Frank
Thank you for joining us.
This is episode 58 of Amateur 3D Podcast, a podcast by amateur printers for amateur printers, where we share our thoughts and experience.
I guess my nose is a little more stuffy than I thought it was.
Our panelists this week are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Chris Weber, Andy Cottam, and Kevin Buckner.
And Kevin is, MIA, presumably sick?
I’m sure we’ll find out probably by the end of day.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
Hopefully he’s okay.
I’m sure he’s just sick or something.
Chris
Frank glares at me.
Yeah, I’m sorry.
Oh, I don’t know if you guys got this in the episode last week, but yeah, I was, I was sick.
I was up, and I was up all night with the kid and I, I failed to mention message you guys before I crashed.
Andy
Oh, no problem at all.
Frank
We did tell you before the podcast that that was perfectly fine.
We gave, I mean, we tease you like we tease everybody when they miss, but we didn’t.
Chris
I expect nothing less from you guys.
Frank
We didn’t judge you negatively for taking care of your kid and then sleeping through the podcast.
So
Andy
yeah.
No problem.
We have to apologize to our listeners, though, for this podcast, because it sounds like Frank still got some remnants of being sick and I’m coming down with whatever cold is buzzing around here.
So if we sound like garbage, it’s because we’re not felling too well.
Frank
Or maybe we’re just going to sound like we’re talking from our nose.
It’s only been a year since we did one of those episodes.
Andy
No kidding.
Chris
Could be fun.
Frank
Could be.
Yeah, it absolutely could be.
Probably won’t be, though.
Yeah, it’s going to be fun to find every sniffle and cut the the gain in half so that is still in there.
Just not.
Chris
Yeah, well, we could use one of those pitch.
We could use one of those pitch changers and do a whole episode like the chipmunks.
Andy
There you go.
Chris
You’re like, I don’t want to annoy our listeners out of this.
Thank you.
Frank
Honestly, our listeners have basically chose, basically shown that they’re not easy to annoy.
I think they just like self-punishment.
All 36 of our subscribers have been listening to us for, you know, a while and I don’t think that the chipmunk thing would bother them.
And we can even make it themed, you know, after Halloween, we’ll do our Thanksgiving and Christmas recordings and probably do a chipmunk themed thing.
That sounds like an idea.
Chris
Yeah, I would like to see if it’s possible to do a New Year’s, a special New Year’s thing all together at my place, but we’ll see.
Frank
So that we can celebrate your birthday with the rest of the world.
Chris
Yeah, that would be fun.
Frank
We haven’t done that for a while.
Chris
I know a good, good New Year’s party.
Frank
Indeed.
Yeah, let’s put it on the books for sure.
Chris
All right.
And all of our listeners will get to hear what we sound like drunk and uncensored.
That can be problematic, maybe not.
Andy
Just for the glory of this, all of this.
I was like, we may still want to censor it sober.
Frank
Right.
A few more common expletives.
Than we’re accustomed to broadcasting in the podcast.
Chris
Yeah.
We talk like sailors when we’re drunk and playing cards, you know.
Frank
Don’t forget that I am a sailor and I talk like this most of the time.
Granted, when I’m not broadcasting, I don’t censor myself.
And it’s not all foul language.
I just don’t censor myself.
So…
Andy
yeah.
Chris
Yeah.
Well, I think I think every adult has, most adults have this on/off mode where where when they’re comfortable, they’re in their element, you know, they they use foul language just here and there.
It’s normal, but when, when there’s kids around, you know, you’re overhanging out with your friend who has kids or your nephews, nieces or something like that.
Or you have your own kids, you’ve got censor mode turns on.
Frank
Yeah.
Actually, my, my favorite illustration of that is the one that says you can be the biggest, baddest motorcycle rider, one percenter person in the world.
If a two-year-old walks up to you with a toy phone and hands it to you, you answer.
Andy
You answer it.
Ain’t that the truth.
Yep.
Frank
Most people just recognize that young people are worth preserving, you know, the small number of people that don’t need to find an excuse to not breathe my oxygen.
But yeah.
Chris, did you do anything this week on your printer?
Chris
Yeah
Frank
you don’t, you don’t sound particularly enthusiastic.
How about two weeks?
You did miss last week.
Have you done anything in the last two weeks?
Chris
Okay.
So let’s start it.
Let’s start at the beginning.
Frank
It’s a very good place to start.
No, sorry.
Chris
Yeah.
So I talked about this a little bit with you guys in the chat, but I was like, oh, okay, I found this print in place katana, right?
It’s, it looked even cooler than the print in place sword, right?
So I adjusted some settings and I printed this little test print and it looked like it was okay.
So I’m like, okay, well, I’m going to go ahead and go and print the whole katana, right?
So the kid was going to be this punked up version of the grim reaper originally, which is why I was, she’s changed her mind.
But so I was like, oh, okay, cool.
Well, she will love this print in place pink katana.
I get it printing, right?
Takes about 15, 16 hours to print.
Prints, it looks, it’s in one piece and it completed completely printed.
But I went to take it off of my build plate and it stuck to the build plate.
Great.
But it was, it had no structure to it.
It actually broke into three pieces when I tried to pull it off the build plate.
So it had some delayering that just kind of.
Andy
Oh, gee.
Frank
So did you print it solid?
But is it thick enough that changing the infill density would change any of that?
Chris
So, no, so I had 100% infill density, but this thing is supposed to be all walls, right?
Because it’s each, you know…
Frank
yeah…
Chris
yeah.
So there’s telescopes, so it wouldn’t necessarily have a lot of meat.
Yeah, it doesn’t have any infill, except for like right there on, on the end of the in on the on the tang and then on the pommel is the only place.
So anyway, so I cut my my wall line count on the test.
I cut my wall line count down to one.
And like I said, it printed OK.
And I was like, OK, so maybe wall line, a wall count of one at the 130… 1.32 millimeter thickness will be good for good for this, because it’s an inside, basically an inside wall and an outside wall right next to each other for every, you know, blade going up.
And I’m like, OK, that should make sense.
That means each thing will be like two and a half millimeters thick about, right?
So that that seems like that would be a good thickness for.
But yeah, no, this this this plastic didn’t handle that well.
So…
Frank
hmm.
Chris
So I went back, I changed my wall line count to two.
I’m not trying to reprint the same sort again right at the moment, because the child changed her mind.
And that is set in stone, because we’re like it is currently Howl-o-weekend.
Frank
So yeah, there comes a point where you can’t just take new ideas.
So that said, that is one of the great things about 3D printing is if you change your mind, there’s a little bit of a lead time required, but you can change your mind up to a certain point, depending on what you’re doing and have a new object for it.
So that’s… sorry, I just wanted to broadcast specifically.
3D printers are awesome.
And I’m in their fan club
Chris
Oh, yep.
Nope, Kevin’s got some scheduling conflicts, by the way.
Andy
Oh, OK.
Well, I know that he might not be sick.
Frank
Yeah, I’m glad that’s the case.
Chris
Yeah, he said he had a scheduling conflict and apparently we must have missed it in the chat.
But that’s OK.
Anyway…
Frank
Not in this chat, he could have put it up somewhere else, I guess.
Um, yeah.
Chris
So, so yeah, that was last week or that was what I would have had for us last week.
This week, I was I spent a little bit of time adjusting my settings and things and got a bunch of my plastic, a bunch of my plastic that I’d ordered showed up.
Andy
Oh, nice.
Chris
And so I started, I started printing some things for the wife’s costume.
So since everybody’s going to get this after Halloween, it was she’s she’s she’s going to be the queen of spades.
So imagine the queen of hearts, except, you know, black and purple instead of black and red.
Frank
And and at least a little bit more stable, given your wife, not an enormously more stable, but a little bit.
Yeah.
Chris
So I’m printing up some purple spades for her to she’s getting one of those gothic punk outfits and it’s got rings all over and she’s going to be hanging these little spades from all the rings.
And she’s got a staff that’s going to have this big elongated spade on it that looks kind of like a spear.
Yeah.
Frank
OK.
Andy
That’s cool.
Chris
I’ll make sure it’s post post pictures when she’s ready to go.
Frank
Now, I don’t remember how descriptive it was in the book.
It’s been a while since I read it.
But I know in the cartoon, the guards were all spades because, you know, they had the spade on the end of the spear.
So that was how they they qualified as guards.
It never occurred to me that there would be a queen of spades.
Chris
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was a wrong idea.
Frank
Maybe it’s like the the relationship with Switzerland and England, where uh… the Swiss guard, no, not England with Rome, where the Swiss guard guards the where the pope lives
Chris
the Vatican.
Frank
Yes, that one.
The Swiss guard is the guard at the Vatican.
Andy
OK.
Frank
And that was a relationship, a treaty from way, way back in the day.
And so, I mean, they’re… I’m expanding the Alice canon at this point, but it is conceivable that there would be a spade queen who signed a treaty with the Queen of Hearts and provides security.
Chris
I don’t know.
She came up with it out of nowhere and I was like, oh, well, that’s a really cool idea.
Sure.
Andy
I like that.
You identified that and then also gave a solution to make it all work.
That was awesome to watch that come come through right there.
Frank
For Chris?
Andy
No.
So
Chris
you.
Frank
So OK.
You’re not looking at your camera.
I don’t know who you’re talking about.
Andy
Oh, OK.
So Chris’s wife came up with something costume on her own.
You found a slight flaw with that with related to Alice in Wonderland.
And then you also came up with a solution and an explanation for it.
I thought that was…
Frank
a plausible solution, right?
Andy
That you had enough knowledge of these things to be able to put such different pieces of knowledge together.
It was just impressive.
I was just a little bit in awe about it.
Frank
Well, that’s one of the advantages to ADHD is I know a lot of stupid stuff that doesn’t necessarily apply.
Chris
This is where all the creative content for Hollywood comes from.
Frank
A good portion of it, yeah.
And I can’t remember.
There are several very wealthy business owners to live with ADHD as well.
So, you know, they leverage it.
However they do it, they leverage it in their favor, and they’ve been very successful with it.
So…
Andy
yeah.
Frank
That is cool, Chris.
I like the queen of spades.
Chris
Yep.
And so I found some now that the plastic has come in today, I’m going to finish printing up all the rest of those little spades for the wife to hang on her costume.
And I found a sword that you can print all the individual pieces.
So it’s still a telescoping sword, but you print all the individual pieces.
Frank
And then you assemble it.
Chris
And then, yeah, you assemble it and glue the glue the glue the pommel on so that it’s all stays together.
So I’m going to go.
That’s a good idea.
Yeah, I’m going to go down.
Frank
It’s probably more stable, too.
Chris
Mm hmm.
I don’t like it.
Yep.
So that’s that that’s been me the last couple of weeks.
Andy
Did when you’re printing the spades out, did you see any of the same problem that happened when you tried printing the first sword?
Or does it seem to be just related to that model?
Chris
I think it’s the plastic.
I think I need to I think I need to condition that pink plastic because this is brand new plastic and all my settings.
I left all the printing settings themselves the same.
The only adjustments I made was I changed the wall count from one back to two.
And then I re-leveled my bed.
And I didn’t…
No, no, no, I know I cranked my print temperature up 10 degrees.
Andy
Did you?
Chris
Yeah, I did.
So but, you know, brand new plastic cranked my temperature up 10 degrees and leveled my and these these all printed out just exactly as you’d expect.
Beautiful.
Andy
well whatever works.
Chris
I might try another test with the pink plastic with the 10 degrees hotter and then see if I notice any changes.
And if I don’t, then I go out of recondition the plastic.
So…
Andy
it works
Chris
but I did build a hot box that I can use my printer to condition the plastic with now.
Frank
So I was going to say, Utah hasn’t legalized that yet.
Chris
So it’s basically going to be my enclosure, but I screwed up the plexiglass.
So I just screwed a board in front of it so I can just I can use it as a conditioning box for the moment.
Frank
Drop it over your whole thing for now.
Chris
Yeah.
Mm hmm.
Frank
I guess if it works, that’s all that matters, right?
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
Until you can move forward.
Chris
Yeah, so I’m not going to actually use it as an enclosure until I have a a door on the front that I can actually see through so that, you know.
Frank
Naw, it makes sense.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
Well, is that about it then?
Or…
Chris
Yeah, that is it for me, sir.
heh.
I called you, sir.
Frank
Don’t call me that.
That’s my dad’s name.
Chris
But anyway, so I saw that you you finished up your box there, Andy, your magic box.
Andy
Yes.
Yeah.
So all this past, how long have I spent on this sucker?
Are we getting on to the three month mark three months on it?
Frank
I think it’s been about three months.
Andy
One project
Chris
end of May.
Frank
Hey, you know, you feel the time here, Andy, but when it’s production, you know, commercial stuff, you can spend three months working it out and have most of the the iterations done.
And then when you go live, it’s about as pretty, you know, I mean, it’s about as solid as it’s ever going to get.
And there are some projects that do less that get just lost in the weeds.
So I think three months is perfectly reasonable for the R&D on something like this.
Chris
But yeah, and seeing what you’ve made, you know, it’s it’s incredible.
This is something that you could, if you find a company that can take your designs and make it commercially, you you could make a lot of money.
Andy
Well, there’s a lot of stuff that a lot of people have made.
You I could have just bought this.
This does exist.
Not with the detail that I put into the program for it, but the whole concept of a temperature controlled fan for your fish tank.
Yeah, that does exist.
I could have just bought that.
And there’s a lot of different ways and kinds that they they made them back or that they’re that you have to pick from.
But yeah, this one here was mostly it’s not really something new, but it is something that I didn’t know how to do all the pieces of.
So…
Frank
And, and that’s that’s really where the value in it for you was anyway.
Yeah, I mean, it took you three months to build, but you built.
The whole thing.
Andy
Yeah, it all came out and it’s starting from nothing.
And the circuit board came out so wonderful in the end.
It’s so pretty.
Yeah, I was really impressed.
I think I showed you guys that at some point, didn’t we?
It just came out real pretty.
But…
Chris
yeah, it’s I mean, I can’t tell the difference between that board and a professionally made board from something that I just took apart.
You know
Andy
Well, thank you.
Thank you very much.
I did find a couple of bugs in software, but that came into fruition after it’s been running for the full 24 hours.
But that was kind of expected because that’s, you know, that’s kind of hard to…
Frank
That’s an edge case, it’s really hard to, yeah, like you said, debug.
Andy
Yeah, yeah.
I’ve done it and I’ve updated the firmware for it once.
And I’ve even got a little port on the side of my box for being able to plug in a USB cord to be able to update it.
Chris
Oh, yeah, the little micro USB.
I saw that.
That was cool.
That was cool.
Andy
Yeah, on the on the side of the box there.
But so I already upgraded the firmware once on it.
I decided that the temperature, you know, I expected a fish tank’s water temperature to be pretty much even all the way around.
You know, I’ve got a lot of a lot of currents inside the tank moving the water around.
I thought that the temperature would overall be pretty equal.
But and so the way that I’m measuring the temperature is when I take a temperature, I read the sensor 10 times and then average them out to get it, you know, a good average of that temperature.
So that’s all just an instant kind of thing that takes 10 readings and averages them out.
And then I had that set to every half a second.
It would poll the temperature so it would every half a second.
It would take the temperatures, take 10 of them and average them.
And then it would store that in an array of 10 slots.
And it would go through every half second and update a slot.
And then the actual temperature read came from averaging that whole set.
So my temperature, so, you know, at that point, it was a hundred reads to come up with one temperature.
And it was a rolling average over the course of five, that’d be five seconds.
And which is is a reasonably fast update for what it is.
And I noticed when I go in, finally, I’m able to look at my graphs and look at actual data from the graphs, which the graphs read really pretty now when it’s got actual data, not just noise.
But you can see waves in it in the temperature as hot and cold spots are kind of passing through the tank.
I got a resolution of point one degrees on it.
So that’s that’s pretty good to see these waves go through.
Frank
Oh, yeah.
Andy
And it was I’ve noticed that sometimes is a wave would pass because it was like about a maybe 10 minute cycle or so for the whole thing to come around again for my tank.
And that was causing the fans to kick on and then kick off, then kick on and then kick off.
So the first update I went and I made that array a hundred big.
And then I also changed the polling to only poll every 10 seconds.
So now at that point, what would that be every 10?
Frank
Did you say 100 100 long
Andy
100 long every 10.
So that’s my brain is not working well enough.
Frank
That’s a thousand seconds.
A thousand seconds divided by 60.
Who’s got a calculator?
Andy
Yeah
Chris
well, it’s slightly over one and a half hours.
Andy
But yeah, 16 minutes every 16 minutes.
It will it will.
So the read time, the average is every 16 minutes worth of reads in that.
Frank
It’s basically tripling the time between reads logged.
Andy
A lot more.
I went from half a second up to every 10 seconds.
So but that completely compensated for.
So now instead of reading, instead of completely getting a new average of temperatures every half a second or no, every five seconds, it’s doing it every 16 and a half minutes.
So…
Chris
and that makes more sense.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, that that took the the waves out of it.
So you can still see it’s still like updating the temperature and stuff.
But the rolling average really smooths everything out.
And that stopped the the bumping in the the the unit trying to keep the temperature at a certain temperature, because it would it would get near the temperature to kick on.
And then as soon as it would kick on, it would fall away again into, you know, the colder cycle of the tank.
And we’re only talking like the whole thing is all within, you know, 0.5 degrees or so.
I had the hysteresis on these set at half a degree.
So as soon as it reaches the temperature, then the temperature to turn it back off has to be a half a degree lower than what it actually reached.
So that way it would kind of stop that, too.
Chris
The hysteresis.
Andy
Yes.
The hysteresis.
Chris
OK.
OK.
Andy
So I got that said at half a degree.
I upped that a little bit.
I upped it to one full degree and gave myself a little bit more of a leeway between when the heater in the tank would kick on and when it would cool down the tank.
But so got that all taken care of.
That required an update because I changed the array size.
And I noticed that I have to look into a couple of things.
It’s doing a couple of things weird.
My the screen, the overall overview screen shows me how many minutes the fans have been running over a 24 hour period.
It’s just kind of a summary.
And they’re all reading it like twenty three and a half hours and they’re not staying on that long.
So something’s weird.
I think I am actually counting the times when the fans aren’t running.
And…
Frank
that’s what it feels like to me as they are running.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
You need to add an exclamation mark in there somewhere.
Chris
If, not and.
Andy
And another thing, too, I think I got my fans backwards when you’re graphing the data, the because on the graph, you can select which things you want to see.
So I’ve got the temperature of my tank one, the temperature of tank two, and then the fan speed of tank one and the fan speed of tank two.
And so you can have four items in one graph, which my screen is tiny.
So it really clogs it up.
I’m glad I added that feature.
Frank
Did you tile them or are they overlaid with each other?
Andy
They’re overlaid.
Frank
OK, that’s not as bad.
Can you imagine how bad it would be if they were tiled?
Andy
That actually might be a little bit easier to read, because my screen is only one color.
It’s not even grayscale.
It’s just on or off for the pixels.
So they either.
Frank
So when the graphs overlaid, you don’t know which one is where.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Frank
At some point, it doesn’t matter, though.
Andy
Yeah, I do got some color…
Frank
All the same data.
Andy
I do got some color screens, though, that I would have been able to do different colors.
If I ever use that graphing system again, which I probably will, I put way too much work into it, not to.
Frank
Right.
Andy
But I think I’m showing the data for fan two on graph fan one and vice versa.
So… I noticed that they’re not really lining up.
And then when I was playing with it the other day, I realized, oh, if I turn on fan two and look at graph of the temperature one, you can see right as fan two kicks on, suddenly the temperature in graph one plummets, you know?
So I wonder if I just got those backwards or something.
And the way I was, what’s that?
Chris
I said, you’ve got a maxbacks.
Andy
Oh, but the the way I stored that data on the chip to try to get as much usable space out of it as possible was kind of complicated.
So I got the the temperature utilizing 10 bits of data on an integer.
And then I stored the fan speed that it’s running at for that frame.
In the last six bits of an integer.
So I’ve got to like pull those, put those together, store it, and then pull them back out to read it.
And so I could have stored them in the wrong variable at some point.
I just got to go back and look at it and see what I did.
There was a lot there.
But…
Frank
does that mean that you’re not using that library that you found where you could define the bit length?
Andy
No, no, I did not wind up using that particular library.
It’s a very neat one.
That’s definitely on the docket.
But I had the stuff written before I found that.
Frank
Oh, gotcha.
Andy
But that that library is pretty, pretty neat.
Being able to create any kind of variable.
Frank
That that would be a good upgrade is figuring that out and like doing a version two or something with that for the data.
Chris
You can definitely use that.
You are the space manager.
Well, it’s there’s not a bit of waste.
There’s not a bit of wasted space in your house.
Frank
That’s true.
Andy
That is true.
Yeah, I’ve had to upgrade my server because I ran out of space.
And I’ve got a whole hoarding issue with that.
Frank
OK, slow down, slow down.
You can’t just you can’t just run over that.
It’s been a while since he told our listeners how much space you have on your media server.
Andy
It’s a lot.
Frank
No, give us a number, Andy.
You know how this works.
Andy
Oh
Chris
in petabytes.
Andy
It’s not in petabytes… yet.
No, it’s it’s not too big.
So I just barely purchased 40 terabytes of data to replace four-eight terabyte drives.
So I’m going to actually pull those eight terabyte drives out of the system.
I had with the way I backup data and things like that, I’ve got a situation where an old two terabyte drive I’m my external, my offsite backup drives are three terabytes.
But one of them is a two terabyte drive.
And my… the amount of data I need to back up has crested over two terabytes in size.
So I’ve had to pull and stop using that two terabyte drive.
And so now I’m missing a drive in my my offsite backups that I should have.
And so I’ve got two…
This is complicated the way I do this stuff.
I got a mirror drive for every drive.
I don’t use RAID.
I don’t trust RAID.
And in place of not trusting RAID systems, I just mirror drives.
OK, you know, it’s not as price….
It’s not as good money wise to do it this way, but it is simpler.
And I think it’s a little bit more robust, even though it costs you a little bit more money to have that kind of system.
So everything’s mirrored.
So really, I’m working with my external backups aren’t mirrored.
They’re they’re a different system, but the drives in this in the server are mirrored.
So I’m pulling out two eight terabytes and replacing them with a 20 terabyte.
And by pulling out two eight terabytes, that will mean four eight terabytes are leaving my leaving the server.
And I will be able to use those for my external backups.
So there’s kind of a reason why I’m upgrading in such a weird way, because it’s actually at the bottom of the smaller drives that I’m actually need the the need the repair and compens…
Yeah, I was doing all that.
But yeah, I just go down hill.
Frank
You you have successfully site stepped my question, Andy.
How much data do you… data capacity, do you have on your server?
Andy
OK, right now plugged into it.
There are two twenties.
Let me add this up here.
So 20 plus 20 plus eight plus eight plus eight plus eight plus eight plus eight plus eight plus eight plus eight plus six plus six and my boot drives 120 meg so that gives me… in advertised storage space of the drives.
One hundred and sixteen terabytes.
Frank
That’s like twice the number I remember, Andy.
Andy
And that doesn’t include the drives that are off site drives that I keep in safe and whatnot that are backup or the external that sits on top of the machine.
Frank
I was just talking about currently in use on your server right now.
Andy
Yeah, one hundred and sixteen is stuffed inside of that computer.
Chris
Oh, how much data is on that?
Frank
That’s a box from this from the 90s to right.
Andy
You know, it’s an older case that I’ve mutilated.
I’ve taken all of the drive bays out of the front and put together my own, you know, drive bay set up so it can hold so many drives.
I got two SATA expansion cards on the inside so I’d have enough ports for it.
So it’s… but the motherboards not too old.
I think it’s a 2005 or 2010.
It’s somewhere around that age, which isn’t too bad.
But yeah, there’s there’s a lot of drives on that machine.
I’ve always had a lot.
I’ve got to let me show you guys here and see which way that way.
So you can see here right now I am copying.
I’m preparing these brand new 20 terabyte drives.
That’s why they’re kind of sitting funny.
Usually this is all closed up.
But right now, in order to test the new drives, I needed to plug them directly into the motherboard instead of using the expansion cards, because my expansion cards are really old.
I only get about 50 megs per second read and write through each SATA port on that.
But the motherboard, I can get about 150.
So to test these drives thoroughly.
What’s that?
Chris
I said that board is older than I thought.
My oldest board still does three meg a second or three gig a second.
Sorry.
Andy
Oh, three gig.
I don’t know many spinning markers that even go that fast.
Chris
Right.
No, no, that’s not right.
Frank
So just to illustrate what Andy showed us here, where the bays are that your drives will normally go is stacked.
One on top of the other is of drives
rattled off each one of a drive bay.
Chris
so each of the numbers that he rattled off.
Each one of those was a drive bay.
Frank
It looks like you’ve stuck them in between the OEM shelves to double your drive space in there.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the OEM shelves, the old bit, the bays are completely removed.
So I’ve got I’ve got this that’s the full length.
Frank
So those are drive frames.
I’m looking at them, not yet, not the actual shelf.
OK, still one on top of the other and the drives that he’s testing.
Now, when I lived there, let’s keep in mind that there was always one or two just in regular use hanging out of the box.
So when he says that the two that are hanging out of the box are going to go back in, I was not expecting that.
I just figured they were in in in use and hanging out of the box.
So…
Andy
yeah, I’m not I’m not that trashy.
It does go together nice.
But it’s a moment in order to test these with the reasonable amount of time.
It’s going to take 40 hours to test those drives before I can put them in use, because I do like to stress test the drives.
I use the H2 test.
So I write every single bit on the drive, and then I go back and read every single bit to make sure it’s correct.
And and that way it, you know, it’s it’s such a large drive.
It’s a straight it is a stress test to the physical components of the drive, even though realistically in 40 hours, I will only check every one bit on that hard drive once and then that’s it.
It’ll take 40 hours to do that.
Frank
Are these still spinners or have you started adding solid state to your system yet?
Would you…
Andy
Yeah My bood drives are
Frank
Will you start
Andy
My boot drive and my my main drive that runs Plex for its caching are SSDs that way can benefit from the speed.
But all the media is spinning rust.
Frank
And that does make sense.
I just, you know, yeah, I wonder if you’re ever going to get to the point where, well, and if the technology gets there, I can see you seeing it as cost efficient.
But.
And then you would have to you would probably have to have like three times as much space just to have the drives and then catch up.
Andy
Yeah, yeah.
And you’ll appreciate this.
So I got hacked.
What was it two years ago, three years ago?
Frank
It was a little while ago.
It was before we started the podcast.
Andy
Yeah, I got attacked with ransomware and it was my own damn fault.
I had remote desktop open to the outside and because I liked to be able to remote into the server and I I’ve never really been been hacked before in such a way.
And so it was kind of a surprise.
And and they got in there and they destroyed all my media.
And then I had it backed up.
And so I was dumb.
I wound up starting to rebuild my server, copying stuff over from the drives.
And they were still able to get into my system.
So that next day, when I was rebuilding stuff, they attacked everything with the brand, with the newer software that is able to lock stuff up even faster.
I don’t remember what it’s called.
But yeah, they destroyed my whole media library.
So I’m really buttoned down now to prevent that.
And I even if you can see, I’ve got this big blue button on the side of the computer here.
I disable my backups that are inside of this machine with that button.
So each one of my backup drives, my mirror drives stays disconnected from the system with one push of the button.
And then once a month, I’ll push that button.
All the drives will come back because both my expansion cards and the motherboard data ports are swappable.
So I push the button and the drives come immediately back, which is kind of nice.
And then I run my software that mirrors the drives and then I take them back down.
So that eliminates my risk of losing my media because my media here, I don’t back up properly.
If there’s just too much of it, I mirror the drives.
I don’t have an upside backup for my media.
Frank
Are you saying that you don’t do it the better way to protect the 120 terabytes of data, Andy?
Andy
Yeah, because it would cost me an entirely another set of drives.
I would have to have three drives for every mirror instead of two.
And that’s just…
So instead I have them physically disconnect inside with that push of that button.
So if I do get hacked, there’s only a one in 30 chance that that will be on a day that I’m mirroring stuff over.
So a little bit safer that way, too.
And one thing it’s kind of cool that I’m kind of proud of and my hoarder friends might respect that.
I’ve got this stack of hard drives alongside my printer here that is every failed server hard drive I’ve ever had.
And there are two, four, six, eight, nine, 10, 11 drives right there.
A failed one terabyte, two terabyte hard drives from when I first started running my server this way.
Chris
No, you shut up.
You’re a failure.
Andy
Well, I also say to the backup is every two months I will take the drive out of my safe and swap it.
And that’s for our pictures and stuff like that.
Because in our family, everybody’s phone, everybody’s computer gets backed up to the server automatically every night.
So if I take a picture, it is backed up automatically every single night to the server.
And then every two months, I take that data and swap it with one item in my safe, which is an offsite one.
And then also every two months when I go to see my parents, I swap the most recent backup drive with them.
So if the house burns down or something like that, all of our photos and important information, all of our computers, hard drives are backed up offsite.
So… in the server, the server’s hard drive is also neared every two months.
So if I do get hacked, I don’t even have to worry about getting into the old hard drive.
I just abandon everything at that moment and pop in the new drive that was from two months ago before it happened.
Make sure however they got in is not, you know, an option at that point and then fire everything back up.
And then as long as the devices and stuff weren’t hacked either, then, you know, when they do their next backup for that night, everything is back to the way it was.
So I’m kind of anal about my data.
Frank
You’ve got enough of it to protect.
Makes sense to me.
Andy
Well, I think I’ve actually got a hoarding problem, but I only do it with data.
I don’t do it with real things in the real world.
I can’t seem to delete anything.
So I’ve got every hard drive or a copy of every single hard drive of every computer I’ve ever owned.
Chris
I might need to hit you.
Andy
What’s that?
Chris
I might need I might need to hit you up for an older version of the partition wizard.
Then the new partition wizard doesn’t let me do any of the stuff.
The old old additions let me do.
And now I’m really, I know exactly what you’re talking about.
And I wound up looking around for another one and I bought that software.
OK
Frank
maybe I’m just weird, but I use the Windows tool.
Andy
Yeah, talking about disk management.
Frank
Yeah
Andy
well, that can create partitions and delete them, but that’s about all it can do.
You can’t like mirror drive or copy partitions from one drive to another.
Things like that.
Chris
Yeah, it doesn’t do all that fun stuff.
Andy
And it’s the new one.
Frank
I’d be surprised if I’d be surprised if someone hadn’t figured out a script to run on like PowerShell or something to manage that.
But…
Andy
Yeah, possibly.
The new software.
Since you’ve done stuff like this, Chris, with with the old software, the new software will allow me to make a complete copy of the boot drive while the machine is running without ever having to reboot the machine, which is kind of cool.
So when I’m making that mirror copy of the hard of the server’s drive, I don’t have to.
I mean, I could do it with the machine still running and never have to reset it.
So and I’ve tested it and I’ve swapped them to make sure that it’s a working copy and it functions beautifully.
So…
Chris
Cool.
Andy
But yeah, I don’t want to lose any data.
And I’ve been lucky so far.
I’ve only lost media when I got hacked and that was it.
So the my external drives when I got hacked, I did have two drives or I had one drive in my safe and one at my parents’ house and of our personal data.
So all of that was safe and but I did lose the media.
So I rebuilt that and now I want to make sure I don’t lose it because I don’t want to do an offsite backup of my media.
That was ridiculous.
Right now it would be like maybe about 50 terabytes of 50 to 60 terabytes of data for all the media to be able to back up offsite.
And at 20 terabyte drives at the current price, that would be like 900 bucks.
So I don’t want to spend that kind of money for an offsite backup of the media.
But having them disconnected like this with that button should provide.
You know, it’s it’s halfway there to offsite.
You know, it won’t protect from a fire, but it’s not an online copy of the data.
So it can’t be hacked unless it’s currently enabled.
But yeah, going back to the 3D printing stuff.
Chris
What?
Andy
I got that.
What’s that?
Chris
Said what?
We’re talking about 3D printing.
Andy
So I didn’t mean to get off a tangent on the computers.
That’s not even 3D printing related there.
Oh, you know what?
That’s not true.
Each one of those drives has a spacer in between it that was 3D printed in the server.
So I can make sure I’ve got air flow in between each drive.
Chris
I was about to say I’ve seen I’ve seen whatcha m’ call ’em… expansion base that you can 3D print.
And I’ve actually got a couple of files of those myself because I got a similar thing going on where I have a media server.
I just don’t have like I’ve got like I’ve got like two drives, not 15, you know.
Andy
Yep, you can see all my 3D printed spacers.
Chris
Spacer, I don’t even know where you’re going out the airlock.
Chris
Oh, dear.
Chris
That makes me think of that little the little mole from Zootopia.
Space’m.
Andy
Yeah, no kidding.
Chris
He’s he’s in a he’s in a space suit, you know, and sitting just outside the airlock space’m.
Andy
But so got my fan project is complete for the most part.
I got bugs I need to work out, but it’s up and running.
By the way, if anybody’s interested over this last week of using it, just guessing I have only had to add about a quarter of the amount of water to the tanks due to evaporation since I started using my fans.
And my my temperature of my tanks is rock solid.
It’s within like two degrees of a target temperature all the time.
So…
Chris
that’s really nice.
Frank
And that was that was that was the end goal, right?
Andy
Yeah, yeah, it really did work.
Chris
Lots of savings on top of that, because that means you have to spend less time treating new water and what that means that the tanks say cleaner longer, maybe is that what I infer?
Andy
No, no, I still got to change out my filters every about two weeks.
I have to go through.
But I use so in most fish tanks, you don’t do mechanical filtering.
You your filtering is biological.
So you get the tanks and stuff like that.
The filter media isn’t supposed to be filtering stuff out of the tank.
It’s a place for bacteria to live that helps, you know, with the chemicals in your water.
Things just settle out of the tank and it stays pretty clean that way.
But for both of my tanks, I run inside of those filters, some polyfill as filter media, and that gets clogged up about every two weeks.
And I need to swap it out.
And I think it’s kind of nice because I don’t wash it.
I just pull it out and throw it away.
And the wife uses polyfill all the time for her cosplay stuff.
You can buy it in boxes like this.
Frank
And that’s a volume wise.
That’s a
Andy
10 pounds
Frank
American American measurement, one square foot of just raw polyfill.
Chris
No, that’s better than a size box.
That’s like an 18 by 18 inch box.
Frank
Is it18?
Andy
18 by 18 by 24 tall, I think.
Yeah.
And I mean, it.
Frank
So that’s inches, by the way.
Still, that’s a lot of… and it compresses.
Andy
So they did used to be smaller, but, you know, it kind of overflows.
Frank
But so this stuff’s pretty when you leave the top opened it expands.
Andy
Yeah, but that’s for the wife’s cosplay stuff that she does.
But I use it as filter media for the fish tank because it’s sterile and it captures a lot of the the crap in the water.
So it doesn’t really help.
Yeah, the fans don’t help keep the water clean.
And I keep a I’ve got a five gallon Jimmy can?
I think that’s what they’re called Jimmy cans, right?
The old fuel tanks that you see on Jeeps all the time.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
I got a plastic, one of those that’s six gallons that I treat our chlorine out of the water.
So I got a a bubbler in there.
I’ll fill up that that Jimmy can and with water from the tap.
And then I’ll run a bubbler in it for about eight hours or so.
And I also put some pH stabilizer stuff in there.
And then I’ve got a little tiny pump that’s attached to that.
So whenever my tanks are running low on water, I just flip on the pump for a minute and pumps water out of the Jimmy can up into the tanks.
And so I only have to fill that up about every month or so.
Makes it a little easier.
Chris
I’m just picturing you taking a just holding a gas can and dumping a little bit of stuff in the top of your fish tank.
Andy
You know, it’s just kind of funny you say that, because I don’t know what I’m doing with fish.
And at one point I got a snail.
OK, I got a pest snail into my tank.
Frank
You mentioned that a little while ago.
Andy
Yeah, I’ll go ahead and repeat it.
So it replicated a lot.
I didn’t realize it would become the problem that it did.
There were thousands and I couldn’t get rid of them.
So after trying chemicals, after trying things that eat snails, all this other kind of stuff, I wound up taking all the fish out of that tank, putting them in our hospital tank for a night.
And then I used the sous vide and sous vide the tank.
I brought the whole fish tank up to 160 degrees after cleaning it out, because I mean, I physically cleaned out as many as I could get, you know, and cleaned out the water and stuff like that.
Frank
Take out the gravel and scrub the…
Chris
Sous vide d’escargot.
Andy
I had to get rid of all the eggs and stuff like that.
So I took our kitchen sous vide that we used to eat food with and stuck it on the side of the tank and ranked it on at about four.
It was probably four or five hours.
It brought the entire fish tank up to 160 degrees.
And then I drained it out and refreshed the water a couple of times and then put all new water in it and then let the tank cycle for about a week before the fish moved back in from the hospital tank.
Haven’t seen a seat.
Have not seen a snail since, so.
Chris
Well, sometimes you got to go nuclear.
Andy
Yeah, that was the nuclear option.
I really did try a lot of ways to take care of them, you know, the tricks online, buying things like we had a fish that ate snails, wasn’t eating them very fast, got some, what are they called, assassin snails, which are snails that eat other snails.
And that wasn’t really doing it.
No, those snails just love the lay eggs.
Frank
I feel like you talked about it for a good two or three weeks before you got to the sous vide option.
Andy
Yeah, but it did work and yeah, so that’s not a problem anymore.
And now the temperature is not a problem in tanks either.
I don’t know many other ways I could automate it.
I would like to make an automated feeder for when I go on vacation for them at one point, but I haven’t needed to yet.
Frank
So is this a bad time to suggest you work out a bubble lever level with a probably a coffee, like an office coffee setup.
So you just have a tube run like you do for the fridge.
So it tops off your water supply and you can bubble it and then automatically pumping in to the tank when it gets low.
Chris
Well, for that, I put in a float like you got in your toilet, I think.
Andy
I did consider that with the pump that I do have on it.
Like, we think a lot of like my friend.
So I did get some electrical floats switches for being able to do something like that.
Chris
OK, yeah, that’s a lot like carburetor floats.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, they’re pretty simple.
They’re just electric.
They’re magnetic and they’re completely waterproof.
I think I paid like five dollars for this bag of five.
So they’re not even very expensive, but then I would be able to use these to trigger the pump and I was going to use a microcontroller on it so that it was a little bit more stupid proof where I could say, hey, if the…
Frank
stupid proof is impossible, we talked about this last week, stupid resistant.
Andy
There you go.
Chris
Yes.
Andy
But where I could have it say, you know, hey, I’ve been running this pump for the last two minutes and the float still hasn’t said that it’s OK.
You know, I’m going to stop and throw an alarm or beep or something, you know, that way I don’t overfill the tank.
Chris
But it should stop and throw an alarm.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, but, you know, really every night when I go to feed the fish, I just look at the water level and turn on the pump while I’m feeding them.
So it’s it wouldn’t even really like save me anything.
And it would it would cause me more anxiety having a system like this automated that could just start throwing water onto the ground.
Then…
Frank
yeah
Chris
yeah
Frank
you don’t want a basement flood.
Chris
I was going to go there.
Yeah.
Frank
Well, and at what point are you automating the process so much that you’re actually interacting with the pet?
Andy
Exactly
Frank
It’s like it’s as much for you as it is them, right?
If you if you’ve got them just so that they can survive in your basement, there’s no point in having them.
Chris
Well, then they become an office fish that they’re just ornamentation.
Andy
Yeah.
And I don’t like to think of them that way.
A couple of my fish interact with me outside the tank, which is awesome.
It’s neat to see them get excited when you hold the food container in front of the tank, you know, where they’re looking through it.
You haven’t even put any up top yet, but they know they see that food container.
They’ll get all excited about it.
So they are.
Chris
Feed Me!
Andy
But I grew up with fish.
And so the fish kind of remind me of my mom, too, which passed away.
So it’s kind of a connection there.
So I like having the fish.
It’s nice to not have everything automated.
So you have to do a little bit with them.
Frank
That’s fair.
Yeah, I guess.
Chris
But it would be nice to have a couple of systems in place that you can just put on every time you go to vacation, though.
So…
Andy
yeah, an automatic feeder would be important.
Something I just clip onto the top of the tank, put a week’s worth of food into and know that they’re taking care of.
I mean, right now I just use the the hard pellet stuff you throw into the tank.
But last time I went on vacation, I know not everybody was eating like they should have been because they was really hungry when I came home.
So I felt kind of bad about that.
So next time I go on vacation, I don’t want to use.
I want to put those hard pellets into the tank so that they’re there for the ones who will eat it just in case.
But I think I would prefer to come up with some kind of automated automated feeder, which there’s a lot of ways to do that.
And I’ve thought about it a lot, too.
And I think there’s a lot of neat, fun ways to do it.
But that’s a project for down the road.
Chris
If yeah, well, if it was me, I would just modify what I’ve got now.
I’ve got an automatic feeder for my elderly cat.
And it’s it was like 50 bucks on Amazon.
They’re not that expensive.
And it’s you just fill up the carafe with with the food.
And it lets you set four feeding times in a 24 hour period.
Andy
OK
Chris
and then it lets you have four different serving size amounts for each one of those.
So OK, it worked so well for the cat that the wife decided to get it, get one for the dog also.
So that’s good.
Frank
You mean the dog doesn’t eat all the cats food anyway?
Chris
Well, we put the kid dog.
We put the cats food up where the dog can’t get it.
Frank
That’s fair.
Andy
That’s good.
Frank
I know a dog will eat all the cats food and let it, though.
Chris
Yep.
Frank
Any dog.
Chris
She likes anything better than her own food, including bugs.
Andy
That’s good.
But most of the time we have when we go on vacation, we have someone come and feed the dog or the dog will go to their house.
Both my parents, my my dad and my mother-in-law are really big.
They both love my dog and the pigs down here, because we also got guinea pigs with the kids.
So they’re more than happy to come down and feed them.
But the fish are sometimes it’s a little bit more of an ask.
And I feel like sometimes so an automated feeder, I think I would feel more comfortable when…
Frank
it’s at least it’s at least harder in those instances where the pet needs to go on location instead of staying home.
It’s harder to get the fish there.
Andy
Yes
Frank
because it’s a lot more involved to change their tank and all that and move them and then get them acclimated to the new home.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Yeah.
It’s like I can see it being like a three hour process, whereas with the the the mammal or I guess even if you had lizards, that the more mobile, yeah, non-water breathing pets are easy because you go here.
Andy
Yep.
Yep.
But the next project I started working on is to make this snake from Beetlejuice and the sandworm automated.
That’s going to be my first animatronic that I’m going to do.
And I am having a hard time designing…
So this one here is not going to be software difficult at all.
I’m going to make a controller that matches the skeleton inside here with potentiometers.
And then I’m using servos inside of this snake to move it around.
And so as long as I put, you know, I just got to make the controller have a potentiometer every place there’s a servo and then I can just record movements with it and then play them back with the servos.
So the software side of these guys won’t be hard at all.
But designing the skeleton for these, I have sat down on the computer several times and I am just coming up blank, just with what do you call it, just a block of being able to figure out how I want to design a skeleton using the servos.
It’s not really a problem.
I looked at a bunch of different ways people have done arms and things like that.
And I’ve got some great ideas, but every time I sit down to do it, it’s just kind of like I just sit there and stare.
I think it’s because there’s so many different ways to do it.
And I keep on trying to come up with different ways instead of sticking with one and trying to make it work.
Frank
Did you watch that video I shared of… uh… his name is blanking on me.
Mythbusters guy.
We’ve talked about him.
Chris
Adam Savage.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Yeah.
Adam Savage.
He was upgrading some stuff for his.
He’s got three 3D printers in his workshop.
Andy
I did see that he was showing the bird, right?
Frank
Maybe not the one that I’m thinking of.
He was upgrading his setup and he sat down and he penciled out the design to catch uh… because two of his printers are the same one and they’ve got I think it’s four extruders in one.
And the way they change is when you change colors, it goes to the back and extrudes a certain amount of the new plastic.
And I guess, I don’t know, probably a quick retraction or something and it falls off and it goes down the shoot in the back.
And he wanted rather than just a little catch, which is, you know, just a little three inch square bin at the back.
He wanted the plastic to catch and then go down to a decent size garbage can.
So we didn’t have to change it every five minutes.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
And when he designed it, I mean, the whole video was good.
But my favorite part was actually watching him think through the design for something.
And he actually sat down with paper and started with a general wire design.
And, you know, just kind of scribbled over that for a second while he was thinking.
And then he made a little change here and he fixed everything.
So that’s right.
I feel like it was a really, I mean, obviously it’s effective for him, but I think it was a really good way to work through the ideas in your head that are just rattling around to the design phase.
Andy
You mean drawing out a wireframe?
Frank
Yeah.
Chris
It’s a rough draft and or a brainstorm.
Good idea to start for any project really, but.
Frank
Yeah, it’s true.
Andy
That does sound good.
Might have to sit down with some pen and paper first and try if I end up with a block today when I actually sit down to accomplish something.
Frank
Just a note for all of our listeners.
Andy is such a confident designer that he does it in pen.
Andy
Oh, my dear.
I wouldn’t call myself confidence at all.
I think most of the time just just doing it and then making all the changes, you know, it’s been a long time though since I couldn’t get started.
And this one here is kind of that way.
And I think it’s because the upcoming, the servo next in line requires components from the servo behind it in the way that I’m trying to design it.
Let me show you the picture that I was kind of looking at that I liked the best that I was going to kind of use.
Let’s see here.
I don’t want to share this.
I’m just going to show it to you on my phone.
But you can kind of see.
Chris
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Andy
On this one here that you can see that a servo’s only got one spinning part on the top.
And if you’re going to use the whole servo as a hinge, you need to kind of fake the bottom piece with a, you know, with another piece of plastic.
But you can see in this model here that I’m using for reference, the servo below it is what is putting the hinge for the servo above it on one side.
And there’s just something about the way that this was designed.
It makes sense to do it this way.
I see a lot of them do it this way.
But it’s hard for me to grasp because then I’m not working on one piece, you know.
Yeah, you end up with stackable movement.
So you end up with the bottom one moves five degrees.
That causes a five degrees move in the rest of it.
So the, yeah.
Andy
Yeah.
So it’s just, it’s kind of got me scratching my head.
I just can’t seem to get a place to start from.
But I’ve only sat down twice and only for about 10 minutes each time trying to do it.
So I haven’t really sunk a lot of time into it yet.
And after the podcast here, I’m hoping to sit down and come up with something.
Frank
Another idea.
I’ve heard a lot about brain mapping.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of it yourself, but it’s a good way to organize your thoughts too.
I like this aspect.
I don’t like this aspect.
It’s basically, you know, the block form design maps.
Like you do this block and then you do this next block and you have a choice and you choose and you have this circle and it leads to these three choices and then it goes to a block.
Andy
Yeah.
There’s a name for that kind of block or that kind of system.
I know what you’re talking about.
I don’t know what it’s called.
Frank
And basically mind mapping is the creation of one of those things.
You start in the center and it can be a graphic of what you’re thinking of rather than text.
If what you’re thinking of is text, it has its own goal in the correct place.
But you just, you start in the center with a center idea and go around it with all the possibilities and kind of extend on this one a little bit until your brain goes, oh, but what about this other idea?
So you go back and expand on the other idea, tie things together and all that.
It just helps you visualize all the stuff that’s been bouncing around in your head in one place.
Chris
And you can also make what’s called an input tree.
So it’s a tree kind of like when you see in those, in competitions where people get eliminated, whatever, where you take each servo and it is the next step on each end of the tree.
And you can take all of the inputs from the previous one and say, okay, so I have all of these inputs and now we’re moving to the next server, which is going to have all of these inputs plus what I need this server to do.
And then so it’s kind of stepped like that.
So it has all of the input you need down the chain.
Andy
Oh, I might have to look into that.
It’s a neat, neat concept.
I like that.
Frank
I was talking planning and Chris is talking physics.
That’s kind of par for the course, isn’t it?
Andy
That’s pretty much the whole project right there.
Frank
Well, we’ve been going for a while and I haven’t talked about the last week with myself.
Let’s get this done and then we can close it up.
I’ve been having trouble with my filament still.
And it’s been irritating.
Chris
Have you reconditioned any of it?
Frank
I have, and it changed things a little bit.
I haven’t done a lot of tests with it.
So for anyone who hasn’t been keeping up, my issue has been that I get a good print and I actually have measured a few and it seems consistently at about 12 millimeters in height.
I start getting under extrusion.
When you’re doing test towers, you expect anomalies and all that to creep in, but you expect one layer to be better than all of the others.
And I’ve… I’m dialled in with all of these other things, my flow, my temperature, all of that.
That the towers, my speed, that my towers all print really well where they’re configured.
And actually some of them print really well for the whole tower.
Like my flow tower is the same at 115% as it is at 85.
So my flow is basically wherever I want it should be good.
But it’s just been mind boggling until I started measuring and at 12 millimeters is when it starts.
So I started thinking, okay, well, what would be consistent with all of these things, even though I get good towers, the towers are awesome, right?
But what would be consistent with everything else that I’m printing at 12 millimeters?
Chris
12 millimeters.
Frank
12 millimeters, the height.
So I started looking into it.
I inspected my screws.
There’s no anomalies that I can see or feel on either my screws.
I do have two screws.
And I thought, well, okay, so because there’s two of them, maybe there’s a misalignment somewhere that cumulative effect is anything above 12 millimeters is setting something off.
And it’s not extruding well because of that.
I found that there’s really two ways to make sure that your gantry is level on two screws.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
And they’re both automated.
There’s one that requires like if you’ve got the BL touch and, you know, all of the super electronic stuff going on on your printer.
And the other one is a more low tech version, but it requires that you get feedback in your controllers from the motors.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
And reads the voltage drop off when it maxes out.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
And I don’t have that.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
I tried.
And my version of Marlin complained.
And basically, you know, because I’ve got the access to the source code, it said, if you don’t care, just go in and turn off this alarm and it’ll work.
And it’s like, I don’t like to do that.
I did it with the version because I knew it was the same version, but I don’t like, most of the time, I don’t like turning off an alarm just because I can.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
But the carbon monoxide alarm was giving me a headache, man.
Frank
So what the process for the automatic leveling does though is it takes your gantry to the max height and expects it to max out.
Like it’s pushing against the thing.
And, you know, with the correct controllers, the motor can’t turn anymore.
So it doesn’t operate that motor anymore.
It just takes the other one and levels it.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
So I had to do some adjustment to, like my tierod on that side, interferes with the stepper motor for my extruder if it gets too high.
So I actually had to disconnect that to get the gantry high enough.
But so I just moved the gantry to, I had to change Marlin a little bit so that I could go above the programmed max height too.
But I did that and then I just pushed it up against the top bolts until it was even.
And the regular stepper motor.
Andy
Just a quick one here.
I got to leave.
I got an appointment here so I got to take off.
So I apologize.
Frank
So just say use hairspray real quick.
Andy
Yeah.
Okay.
Andy
Use hairspray.
Always use hairspray.
Frank
That one.
Yes.
Okay.
Take it easy, Andy.
So I got it.
So I was pushing up against the top of the screws on both sides and that took the under extrusion issue and moved it from the 12 millimeter level to the whole thing.
Which I feel is, I feel like that was a step forward because it meant that, you know, whatever the issue was, it was consistent, right?
Instead of just at whatever height.
But I feel like my PLA had aged a little bit.
So I reconditioned it yesterday and I started with my test towers again.
And that’s where I am with it.
Chris
Okay.
So do you have the opportunity to try a fresh roll or…
Frank
I do have a fresh roll?
After last week when I realized I had accidentally been using a roll I couldn’t get into spec and reset.
I’m kind of hesitant to go beyond just, you know, using this roll.
And I want to make sure that the roll is the problem at this point too.
Well, I guess switching it out for the new one would do that.
I’m just not quite there.
You know, I want to run these tests and see if I can get print off of the reconditioned roll first and then I’ll switch and see if that fixes it.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
Because I know that my recent issues actually were the plastic because I got a fresher.
Chris
I put a fresh roll in, kept all my settings the same except for the wall count obviously.
But all of the blistering on the outside of the prints and the delayering and all that just disappeared.
Frank
So, and that’s another thought too.
I haven’t had this problem before.
I didn’t have this problem last year when things were transitioning from summer to winter.
You know, fall is a little wetter outside.
Yes, but I still don’t remember having these issues.
I just, I worry that my chosen retailer for plastic is made some kind of change that doesn’t jive with the way I print, which is its own potential problem too.
Chris
Yeah.
And well, and now PLA has its own ISO standard, which means that we want to start.
Frank
I was reading that too.
So it could be.
Chris
We want to start buying plastic makers that follow the ISO standard.
That way we can have more quality in our consistency in our incoming plastic.
So that’s possibly a good thing.
Frank
And, you know, whatever the issue is could be in line with them knowing about it ahead of time that this was going to be a thing and complying to it before it became regulated.
Chris
Yep.
Frank
Because I know companies do that.
It’s nice that companies do that.
They have that privilege to learn about it before it becomes an issue.
Chris
Well, and that’s the thing is, you know, you’ll still be able to buy the cheaper plastics from wherever, but they won’t be, they won’t be compliant.
So if you want to get the kind of consistency, you’ll just make sure that whatever plastic you buy is ISO compliant from now on.
Frank
And it makes sense to me that I would, it would be more beneficial for me to change my process to meet the compliance so that I can benefit from it.
Chris
Yep.
Frank
Rather than insisting on doing it the wrong way.
Well, “wrong.”
Chris
I’m ISO trained and whatever else with my job.
And I trust me, it makes things so much better.
Frank
Oh, yeah.
Well
Chris
t’s a real pain in the butt to get there sometimes.
But once you’re there, it’s easy to maintain and it makes everything so much easier.
Frank
Ever since interchangeable parts, it’s been understood that when there is a standard for creation, it increases your options for supply chain stuff and makes it easier when you’re on the manufacturing side to actually use stuff when you can depend on the standard being followed.
So
Chris
yes, sir.
Yeah.
Frank
That all makes sense to me.
Chris
Yep.
Frank
I talked with everybody before we started the podcast.
My wife and I have gotten a, we have adopted a 12 year old puppy.
And if I can get some of my Halloween stuff done before the event, which, you know, was rapidly closing, then I won’t print the Halloween stuff.
But immediately after that, or, you know, if I can’t get there, and I am going to start printing stuff, I’ve got some stuff that I want to print for my dog.
Things like a little container to hold the public poop bags and maybe carry some food or treats when we go on walks and that sort of thing.
So that’s on the near future list.
Oh, and a scoop for the dog food, except when we’re not doing drive dog food.
Maybe I don’t need that one on the list anymore.
Yeah.
So I’ve got stuff in the works.
I just need to understand what my printer is doing.
Chris
Have you looked at any forums or anything to see if other people with the Ender 3 have been having similar issues?
Frank
Um, the CR 10.
Chris
Oh, right.
You’ve got the CR 10, right.
Frank
Um, I found a few discussions online where under extrusion started at a weird level or a weird height and most of those, that’s actually how I got to the point of deciding that I needed to make sure that my gantry was level like with itself
Chris
in the whole z-axis.
Frank
Yeah, um, because you can account for some unlevel and like everyone will remember I bottomed out on a print a couple of weeks ago and that could have offset that, which, you know, the neurons were firing and saying, you know, I screwed something with that.
So then I found the forums that said make sure that your z-gantry is level with the screws and all that.
And, um, that’s when I shifted to the process to actually do it.
So, yeah.
Chris
Okay.
So that, that would being said then, um, and it you’ve already determined that it’s not any, it’s not your speed setting.
It’s not your flow rate.
Frank
Oh, like I said, all my towers have been coming out wonderful for, especially with the configuration that I’ve got, but even several alternates outside of it.
And like with my flow setting, the whole tower looks great from 115 to 100, or um 85.
So it’s not my flow and it’s not, um, my temperature is not speed or, or, uh, what’s the last one I’m missing?
Um, flow, speed, temperature, fan.
It’s not my fan setting.
Any of that, it’s height.
So, yeah.
Chris
Um, does, does your z, does yours, do you have a z-step turned on?
I was wondering if possibly that if, if your z-step is overstepping on each layer, maybe you’d end up with the, with it not quite connecting properly through the whole layer.
Frank
A z-step, like in the middle of a layer?
Chris
Well, I would think if, uh, if you have like a z-step, z-step or a z-hop, um, on, on your moves.
Frank
Yeah, I don’t z-hop when I move.
I do retract.
I only retract like a millimeter.
And, uh, the fresh, um, profile on Cura, has it set at like five, I think.
Which, you know, is not bad either.
Um, but yeah, I only retract a millimeter.
Um, I’ve been getting, there have been some other issues where, like normally it’s not difficult at the preheat temperature to manually push the plastic through everything.
Chris
Yeah, and make sure your nozzle’s all cleared.
Frank
And there have been a few times where it was supposed to be at temp.
It was reading at temp.
And it wasn’t pushing through.
And when I pulled that, it was like essentially a cold pull.
And, um, that was weird.
And then I, uh, I pulled off my nozzle and just pushed the filament through.
And it pushed out a good two or three millimeter chunk of plastic in front of the piece that I had cut fresh.
And that was weird.
So like it had gotten warm and then cooled above the heat block.
I don’t know why that would have happened.
Really made things difficult on my part.
Um
Chris
I wonder if you’ve got a, uh, an intermittent thermistor.
Frank
That’s kind of got me concerned too.
Goes back to the, uh…
Chris
you got a gremlin.
Frank
The sparky stuff that I did a month or so ago, just getting plastic off of my heat block.
And so, you know, and thermistors aren’t expensive, I just haven’t gotten a replacement.
So…
Chris
and, and, and, you know, might be not even the thermistor itself, just some of the wiring in between.
I know that when I have car gremlins, a lot of the times when, when they appear, when it’s just cold or it’s just hot.
So things that happen like right in the middle of summer or things that happen, just as it starts getting cold outside is, uh, I call them gremlins because, because that means there’s either like a broken wire that’s making connection while it’s warmer and then it’s cold and everything shrinks and then it loses connection, right?
Or things get hot and things expand and things that shouldn’t be making a connection, start making a connection.
So
Frank
and those are irritating too, because they result in what I call non fixes.
Sometimes you’re able to identify it and then you try to fix it, but you don’t quite get there and you know you’re not there, but it seems like it’s fixed so you can’t reproduce it.
Chris
Yeah, well, um, I have been able to fix that occasionally, but just on cars.
I haven’t done it with, with other, with other applications, but you know, I found, I found that a wire from here to here doesn’t always have the right, connectivity, where you do a, where you, uh, check it and yeah, continuity, that’s it.
You check it end to end and you play with the wire and the continuity just pops in and out.
That’s how you know you’ve got a funny wire, but, um, and then, you know, you replace that whole wire and everything continuity stays when you just play with the wire again, you know, that you’ve, you found it and fixed it.
Um, also same with connectors, you know, a lot of times you can look at a connector and say, okay, you know, this, when I’m, when I’m, when I’m looking at this, I can see that it’s got a questionable connector and so you crimp the connector a little bit and then clip it back together and you don’t ever see the problem again.
You know, um, yeah, I’ve had that, that happened quite, uh, quite a few times too.
Frank
They irritate me when that happens though, because I hate chasing those down.
I hate it.
Especially when it seems like it fixes itself.
That’s why it’s a non-solution because it’s not fixed.
You just can’t reproduce it and that irritates the crap out of me.
Chris
Um, if I, if I do something about it and it disappears and it doesn’t come back and nobody ever says anything about it, you know, within like, you know, a good timeframe, then I assume that that was the fix.
Frank
That’s what I’m saying.
I know I didn’t fix it.
It just isn’t reproducible anymore.
Chris
Well, does it matter at that point?
If everything keeps working and it doesn’t come back, at some point
Frank
you have to abandon your effort to find the cause because you can’t reproduce it.
Well, if it’s gone, if it’s gone for now, that’s not fixed, it’s going to come back.
Chris
Well, like I said, if you’ve, if you’ve done something about it and it doesn’t come back, then that means that was the fix.
But yeah, what I’m saying is I know it’s not fixed and it’s going to come back.
Um, yeah.
Frank
We’re not disagreeing.
Anybody who’s listening to us, we’re actually arguing the same and just getting heated about our own perspective on it.
Chris
Yes.
It’s the same perspective.
Or I mean, it’s a different perspective, same concept.
Frank
Married couples know how that works.
Or people that have known each other for 20 years know how that works.
Chris
If the problem goes away and you’re not sure that you fixed it, it may not technically be fixed, but should you keep worrying about it?
No.
Frank
At some point, there’s nothing you can do.
You have to, you have to let it go.
Yeah, just let it go.
That’s the hard part is making myself do that.
Um, actually, I was just talking to my manager.
I hate entropy.
In my job, if there’s too much entropy, then I start getting concerned.
Chris
What, just stuff just falls apart?
Frank
No, no, no, no.
Entropy is the, the word that is used for the tendency of the universe toward chaos.
Chris
Right.
That’s what we’re talking about.
Things falling apart.
Frank
No, no, no.
When you have too much entropy, you have too much potential for things to fall apart, meaning things are going really well and that’s what scares me.
When things are chaotic and falling apart, it’s like, okay, yes, this is why you hired me.
When things are going really well, when nobody, when nobody’s submitting tickets or complaining about anything, that’s when I worry because it’s, the gates are going to open and we’re going to be buried.
So yeah.
Chris
Yeah, that is, that is a reasonable concern.
I, I, I have the same thing happen a lot with, with my jobs is when everything is going smooth and everything is beautiful and hunky dory, you know, the shoe drops at some point and everything goes to pits, you know?
Frank
Yeah.
And yeah.
So yeah, I would be nervous a little bit myself.
I totally understand that.
Well, as a mechanic, when your car is running real well and you haven’t had to fix anything for a while, you’re getting concerned.
Chris
Especially when you’re, you’re the mechanic.
So you’re driving something that always has some, something very well acquainted with your car and it’s always got something wrong.
Yep.
Frank
When my truck was brand new, I had to fight the anxiety of entropy because I realized at some point, no, this is brand new.
It’s not going to have those issues that you’re used to for eight years.
Chris
They engineered this to not have problems until the warranties up.
Frank
Planned obsolescence is an interesting theory, but at the same time, I don’t think that OEMs really plan around it or plan it into what they’re designing.
I think it happens naturally and they just catch a lot of grief for it.
Chris
Yeah.
Actually, having been IATF certified, that is my opinion on the subject is that they don’t mean to, they don’t mean for it to happen, but it just kind of happens.
Well, except for like, they know that your engine has, your powertrain has potential for problems after the whatever warranty, the 100,000 miles or whatever they simply because that’s, that’s just physics.
Frank
They will guarantee it to the point that it’s not profitable to guarantee it anymore.
Chris
Right.
Frank
And that allows them to compensate for, you know, the auto not and replace that.
Chris
Yeah.
See, and that’s why it’s 10 years or 100,000 miles for most cars because yeah, because that’s when the rubber starts to break down.
That’s when the various components that you can be relied, they can be unreliable start to not be reliable.
Frank
If you’re not religious about changing your oil, like most mechanics, I know, push their engine oil as long as they can before they change it.
That’s hard on the engine, right?
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
Whereas if you change it at the right time consistently forever, your engine’s going to be good for a long time.
Chris
Right.
Frank
So you buy synthetic oil and it says to change it every 10,000 miles and I’m like, no, I have a hard time going past five personally, but it seems to each other.
Awkward too.
And yeah, if you can financially do it, there’s no reason not to.
Anyway, why don’t we wrap this up real quick?
Chris
Yeah, let’s go for it.
Frank
And we’ll go on with our thing.
Since Chris already or Andy already bailed on us anyway.
Chris
Yeah, hairspray and stuff.
Frank
Yeah.
We’d like to thank everyone for listening to the very end.
Chris
The very, very end.
Holy moly.
Frank
We just like the hour and a half long, apparently.
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 we’re easy to share.
If you have feedback or if you have content requests, please let us know.
You can find us in our Facebook group, Amateur 3D Pod.
You can also email us at panelists@amateur3dpod.com or you can email us individually at Franklin, Kevin, Andy or Chris @amateur3dpod.com.
Kevin Buckner is the one that wrote the music for this episode and 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 Kottam.
And until next time, we’re going offline.
Chris
I can’t believe it.
I bought a printer for a hobby and now I’m a slave to my wife over it.