees, that could give me, what it would be, 51.2 degrees range that I could store in nine bits and then just offset it so I can only, so I’d be able to store temperatures from like, what would it be like, 50 to 100 degrees or something like that.
Instead of doing it too complicated like that, which I like doing stuff like that, I decided to use 10 bits for that.
So I wouldn’t have to do any complicated adding and stuff like that.
So I can store a value up to 1024, so 102.4 degrees.
And I’m just gonna store it from zero to 102.4.
And then that last six bits, I’m gonna store the fan speed.
I’m gonna take that, what I would call a zero to 100% fan speed with the settings you got.
I’m gonna convert that into only six bits.
So that’ll give me a zero to 63 value.
But my screen’s only 64 pixels high.
So when I’m zoomed in, as far as I can go, looking at the pixel per entry data, it’ll still be 100%.
You’ll be looking at the raw data there.
So that’ll work out good.
But by doing that, that means I’m using 16 bits per entry.
And for a 24 hour period, every five minutes, 288 entries I need per tank.
So after everything is said and done, and I did the math here, but I don’t have it on hand, I think it’s like 1,100 bytes that I’ll need for that storage.
So I’m only taking up about a little over three kilobytes of RAM.
And so I’ll be adding this extra… a little bit more than a kilobyte to store 24 hours worth of data for both tanks on it.
So when you go into the graph, you’ll be able to zoom around and stuff like that.
So I’m almost ready to start doing the graph.
As soon as I get the graph part done, then tweaking a little bit of the menus.
I do want to sit down and put my thermostats in some water with my fish tank heater and get a better range of samples.
And then re-figure out the curve for that.
And then put that in there.
So it’s a little bit closer.
That way I don’t have to adjust it so much.
Because right now it’s like two or three degrees off.
The open air temperature, but I’m still working on it.
So I wasn’t expecting that to be too accurate right off the bat.
But I do need to calibrate it a little bit.
And then that project will be done.
That’ll be printing the PCB and getting that done, soldering on the parts.
And then finally, what makes this a 3D printing project is I can print the housing for it and attach it to my fish tank.
So that has been a long project.
I just don’t have a lot of time to work on this stuff.
I do have some other neat stuff come along here, not related to that project.
Let me grab this real quick.
I was excited to get this… for our visual listeners here.
Chris
It’s a box!
Andy
Yes, here is my Elegoo Mars SLA printer.
Kevin
All right.
This is the Ultra 9K, and I’m super excited for it.
It’s still in the box.
I’m not going to open it for another month or so.
Frank
Too many projects on hand.
Andy
Yeah, so as soon as I get done with my fan project, because if I stop working on this, I’m going to stop working on this.
And I need an actual fan controller, even though I went way overboard with this one, making it really complicated.
Now I’ve got something.
When I’m using these tiny screens for a controller, I’ve got a complete menu structure put together.
And even the ability to graph once I’m done with that, if I have data or whatever I want to display, and I can implement that into any other project and have it be good.
And you guys have seen my menu structure.
It’s got like the nice, pretty scrolling menus and stuff like that.
So it’s well done.
So it’ll look good amongst other things.
But as soon as I’m done with that, I promised the wife to do an animatronic worm.
I’ve got Steven here for our visual listeners.
This is a sand worm from Beetlejuice.
And this is what I was talking about making animatronic.
And so I’m going to be putting a couple of servos into this and making it move all by itself.
Kevin
That’ll be cool.
Andy
I think that’ll be fun.
I’ve got a plushie for visual listeners.
This is something about the shape of a large knee-high sock.
Chris
I wasn’t going to go there, but uh…
Andy
That is a plushie of a sand worm.
Frank
Kind of the same design, except for the teeth and the mouth.
Kevin
Right.
Andy
Yeah, no kidding.
But so I got those going for me.
And that’s going to be a fun project.
I’ve never done an animatronic before.
And so that one’s going to be kind of something to learn on how to do.
I’ve got a bunch of these really small servos.
Let me see if I can show you guys these things.
I’ve got a bunch of these.
Frank
You just showed us a couple of weeks ago too.
Andy
Yeah, these are really tiny ones.
And then I bought some bigger heftier ones.
The beauty of these is even these bigger heftier ones here, I think this is a 24 gram servo motor.
I bought four of these for $9.
And you can buy 10 of these really small ones for that same price.
So putting these together as joints in a skeleton for the worm, I don’t think it’s going to be very hard.
And then to get organic like movements, I was going to make another skeleton, essentially, that uses potentiometers as the hinges.
That way I could record the position that the potentiometer’s reading.
And that way I could use it kind of as a controller where I can move it around with my hand and record every half a second or so the position that the potentiometer is sensing.
And then correlate that to what to set the servo to and be able to have that move around.
But that’s going to be a lot of 3D printing there to be able to hook these together and stuff.
But the wife… I was hoping to get these done for her costume that she’s doing for Beetlejuice.
We got two of these sandworms.
And she’s planning on not having the animatronic one for her first thing.
Because I got a feeling, you guys have seen how long it takes me to do projects.
It’s a long time.
I doubt I’m going to miss that day.
But um…
Kevin
You doubt you’re going to make that day.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, thanks.
She does a lot of costumes.
She’ll do this costume again quite a bit.
So it won’t be a loss, this learning lesson.
But making this sock move around will, I think, be the easiest starting animatronic stuff.
Frank
If you do need to warm it up, you’ve got your 3D printer.
So…
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
Need to warm it up?
Frank
Warm up your socks…
Andy
Oh, I was about to say.
The sandworms, from what I remember right in the movies, actually are on Saturn.
And that’s cold.
So I don’t know.
But then too, in the movie, Saturn wasn’t the gaseous planet.
It was like Dune, so who knows.
But yeah, so that’s that project.
I think that was fairly it for me.
There was three things total.
I think I only addressed two.
I don’t remember what the third one was.
Oh, the printer.
I’m waiting on the SLA printer setting it up because I need to make the hood and stuff for the wife not to be able to smell any of this stuff.
I thought of something while I was at work here that I haven’t heard too many people say.
But while I’m pushing the fumes out through my vent in the house here using a fan, one of the things I thought about is that resin is completely safe when cured, right?
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
And the smell is just atomized resin, right?
It’s not something in the resin.
It’s the resin itself that you’re smelling, right?
Kevin
I’m not sure exactly what the smell is, whether it…
Andy
I couldn’t find that out either.
Let me ask you this.
After a component is done curing, does it seem to smell?
Kevin
No.
Andy
So that’s kind of where I’m going with this.
I think it’s the actual resin itself that’s atomizing.
Kevin
I think it’s the whatever solvent they use that’s actually doing it, the part that keeps it liquid.
Andy
Yeah.
I’m sure there is some solvent in there, but that wouldn’t make sense unless it all evaporated off when it was done curing.
Either way…
Kevin
Yeah.
I mean, it might be atomizing resin.
Andy
Yeah.
My thoughts are, in the exhaust vent of my thing, since this is going to be exhausting out into my backyard where I’ve got my water cooler that could suck it back up, I was concerned about still breathing that fume stuff back into the house, I thought, why don’t I take some UV LEDs and wrap the inside of the vent with them so that any vapor that’s going out will be cured hopefully on its way out and be less harmful that way too.
So I’ve got a strip of 300… What were they?
395 nanometer LEDs.
I couldn’t find the 405.
That’s a really rare, expensive thing.
But from everything I understand, these 395s are plenty enough to cure resin because there’s just so many.
300 of the [cat sound] ones is just as good as six or eight of the actual wavelength that you should be using.
So I guess there’s a lot of inaccuracies that these aren’t lasers, so they’re not really good control of their wavelength.
So these 395s being close should do it.
So I’m going to be wrapping these inside of the exhaust tube as it vents out.
Hopefully that’ll be one more thing to be able to prevent the smell from being a problem.
Kevin
Yeah
Frank
I like that idea.
Kevin
It’ll be interesting to see how that goes for you.
Andy
Yeah, and it’s something I’ll be able to just turn off too and be able to smell and see if it’ll also smell come back when the lights are off or whatnot.
So that’ll be a neat experiment.
But I think I’m just going to go ahead and install it as if it works because if anything, the wife will see I am trying my darndest to protect from the fumes inside the house as much as possible.
So both would be a win.
Kevin
Now, I did have a couple thoughts on your discussion in my absence about the filter placement.
And you were saying that you couldn’t find any that had the filters actually inside the chamber where the resin is?
Andy
It’s not that it’s inside the chamber, that it’s pulling the smell from inside the chamber outside to filter it.
It’s like this one that I got, they are the plug for it where the filter goes is inside the chamber to filter that out.
But…
Kevin
Yeah, because I think it’s because when you turn it, when it starts printing, it does turn on some fans that are in there probably to cool the electronic components as they’re going.
And so it does circulate air through there.
And like mine, mine’s got the carbon filters on the inside.
And that’s where it does pull the air through there and bring it out.
And they do a pretty good job.
I can still kind of smell the resin while it’s running.
Andy
Really?
Kevin
But yeah, I mean, it’s not a very strong odor.
But I could see how if somebody’s got sensitivities, it could make running it in living space problematic.
Nobody in my family has any sensitivities to it.
And we get nose-blind to it pretty quick, but it’s not a very strong smell anyway.
Andy
OK, that’s great to hear.
Yeah, because we were only speculating on how well that system would work.
It doesn’t look like it would be the best.
That’s good to hear that it might not be that bad.
Frank
I feel like our discussion of it was that the filter mounts on the outside of the machine, though, right?
So it’s not really filtering from inside of the cover.
Like it’s filtering the air from outside of the machine.
Andy
OK, so the pictures that I was showing you is the filter plugging into the top of the machine, but then the cover goes over that.
Frank
OK.
Andy
So the filter would have been within the near the vat, sitting by the vat inside of the cover, but it’s not like inside of the machine pulling air from inside of the print area, filtering it and pushing it out.
Frank
And that’s where I was misunderstanding, I guess, because with it filtering inside of the cover, I would expect it to work better than what I thought you were saying, where it’s outside of the cover and just filtering the air from the room, which doesn’t make any sense to me at all that it would do.
Andy
I see.
I see.
I was just filtering the air in the vicinity of the print itself.
Frank
Gotcha.
That seems much more reasonable to me.
Andy
My thoughts on that, though, is like the smell, it would saturate the air inside of the unit.
So instead of, my thoughts are, instead of, why are we filtering it out inside of the unit, where it’s going to just allow it to out gas more inside of the print area and cause the need for more filtering, but if we were to not filter it inside of the unit until after the print is done, if it was a sealed thing, then your outgassing would only be able to out gas so much before it’s saturated, then at the very end or something, and it would be nice if it would filter the air through it.
If it was just a sealed unit until the very end, before you go to pull off the top, and then it would filter everything out of it.
Kevin
That is a good point.
I don’t know why they do it the way they do.
Andy
Yeah, I’m sure there’s a reason.
Kevin
I’m not an engineer.
Frank
Andy, you like to 3D print gaskets, just rig your own and figure it out.
Yeah, well, you know, with this project here, I’m just going to put everything under a hood, and then slowly just keep a slight negative air pressure under the hood, and that should solve all the problems, too.
And the curing station is what I’m most worried about, sitting apart out when it’s curing.
I mean, I don’t know.
I haven’t played with an SLA yet, but it feels like there would be a lot of evaporation of the resin during curing.
Is there not?
That’s cool.
Kevin
No, because you don’t cure it until you’ve washed it.
And so the curing stage, you’re actually just blasting it with extra UV light, because it’s already cured.
You’re just kind of hardening it.
So I feel like calling it a curing station is a little bit of a misnomer.
It’s more like a hardening station, because when you first pull it off of the build plate, it’s kind of soft.
I mean, and that’s when you want to trim off the…
Before you put it in the curing station, is when you want to trim off the supports, because they become hard and brittle after you’ve got it in there.
And there’s no odor on it after you’ve washed it.
Andy
Oh, okay.
Kevin
Well, hopefully I’m not wasting time putting this much effort into preventing a problem that might not be a problem at all.
Andy
I actually hope that’s the case.
Let me ask you this.
You’ve mentioned in the past that you’ve had moments where the smell does really kind of fill up that room.
What situations is the smell the strongest when you’re using the printer?
Kevin
When I open it to get the build plate out
Andy
Oh.
Kevin
Because that does release a lot of the fumes from the inside of that chamber.
Andy
Is it?
Kevin
Yeah.
So, yeah, I don’t think it’s wasted effort to build this fume hood that you’re talking about.
And I’ve considered building my own, just because nobody here is sensitive to it, but it’s still probably not the best thing to be breathing it in.
Frank
Still fumes that are atomized.
Kevin
Right.
Andy
It might be worth.
Now, I’ve seen one printer that had a hole for venting for doing your own venting of the system inside the shroud itself.
Does yours have an access panel like that?
Kevin
No.
Andy
Oh.
I think there’ll be a lot of experimenting, because maybe while it’s working under a fume hood, it would be beneficial to have it, the printer itself not so sealed up.
Kevin
Right.
Andy
Or whatnot.
That way, it could be vented out, because I’m thinking, well, if pulling it off, pulling the top off is the worst part, smell-wise of the process, then at that time, that’s when I’m going to have the hood off of it anyway, is to open it up.
So, it’s kind of like the whole idea of putting the hood together isn’t going to compensate for that moment when you’re pulling the build plate out.
Kevin
So, you could pattern the fume hood.
And I was pretty sure that’s what you were going to do, is pattern it after the fume hoods I use at work, where they’ve got a sash kind of thing that you can raise or lower, and still have the negative pressure going under the fume hood, and stick your arms in there and manipulate whatever you need to do.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
Get some elbow-length dish gloves and the holes, so that you can still reach in and operate it, just like a sand blaster or something like that.
And, uh…
Kevin
You could do that too.
Andy
I guess my original idea was, I mean, a nicer example than this, but if you were to just take a garbage can and put it over the printers, and then have a hose coming out of the side of the back of the garbage can, and you’re kind of pulling in negative pressure inside the can, and you got maybe a couple of vent holes near the top of the garbage can, so you’re kind of pulling the air through it that way.
I’m sure stuff is, you know, sucking in from the bottom and stuff too.
But I was going to make it out of plexiglass, and only the footprint of both the printer and the cure station sitting side by side, you know, and have the footprint only be that big out of plexiglass that I was going to caulk together to make, you know, that box shape that you could just lift off and then access the printers that way.
Frank
You don’t want to put a sand blaster in your washroom?
Andy
I don’t have the room.
I don’t even know how I’m going to put all this stuff in there.
I don’t know.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
Well, it sounds like I got some extra…
Kevin
Yeah, that kind of setup would not do anything to prevent the fumes that are released when you open the unit to get your printed part off.
Andy
So I might have to consider, there might be something I can do where I could pop it open or something at the end of the print and let it, you know, vent out, or if I could put, make an adapter that, you know, attaches to the bottom of the cover for the printer that kind of, you know, allows it to breathe into the hood of the area so it can keep, you know, keep it clean.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
What I’ve been envisioning since you started talking about it is you just 3D print some risers on the corners, something to hold them together, but when you put the hood on, it’ll hold them up like that millimeter or whatever so the hood doesn’t even get the mechanical seal.
It wouldn’t get much anyway.
I’m assuming there’s not like a gasket to seal it anyway.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Just like hard plastic against hard plastic, but if you lift it up even that little bit, you’ll get airflow into the bottom.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that might be enough to keep the smell inside the printer fairly clean, but then too, back to the whole idea of only doing that at the very end of the print job so that you’re not causing, intentionally causing the resin to, you know, out gas during the print because it’s not saturating.
Frank
Yeah.
Andy
Well, there’s a lot of experimenting to be done.
I’m just trying to set up for the best example because it’s only going to take once where the wife says, no, can’t be in the house.
So I want to…
Frank
Let’s find a way to compromise the mechanical design of these resin printers that really smart people have been working on for 30 years plus.
I would say yes, but when there’s money involved, shortcuts are constantly being taken, you know.
It’s like I got a boost converter that I use out of China that is noisy as heck.
And to make it from the crappy power output that you can’t even like run these controllers off of because it’s so… so noisy, to a good one is just one 50 cent ceramic capacitor.
All it takes to change that output into something that is great and completely usable, you know, but you don’t need that to it technically to work, you know.
So they took it out.
They don’t have it.
And you see that kind of stuff all the time where they cut, they do shortcuts to save a little bit of money here or there.
So even though they’ve been building it for some time, you know, what shortcuts did they take to make this work where something small and stupid could make all the difference?
Chris
Right?
Frank
Challenge accepted.
Andy
I mean, just looking at some of this stuff here, like I got my oscilloscope right here, dorky little oscilloscope.
This looks like a handheld portable unit, right?
But this is a plug-in only unit.
This is something that is like half the size of a standard multimeter, maybe two thirds the size of a multimeter.
And it doesn’t take batteries at all.
And you got to plug it in for it to work.
And it takes 12 volts for this thing to function.
It’s just, it’s a stupid design.
And I got this running off of a bloody 9 volt battery, you know.
And for all it would take to make the case a little bit bigger and be able to occupy a battery.
I mean, that would have been nothing that would have made this a much more usable unit.
But just to save a couple of bucks and make the case smaller, they decided not to put a battery.
And this 9 volt battery runs it for, I could probably get four or five hours of runtime off this, which is what you’d expect.
So it’s not even like it uses a lot of power.
Frank
Not to say necessarily that a more expensive part is worth the more money, because I’ve seen and experienced where even the more expensive stuff is not great quality.
Andy
Yeah, I agree.
That’s why I keep on talking about the CO2 detectors and the design of the unit itself that I absolutely love.
All the little extra things they put in here that are only there just in case, you know.
There’s probably a good four or five dollars worth of material in this unit that is just in case.
Just in case the customer wanted to use this.
90% of them will never use this option on this device.
But there’s that couple of percent that will, so we’re going to include it on all of them as default.
Frank
And that’s why you play with this stuff and figure out where you can find the most value for your investment too.
Andy
That’s what I’m hoping with the printer.
There could be a couple of things where, because right now in its current condition, and the stories I hear about the smell and stuff, I cannot have a resin printer in my household.
So that’s why I’m putting so much effort into doing all these extras to try to make it work, because I really want a resin printer.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
Could always find a way to rig it out in your workshop, if nothing else.
Andy
Yeah, that is true.
I’ve been even tempted…
Frank
It would get cold in the winter.
Might have to find a way to keep it at a reasonable temperature while it’s running, but, you know.
Andy
We were talking a couple days ago, or a couple podcasts ago, about how nice it is to have an office in the house.
I was personally jealous of you, Chris and Kev.
You all got your offices for stuff like this, and I’ve only got five rooms in my house, and I’ve got three kids, and the wife is deeply into cosplay and has her own room, because I’ve got my tool shop out in the backyard.
Frank
You mispronounced closet.
Andy
No, it’s a, yeah.
Well, it’s an office.
It doesn’t have a window that you could have somebody living in there, legally.
Frank
So it’s a closet.
It’s a really big walk-in closet.
Andy
The biggest room in the whole house, and it’s a closet.
But she uses that for her cosplay stuff, and gosh, she’s got exercise equipment in here.
She’s got a treadmill, one of those bikes, a weight station in here.
Frank
Gotta have something to hang all the costumes from.
Andy
Yeah, actually, she uses this stuff.
I’m kind of impressed.
I never had a problem with buying her exercise equipment, because there isn’t a single piece of laundry on this stuff.
There’s some stuff on the treadmill, but that’s only because this morning, when I was cleaning up from the weekend, you ADD people in your chaos piles, I put it downstairs on top of the treadmill.
So the only reason why it’s got stuff on it is because she hasn’t been home yet to put her stuff away.
Frank
To manage the chaos pile?
Andy
Yeah, the wife actually uses the equipment every day.
Frank
Well, good for her.
Andy
But I don’t have a room, and I would love to have a room for my electronics and stuff, because I just live out of these Harbor Freight boxes of components and things that I just bring up on set on top and take over the living room table.
Frank
I will say you kind of have space.
If it’s any like when I lived in your basement, you’ve got space in your bedroom, you’ve got the space where you are now underneath the living room, you’ve got the living room.
You don’t have storage in all those places, but you definitely have them all optimized for your workplace.
Andy
Yeah, they can be.
But it would be nice maybe to one of these days build another shed out in the backyard that I could insulate and drywall so that I can control the temperature better.
Frank
Have an actual workspace, not a shed that you converted to a workspace.
Andy
Yeah, because that one does work, but my tool shop is a little bit more for metal working and stuff like that.
It’s got all the heavier duty tools, metal filings everywhere, stuff like that.
Frank
Stuff you don’t necessarily want inside your printer workings.
Andy
Yeah, I mean, if I get a CNC machine, it would live in that area, I admit.
But all the rest of these things, like the 3D printers and stuff, it would be nice to have an office to do it.
My oldest is 10 years old, so I probably got another 30 years before he leaves the house.
And so I’m not going to be able to have any of those rooms back for myself.
Frank
He might surprise you.
At least one of them might.
Andy
Yeah, well, if they got my genes, you know, they’ll get out of the house as soon as possible.
But either way, it might be worth building another shop out in the backyard for this kind of stuff.
But you guys know how I am with just ideas and never following through, so we’ll see what happens.
Frank
And I’m the one with ADHD.
Andy
I just don’t have time to do anything.
It’s all about time.
I don’t watch TV.
I don’t have that lazy sit-down time.
In fact, even during the podcast here, I sit and try to cram multiple things by doing my laundry during the podcast, you know, for the whole house.
So…
Frank
Yeah, we actually talked about multitasking before this podcast, too.
It doesn’t work.
Andy
Yeah, but you know what?
All my laundry is done.
Did the laundry for five people?
Well, I guess there’s a load still going in there, but yeah, pretty much done.
Frank
Maybe that’s why you ramble as much as you do.
Andy
Yeah, I think so.
You know, when you got something that, like occupying your limbs, your brain’s just like free to flow.
Frank
Fair.
I accept that.
Andy
Yeah, I haven’t said anything intentional thought out at all for the last 20 minutes.
It’s just been rambling.
I don’t know why you guys have me on here.
Frank
Well, I’ve said it before.
Our 30 fans listen specifically because they can hear you ramble about whatever you’re doing.
I can almost guarantee it.
Andy
Well, there’s a couple of podcasters that I listened to that are kind of this rambly.
Listen, check out this project I’m working on, and here’s my thought process on it.
And I know I really enjoy those.
That might not be for everybody, but hopefully some of our listeners like what we do when we’re just talking about our projects and things we’ve accomplished and stuff like that because it’s kind of what we are.
Kevin
I don’t think anybody would listen if they were not interested in hearing… that.
Andy
Yeah, that’s true.
I get a lot of mine.
Frank
Considering…
I think you make up about half of each episode, Andy.
Kevin
Easily.
Andy
Sorry.
I get excited and I like to talk.
Frank
I didn’t mean to make it feel like I was throwing shade.
I feel like we have fun with it.
It’s a conversation too.
Of course, any of our listeners who have a different opinion, please feel free to send us an email and let us know because we’ve been getting crickets despite asking for feedback.
Anybody, somebody tell us.
Andy talks too much.
Frank needs to shut his mouth.
Any of that.
Andy
Agreed.
Chris
Or even just, hey, I like this thing in particular.
Yeah, sure.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
Chris is my favorite panelist.
Chris
Yeah, say that!
Kevin
I wish Kevin would talk more.
Or less.
Frank
We want Kevin to talk less.
He’s less interesting.
Kevin
I’m just going to say, if you wish, I would talk more tough.
It’s just not in my nature.
Andy
They might be surprised if they get you on the game table to hear you go, though.
Kevin
Yeah, that’s fair.
But Frank, what have you done this week?
Frank
Well, because I missed last week, I’m going to cover two weeks’ worth of fighting with my printer to get PETG.
Andy
We’ve got some printer talk.
That would be great.
Frank
I mean…
Chris
We could double the fun.
Frank
Right.
So I was printing an XYZ block and fighting to get this stone PETG to work.
And I will admit at one point, I wondered if it was an adhesion issue.
Went with a non-heat oriented.
It wasn’t hairspray, so don’t get your hopes up too high there, Andy.
And it still didn’t work, so I was pretty confident.
It wasn’t an adhesion issue.
Tried a couple of different parameters, tried slowing it down, speeding it up, changing temperatures, all that other fun stuff.
And I ran into an issue that was bizarre, where I would tram.
And then when I reset it to zero, it was easily like three millimeters high.
Andy
OK.
Frank
So I would reset, tram again, and then it would be touching the build plate when it was supposed to be a third of a millimeter high.
Andy
Does your printer use a switch for the stop, or does it use a different kind of sensor?
Frank
It does use a switch.
Andy
So it is a micro switch?
Frank
Yeah.
Andy
Sorry, go ahead.
Frank
I hadn’t thought to be suspicious of that switch until you just said something.
That’s interesting.
Andy
I know on my printer, they’re all the same little board that they’ve made.
If it’s the same thing on yours, you might be able to swap your gantry limit switch with another one on your printer, like your X, Y, or X limit switch, and see if the problem moves.
That would let you know.
And they’re cheap as dirt, too, to buy, if that is the problem.
Frank
Well, and Creality, when they shipped me my unit, sent me an extra switch.
Andy
Oh, that’s convenient.
Frank
Probably because they’re stupid cheap, and because they do go out.
And I did just realize, when you were saying it, that it doesn’t click like it used to, either.
It used to be a very audible click, and it doesn’t anymore.
Andy
OK.
Frank
So that’s something I’m going to look into.
There was another thing I noticed.
Probably, I’m worried that I didn’t notice it because it wasn’t having issues.
But the carriage has a little click.
It’s got movement along the axle of the gantry bar.
And it’s got this slightly audible click.
And when I pulled off the hot end and my extruder, and just moved the carriage frame itself, it still clicked.
Andy
OK.
Frank
And it was on there tight.
So I have no reason to believe there was loose screws or anything like that.
So I am worried that my wheels might be going out.
I mean, I’ve been running the thing pretty heavily for a little more than a year.
It’s time for stuff to start to fail anyway.
Andy
You might be able to just tighten the Delrins and get a little bit more time out of them.
Frank
Well…
Andy
They do wear.
Frank
I looked at the wheels, and I wasn’t seeing any movement on the gantry frame.
Andy
Oh, so you think it’s the bearings?
Frank
I’m worried that it’s the bearings.
Andy
OK.
Frank
But I’m still not seeing any movement.
And for the click, I should be able to see some difference in the bearings, I would think.
So but they’re looking like they’re getting old, those bearings.
So…
Chris
If you’re able to stick a straw nozzle in there close enough and spray a little white lithium grease in there, that will tell you for sure if it’s the bearings.
Frank
And I’m worried about, well, would that affect the belt?
Like I would want to rig something so that there is no residue getting into the track.
Because the teeth with just a little bit of lubricant on them would be problematic with the motor that moves it back and forth.
I’ll figure something out, but that’s a good idea too, Chris.
So anyway, yeah, for two weeks, I’ve been trying to figure that out, trying to get a decent print.
I’ve tried a couple of different kinds of prints.
And I’ve gotten to the point.
Chris
Two printses?
Frank
Yes, Chris, printses, because I’m Golem.
But the my current issue is just kind of strange where I get about five millimeters off of the build plate.
And then it starts to under extrude.
Andy
Oh, that’s weird.
Frank
And I can’t figure out what’s going on.
I’ve tried benches.
I’ve tried the XYZ block stuff like that.
And I can’t identify any…
Like there’s nothing on my vertical motors or screws or anything like that that would cause this.
And I just, at first, my thought was maybe it’s tension on the spool.
But I would expect it to be worse when it has the pull farther on the filament.
And I was having the issue with the tramming being weird before this happened.
But the XYZ block failed.
It started to do the under extrusion.
Just it, I guess it was closer to 10 millimeters at that point.
And so I… oh! and I had accidentally pulled my memory card because I was thinking I want to save for a new configuration.
And when I said restart, because the print stopped when I pulled the card, it reset to zero and dragged the XYZ block to zero and then smashed it.
Andy
Oh, no.
Chris
Cool.
Frank
And so I’m worried that smashing that XYZ block has affected the cause of the clicking, too.
But I can’t say for sure because if it did it before, I wasn’t paying attention, right?
So I don’t know if the block caused the clicking.
Chris
The mysterious clicking noise.
Frank
Yeah, just as long as it’s not a marble in the ashtray, I think I should be okay.
Chris
A pipe bomb?
Andy
One thought, when you’re talking about the under extrusion seeming to happen about five millimeters above the print bed, I at one point was having the temperature of my bed affect my print, where the first few millimeters was crappy.
Frank
Because the radiant heat from the bed was…
Andy
Yeah, was affecting the print.
And that’s because I made the mistake in Cura.
At some point, I had adjusted the bed temperature up to 255.
And so the bed just continued to heat up.
And I was printing off that without realizing it.
But just the temperature above the bed would keep it cooler than that.
But that means the heater was running all the time.
And so obviously way too hot.
But since I would start a print, leave and come back when it was done, well after it cooled, I never really picked up on it.
But my thought is, is that did seem to only affect just the first little bit above the bed.
I wonder if one of these times trying to print without the bed heater on at all, even though you’ll get a little bit less good quality.
But that might tell you something if the problem kind of goes away.
Or it’s bad all the way down now.
That it could be something for the bed heater or a temperature thing, not necessarily the bed heater being a problem.
But that might be where the temperature of the bed is preventing the problem from really showing until after it’s printing high enough off the bed where it’s not affected anymore.
Frank
That’s an interesting idea.
I feel like that one’s probably got the higher probability right now.
I’m going to definitely hit that.
This is why I like having somebody with two years of experience more than I do with this stuff.
Because I come up with an issue like that and you go, oh, maybe it’s this.
Andy
It’s all about the different perspective.
I don’t think it has anything to do with the time I’ve been doing it at all.
Frank
It’s more opportunity to encounter these issues though.
Andy
Yeah, the different problems.
Yeah, I agree.
It’s good to always throw problems like that at someone else because they might just think of something in a different angle that you did.
Especially when all the information I have is just what you’ve told me.
So I’m sure there’s a little bit more there that you’re making your judgments from.
But since I don’t have, it will lead me to different solutions or possible solutions.
Frank
Yeah.
Andy
I love bouncing ideas off people like that.
Frank
The Pragmatic Programmer, not to bring it back to software engineering or anything, they specify, actually, I think we’ve talked about this on the podcast, the rubber ducky method, where you talk to somebody.
They don’t even have to have any concept of what you’re talking about.
But just the act of explaining it to them…
Andy
Helps you…
Frank
Causes your brain to think of it objectively enough that you see where you might have other options to resolve the issue.
Chris
Rubber Ducky,
You make my programs run.
Frank
I’m going to have to pull that sound bite and put it as part of our intro, I think.
At least one.
All right.
So there was all of that, and randomly, because I was talking about how absurdly expensive it seemed like the dragons at that store were for the material that was going into them, I decided to do some math.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
So to do my mother-in-law’s dragon that she asked me to do, Cura estimates $3.55 worth of material to print it.
The time for that is, and now this is me doing it solid, too.
At a 100% infill.
Andy
Oh, okay.
So good quality
Frank
Or at least very heavy.
The time to do that is two days, three hours and 26 minutes, or 51 and a half hours is what I rounded it up to.
Looking at my power bill, I was able to estimate that the power cost per day, for me, is $3.57 at 26 kilowatt hours.
That’s approximately .137 kilowatt hours, or kilowatts per hour.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
Assuming that the graph that’s on my printer is accurate to how much power it consumes at full capacity, it’s rated for 350 watts, and this is where my math could be going wrong, because I’m just drawing a lot of conclusions there.
Andy
At this point, at least we know you’re figuring out the upper bound of it, which is probably the most important number in this.
Frank
So the controller is rated at 350 watts.
31.5 hours times 350 watts is 11,025 watts, or just a hair over 11 kilowatts times .137 kilowatts per hour.
To run is $5.07, and that’s material and electricity.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
What was the amount that you came up for, just the electricity?
1.51,1.51,1.5138, so $1.52.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
All total is 5.068��5.068or5.07.
Andy
Okay.
I bet you if you were to actually figure out the total usage of the printer instead of its max, you’re going to look at like a third of that, too.
Frank
Probably less, because it’s not running at 100% capacity, right?
So assuming, now I actually haven’t handled these dragons at the store, so I couldn’t estimate if they were what their infill was, probably not 100% infill.
They’re still charging four times their production cost to sell it at the store.
Chris
Mm-hmm.
Frank
And I am effectively, even with all of my tests, and struggling with getting the PETG to do what I want it to and all that, I’m going to sell, because she made me take $10 from her to do this job, basically selling my dragon to my mother-in-law for 100% profit, and giving her a 10 times better product.
Andy
Yeah.
I don’t know about most places.
I haven’t, now I know like movie theaters split the profit with the location that it’s being sold.
I know it’s like 50%.
When I used to sell my prints, my framed photographs that I would take back in the day, in the mall, it was a 50% to the shop for the cost that I charge as well.
And so, I mean, I’ve only got, that’s only 2n for me, but based off of that, that means those dragons would have costed about 10����ℎ��ℎ���������ℎ��,��10fortheshoptosellthem,so10 would go to the person who printed them.
And if it cost them a little over 5������,����ℎ��′��������5tomake,andthey′remaking5 profit for that, that actually sounds kind of reasonable.
Frank
That sounds low to me.
That honestly does sound low to me.
I would expect 3x at the low end, like, realistically at the low end, because there’s usually middleman, their markup and that sort of thing too.
But I feel like the 4 or 5, 4 is probably middle range reasonable.
5 is too much in my mind.
And that if they’re spending 2���ℎ������������,�ℎ��������������������ℎ��������,��������������202onwhatlookslikea,theyjustpulleditoffoftheprinter,andIamassuming202 a print seems reasonable for production costs.
And if they’re selling it for 10, that’s just, that still violates my willful suspension of disbelief.
Yeah, making $5 profit off it, giving this to my mother-in-law, seems not much in the way of profit for the cost of doing business.
Andy
So yeah, yeah, it’s just kind of a surprise, because when you first told us the cost of those in the store, I was thinking, God, that sounds like so much money.
But yeah, when you sat down and actually cracked the math and the profit margins that the guy’s probably getting, that’s actually pretty reasonable.
Frank
Yeah, high reasonable, but still reasonable, I would say.
And I’m still assuming that whoever it is, I’m not going to make…
Anyway, I’m still assuming that they’re doing it with at least 20%, maybe close to 30% infill.
So they’re saving a reasonable amount of material by not doing it 100%.
Like I have committed myself to doing for this one.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
And I feel like they didn’t do any post.
When you look at it, there’s obvious layer lines.
And I feel like they did it at a slightly lower resolution, maybe 0.3 instead of 0.2.
Andy
Wow, that’s huge.
Yeah, I could see where the disappointment would still be there for that.
That is a little bit on the high side.
It’s not as stupid as I thought it was, but yeah, that’s still a little high.
Frank
Whatever.
We can also afford to be snobbish about it since we got our own printers too.
So there’s that aspect.
Andy
That is true.
Frank
Why would I buy that when I can waste $10 in plastic trying to get my printer to work and then print it solid just to make a point?
Andy
Yeah, no kidding.
Kevin
Right.
Andy
And we’re not even going into the detail at how much effort and stuff you put to put the whole deal together with the store to be able to sell them and all that.
Frank
Not to mention the difference in production between a one-off and I’m assuming probably 20 or 30 a day.
On probably… I would accept no fewer than 10 printers running just to stay ahead of demand.
Andy
Yeah, possibly.
I mean, for all we know, he could just know somebody who runs the store and he’s just a guy like us in his basement running them off when he’s not using his printer for other things, for all we know.
Frank
Well, I guess it really kind of depends on if it’s just that one location or if it’s the whole chain too.
And I don’t have one near me, so I can’t go check.
Andy
I’ve kind of considered maybe a lot of my electronic stuff that I do is of it’s not higher quality.
I wouldn’t use that.
It’s from someone who shops for displays and options and customizability and things like that.
The world’s pretty lacking.
And so when I build that into my projects, if I was to buy something like that, I would favor it definitely a lot more than the cheaper item.
And I was contemplating the other day thinking, well, with the resin printer, I could actually print enclosures and things like that of sellable quality.
It might be worth like maybe put, you know, whenever I do a project like this to make a second one and throw it on eBay.
Worst case scenario, it just stays sitting, you know…
Frank
Doesn’t move.
Andy
And if I happen to sell one or find something that works, then I can print them as long as I’ve always got one ready to go or something.
But that might be a fun little project.
I used to sell a lot of things.
My wife used to make props and stuff, cosplay props, and we sold them on eBay.
And that made some money that almost made it worthwhile, almost, not quite.
There was still a little bit too much labor in the process to do it and having to sell things cheap.
But some of these other projects, like my fish tank thing, you know, maybe there’s a good reason why I’ve overdone it and made it look pretty and stuff like that.
If I can put something together, then that might be worth it.
Of course, having two on the controller, two tanks on the controller is kind of a weird customization thing.
But if I went and stripped it down to only do one, that would probably be perfect.
Frank
I imagine like commercial locations where they have bigger tanks and probably separated tanks, it would be a good controller for something like that.
Andy
Yeah. Doing two together.
But where the components for it and all that only cost about $10, and I might be able to actually sell something like that for, you know, 60 or 70 bucks or something
Frank
Reasonably
Andy
At some point online.
Frank
Reasonably.
Reasonably sell it for a reasonable price at 50 or 60 bucks.
I think that a lot of people would probably find something like that valuable at that price.
Andy
Yeah.
And then too, I’ve been trying to sell a Trimble unit online for the past year almost.
It’s like worth almost 1,200�����.���������������������������ℎ������,ℎ��������������������1,200bucks.AndIjustkeeponbringingdowntheprice,hopingitwillsellabout100 or so every two months, bringing it down.
And I’m down to like 400��400or500 for it.
It’s just, I can’t sell the damn thing.
So the whole eBay thing has kind of been a bit of a drag on me lately for selling stuff.
But…
Chris
It’s kind of, yeah, it’s kind of hit and miss.
I try to sell collectibles on eBay and get nothing.
But you know, every time I go to the junkyard and find one of those old Subaru clocks and post it, people take those right up.
Andy
That’s nice.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
I used to kind of been able to do that too with locating equipment.
I used to buy and fix sub-site 70 or 90 series, no, 75 series locators, because people would find those and it wouldn’t work.
And they’d sell it for 100 bucks, not knowing what they had.
And I would buy that crap up and take two to make one working one, turn around and sell a working unit for 1,800��1,800to2,200.
And so when they would sit there, because only certain people are looking for that kind of stuff, I wouldn’t be surprised if I got a month or two without any kind of sell.
It wouldn’t be a big deal.
But if you’re selling smaller stuff, you kind of need to sell more frequently to make it worthwhile.
Frank
And there is definitely an industry for stuff like that.
My wife has a YouTuber that she follows.
As she’s learning more about tech.
It’s been fun to watch her grow into it sort of thing.
Andy
That’s cool.
Yeah.
Frank
But she’s got a YouTuber that she follows who buys lots of broken electronics, quote unquote broken, like he’ll buy a lot of 10 or 12 switches and get into them and go, oh, it’s just this one component.
Well, this one’s good on this other one that is definitely in bad shape.
So I’m going to switch this out and put them together and sell them as refurbished.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
And so he’ll get 10 good units out of a lot of 12 that he purchased and be able to sell them as working functional devices for a serious profit.
And he does his video about how he tears them down and changes the stuff out.
So he’s making sponsorship money that way too and has a good little thing going.
Andy
So there is one thing here.
Oh, go ahead.
Chris
Sorry.
The thing about when I did the clocks, though, is I’d sell them for right around 25��25to30 and I’d buy them at like 5��5to6, but I’d only spend about five to 10 minutes fixing them.
So the amount I get per my time was really great, but it was still just small amounts of money.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sometimes stuff like that is only good if you enjoy the work.
Frank
Yeah.
Andy
Just enough to break even money-wise, but unless you enjoy doing it, it’s kind of like, you know, why?
Frank
Definitely belongs in the realm of hobby.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
That’s fair.
Chris
Anyway, you were saying, Andy?
Andy
No.
Well, just my brain’s kind of starting to melt a little bit.
Frank
Probably a good time to call the end of the episode then.
Kevin
I agree.
Andy
We’re doing pretty good hour and a half almost.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
It’s not no two hours that we pulled off the other day, but.
Frank
Well, Kevin’s here too.
So…
Andy
Kept us on track a little better.
Frank
All right.
We’d like to thank everyone for listening to the very end.
Chris
The very, very end.
Frank
If you like what you hear, please give us all the stars and subscribe.
We are available through a wide variety of podcast vendors and so are easy to share.
If you have feedback or if you have content requests, please let us know.
Like if you want to tell us that Kevin needs to talk more or less
Kevin
Or whatever
Frank
Or because Chris is your favorite panelist.
You can find us in our Facebook group, Amateur3DPod, or you can email us at panelists@amateur3dpod.com, or because I like to say or a lot, or you can email us at Franklin, Kevin, Andy, or Chris @amateur3dpod.com for individual feedback.
Andy
I want to hear from you.
Frank
Email Andy.
Tell him that he needs to talk less.
So it’s not just me making a big deal out of it.
Andy
Tell me to my face!
Frank
That’s what I’m doing.
Is it not?
Andy
No, I’m talking to the listeners.
I want them to tell me in email to be quiet.
Frank
Gotcha.
Chris
To his face, you know, because they’re all big visual, visual listeners.
Kevin
Right.
Andy
All of our audio listeners or visual listeners.
Frank
And unless you’re like me and you don’t visualize, but we’ll get into that later.
Kevin Buckner wrote the music for this episode.
OpenAI’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 Cottom.
And until next time, we’re going offline.
Kevin
Keep your FEP tight.
Andy
Always use hairspray.
Chris
I left my printer turned on, and now every time I walk into the room, it calls me daddy.
Andy
Did you have that one lined up for that?
Or did that come off the top of your head?
Chris
It was an apostrophe halfway through the episode.
Andy
I love it.
Kevin
I think we broke Frank
Chris
Frank’s like, I don’t know if we can leave that in.
Frank
It happens at least once in episode.
So I should be used to it by now.
Andy
That was beautiful
Frank
Wow