Frank
Thank you for joining us.
This is episode 48 of Amateur 3D Podcast, a podcast by amateur printers for amateur printers where we share our thoughts and experience.
Our panelists this week are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Andy Codham, Kevin Bucker, and Chris Weber.
And I’m kind of terrified because my brain just told me that I may have said episode 38 when I meant to say 48.
Chris
You said 4 to 8, so are we doing like 4 episodes right now or?
Frank
It is a little early to start at 4.
From 4 to 8.
Andy
I don’t even remember what episodes we did back then.
Are we supposed to redo them exactly?
Oh dear.
Kevin
Wait, you don’t memorize every episode, Andy?
Andy
Oh god, I’m so sorry.
I know I’ve been slacking.
Kevin
I’m disappointed in you.
Frank
More importantly, the whole, I don’t even have transcripts up for those.
I kind of abandoned them.
So, yeah, the only record that they exist is the audio.
Andy
Is it?
Well, I guess that’s the most important part, at least.
And we never really had scripts for them either, so it’s not like there was a lot for Andy to forget.
Andy
Oh, thanks.
Frank
Have you worked on anything this week, Andy?
Andy
Yeah, so I’ve got some story to tell here.
Unfortunately, it’s only 3D printer adjacent.
I’m working on a project here with a PIC controller to control the fans on my fish tank.
I think I mentioned it before.
I put some fans on it to keep it cooler.
And it’s got a lot of, it’s got excessive evaporation because the fans are running on all the time.
So I wanted to make it thermostat controlled so I can still get the cooling, but get the least amount of evaporation as possible.
And I decided to do a PIC controller for that.
Now, I’ve done a couple in the past, a couple projects like that, and it’s a great skill to have.
I absolutely love it, but I don’t have a lot of time to do stuff like this.
So when I’ve got an excuse to use one, I try to take it, and this is a good one.
And so for the last little while here, I’ve been kind of putting it together.
I’ve spent spending five minutes here, 10 minutes there, and I settled on a PIC controller.
I’m going to be using the 328, the AT Mega 328, and that’s one that I use for a lot of things.
It’s one that I really like.
But most of the time, I don’t use a screen on it of any kind.
And so for this last little while here, I’ve been getting the hardware pulling and stuff like that set up.
So I’ve got two thermostats attached to it.
I’ve got a photo sensor so I can detect when the lights are on in the room so I can make sure to shut the screen off when the lights go out and little things like that.
I’ve got a rotary encoder attached to it.
I wound up to control the fans, decided to use MOSFETs since they can turn on and off rather quickly compared to a relay.
I’ll be able to use to make a PWM controller to be able to control the speed of the fans.
So that way…
Frank
I don’t know what a MOSFET is.
Andy
Think of a transistor that really is more like a relay than a transistor.
It’s not very analog, it’s more of a digital on or off, but it’s very quick and it’s much more efficient than a normal PNP or NPN transistor, so they’re pretty fun.
But they can switch rather quickly.
So you can use amplified PWM signals to be able to control DC motors like these fans.
And that way, instead of having like a thermostat heuristus, I will do a ramping instead.
So all of that’s been kind of fun.
The screen I picked is a new screen I haven’t used before.
It’s just a small little OLED 128 by 64 pixels and that will allow me to be able to have two displays on it because I want a controller to run two separate tanks.
And everything’s been going great with it so far.
There’s a couple of things that I haven’t tried before, like creating my own font to make the font more pretty for displaying text on the screen because the library I usually use has a very bulky kind of font.
And even though it works really well when things are really small, I want nice big numbers for the thermostat temperature values in the tank.
So I wound up putting together a 0 through 9 library that can print those and it looks great so far.
But I ran into a really neat problem and this has turned my little world a little upside down for this.
So a lot of the times I have used, when I’ve used this particular type of controller, or PIC controller, I’ve used a smaller screen.
I’ve got one that’s like half the size of this one here.
It’s 128 pixels by only 32 pixels tall.
It’s something that you would expect to see like, I don’t know, I’ve got a digital electric soldering iron pencil that uses one of those.
You can kind of imagine the kind of screen that would fit into the handle of something like that.
So they’re screens like that.
And these PIC controllers I have, the 328s only have 2 kilobytes of RAM, of SRAM in them.
That’s stuff like memory for variables and things.
And I’ve never really had a problem with running out of memory on those.
I mean, you do have to be very careful, you know, a great example is my thermostat I showed you guys.
I used a much larger chip for that, the 2560, 18 Mega 2560 to run my thermostat.
But I’ve also got a much larger screen for that, like a 320 by 280 I think it is, something like that.
So it’s got a nice big screen on it.
And I even do things like I have a 24 hour graph of the temperature inside the house that is constantly scrolling by.
And every five minutes it takes a sample for that log.
So even though it’s just one byte, the array itself is like 300 large, which is small when it comes to the program you and me have done in the past, Frank, but 300 on these controllers, that’s 300 bytes of the 2 kilobytes you have to work with.
You know, you got to start counting this stuff and making sure you’re using all as only the big of variables as you can.
Frank
And like the issue that we ran into with our project, our limitation was memory, yeah.
We just couldn’t do larger numbers because the computer wasn’t prepared to do it.
And we weren’t putting the time into storing those numbers on the drive.
Andy
Yeah, exactly.
So while I’ve been doing this, the old screens that I would use with these little processors it never really occurred to me, those screens don’t have video memory of any kind.
They’re just written to straight up.
That’s it.
The video memory that the driver I use on it takes memory from the PIC controller.
And for this screen I’m using, you know, 128 by 64, that’s 1,024 pixels.
Even though it’s monochrome, so it’s only one bit per pixel, that’s a kilobit of video memory.
And I didn’t think about this before I started the project.
So last night I took some time, I got everything done for the night, got the kids put back to bed and I planned to stay up for a little while and get myself into that flow state I enjoy so much when it comes to programming, you know.
Been looking forward all week to spending a good couple of hours on my project because I was hoping to get the menu structure and all that kind of stuff done that way before the podcast here I could, you know, come to you guys, hey, look what I did, look, you know, the software side of it is mostly finished and now I can work on the 3D printing side of making the housing and stuff for it.
But last night when I was running, when I was coding it, I got all the hardware polling and all that done, so I started the interface last night and I started the first screen, which will be the one that’s normally displaying the temperatures.
It’s like the default screen that it will run.
And as I was doing that, I went in to make some, make a little 10, 10, what would you call it, a 10 spot array, 10 large, 10 bytes, so that I could remember the temperature every polling cycle for a rolling 10 to smooth out that data.
Does that kind of make sense?
Frank
Yeah.
Andy
Because it gets all over the place when you’re reading data from these.
You really need to average things out to get the correct temperature.
Frank
Beacuse if it just randomly spikes, then your, your fan is going to run for whatever five seconds or whatever it doesn’t necessarily need to.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, it’s stuff’s noisy when you start sampling it really, really, really quickly.
So but as I got ready to create that variable and went to go and export to the project, my, the video driver that I use, the library for that reported that it could no longer allocate space for the video.
And it took me like an hour to figure out what the heck was going on because it just didn’t occur to me.
I’m now missing an entire kilobyte of memory.
I have just simply ran out of memory.
So that completely put my whole entire project on hold.
Out of all the PIC controllers I have, this one here was one of my favorite to use, and it’s the second best one I have.
The 2560 I’ve got has, I think, eight kilobytes of RAM.
It’s a much more beefy chip.
It’s huge too.
But it’s kind of overkill for this whole project.
And I use some smaller ones, some of the 18 mega tiny 85s for really small projects.
But that’s on the other end of this, that’s, that’s worse than this particular chip.
So most of my night last night was spending some time researching other PIC controllers that I might be able to use for this project, you know, I’ve only settled on a couple different ones that cover most of my needs and I just make them work for whatever project I’m working on.
But for this particular smaller project, if I’m going to be doing larger screens like this, I showed you guys this, this thing that the screen is only about one inch wide and about half an inch tall.
They’re tiny, but there’s a lot of information on there that I want to be able to show instead of using the smaller screens.
And on top of that, that’s for like indoor use because it’s an OLED screen.
I came across some old Nokia screens from the old cell phones that are like 96.
Yeah, they’re like 96 by 64 pixels, something like that.
But it’s a traditional LCD dot matrix screen that I could run with these PIC controllers.
And so I’m excited to use those.
But that’s still a lot of memory to use on these controllers.
And if I want to make any kind of menu structure on them for settings and things like that, I’m going to need more RAM.
So I went looking around and I came across it’s an 18 mega chip.
It’s the 4809.
One bad thing about it is, is it’s only SMP mount or SMTP mount.
It’s surface mount processor.
They don’t come in the standard through board packages.
They only come in the surface mount ones.
So I’m kind of stuck because I don’t have the capabilities to, like I can make circuit boards all day long, but the precision I would need to do surface mounts, that’s like, I might be able to get like a resistor and capacitor, some of those single pin, maybe four pin items.
But when you start getting to where you can’t have pads, you got to have pads in between pins, it becomes harder and harder to etch boards that thin of traces.
So I’m kind of stuck if I use this processor, I’m kind of stuck of getting the ones that are on the little development boards for them.
And the development boards are still pretty, pretty small.
And I use those a lot too because they come with their own voltage regulator, which is often really convenient, especially in this project, I was planning on using a development board because I want to be able to run the fans off at 12 volts, but my whole controller only runs off five.
So having that just built into the board is not something I have to worry about.
I can throw 12 at it and got five and 3.3 right there.
Another thing about it is it’s got the USB, what’s it called, the UART for the USB and a programmer on the development board.
So if I ever want to change anything, if I make it so it buttons up against my 3D printed housing, so I have access to the USB board, I could just plug it in there and update the firmware on the chip, which would be very convenient to do.
So sometimes it’s nicer to just use an entire development board on a standard project, you know.
So I guess I’m not too worried about this.
They’re a little bit faster.
The boards I use here are 16 megahertz.
These new ones are 20 megahertz, but I should be able to swap it out for this.
So this next week here, I’ll get them in a couple of days, going to throw them on here and see what changes I need to make to the pinouts and things.
They’re not that different in the pinout compared to the 328s I normally use.
But that might be a whole change-up.
These are much more powerful.
They’re also like twice as expensive.
These 328s on the development board you can buy for about six bucks a piece.
But these other ones, I think I paid 13 and I wound up buying three of them.
So that’s where I’m at on my project here for 3D printing.
I know none of it was about 3D printing, but this is like the insides to the 3D printing project.
Frank
Oh, it’s pre 3D printing.
Once you have this done, you are 3D printing to cover up any mistakes that you don’t want anyone to see.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, no kidding.
But so that’s what I’ve been working on this whole week.
I’ve been just coming home from work and spending five minutes here, 10 minutes there to just setting this up.
I think I put maybe about three hours into actually coding it, which is a long time, but I don’t natively speak C.
So just even programming simple things.
I’m having to go back and have the syntax for if statement’s available to me so I know how to do them.
You know, I’m at that stage, so it’s taking a lot longer to code them.
Frank
But yeah, I don’t think anybody truly natively speaks C anymore.
Even the people with lots of experience spend a lot of time online researching maybe the best way to do a thing.
Andy
Yeah, yeah.
And another thing too, working with PIC controllers, is such totally different idea of programming that’s really just neat.
Like one of the things I had to do was I needed to convert a, or I just needed to round a number.
And so I was looking, you know, what’s the equivalent to round in C?
And I mean, there’s not ones that people tend to use for this.
It’s not part of your basic library of functions to use.
And that feels weird that round isn’t an option.
And that’s because it’s so much easier to like assign it to an integer or a word and just dump, you know, the decimals after it or add 0.5 and then dump the decimals after it so that it, you know, is essentially rounding for times it by 10, dump the variables, restore it in a float and then divide it by 10 again.
Like that’s how you’re supposed to do that kind of stuff.
It’s just, it’s so weird to be that close to the assembly itself.
And measuring time difference.
I don’t know about you, but most of the time when I’m programming, I’m working on the millisecond level.
You know, that’s just the way of thinking, you know, this function takes, you know, 30 milliseconds, but in order to run it this speed I need, I need to get it under 15 or something like that, you know.
But these boards have two separate timers.
You got your millisecond timer, but then you also got a microsecond timer.
And that’s just insane how I can run, you know, a couple of commands that take 10, 15 microseconds per command and to be like operating on timers that are that small.
It’s insane.
I love it.
Frank
Well, and you can, I’m sure there’s a way you can do it with higher level languages, like with .NET libraries and that sort of thing.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, I’m sure.
Frank
Did Chris fall asleep on us.
Andy
I think he did.
Was I being that boring?
Chrissy, you asleep?
Chris
Nope.
Andy
Oh, okay.
Oh, beautiful, beautiful.
Kevin
He was just snoring while awake.
Andy
I could take a hint.
I could take a hint.
Okay.
Yeah.
I’m bringing the podcast down.
I’m being too boring.
Frank
I mean, I did have the other thought once again that we could fire up an amateur programming podcast and you could talk about this stuff.
Andy
My only problem with that, though, is we both know that I’m self-taught in all the wrong ways.
So even though I’m getting excited about this kind of stuff, my code, I mean, it may work.
One thing I do have that I think a lot of devs that just going through the school don’t have is I can make things work.
I can come up with end products.
It’s just when you look at how it was done, it’s spaghetti code.
It’s not industry standards.
It’s I’m lucky if I comment on anything or anything.
Frank
Well, not to change this specifically into a dev podcast, but they’re different skills.
So you get devs that have the same skill.
They can find the answers, but that is being applied to being a programmer, not specific to.
And so because you have the skill, you can apply it to your programming and you can apply it to your hardware stuff, which I just I have to research anything I do with hardware because I am not interested enough to remember any of the details.
And when it comes to the coding, the better quality code, you know, you make a big deal out of the spaghetti code.
And to be fair, I’ve even teased you for the spaghetti code on occasion.
Andy
Oh, all the time.
In fact, any project you’ve ever seen of mine, you always give me a hard time for it.
Frank
But I literally just think in modularized code.
And I wasn’t taught how to do that.
I picked it up with experience and reading, you know, books about coding and that sort of thing.
So I have changed myself.
But there’s still plenty of professional devs who don’t give a crap about that.
And they just go in and make it work.
And it becomes somebody else’s problem in 15 years.
Kevin
Yeah
Andy
I’ve got an honest question because I’ve I’ve done dev work.
When my very first job, I was working for a company called Matrix Marketing, which is now Convergis, a telemarketing company.
And I did some dev work for them, kind of like not like an apprentice, but I was under another developer kind of doing miniscule things.
I think they were trying to give me a chance to see if I was worth anything because I was just a dumb kid still in high school, you know.
But my work there, I don’t think showed me what a developer actually does.
I learned to hate the work very quickly in that scenario.
And because it’s just like, I don’t know, you always got to program and code it like in a certain way instead of the way it works in my head, you know.
I guess what I’m saying is you’ve seen my code and the kind of skill that I have.
How does that compare to your average developer in the field that you’re in?
Am I actually is like rednecked when it comes to the coding as I think I am compared to the way it’s done?
Or are a lot of people as kind of kind of chaotic and messy as I am?
Frank
I would say that you’re only primitive in your programming because you insist on using visual basic.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
You have some very big ideas and you make them work with the code.
The spaghetti code is troubling, but it’s not like the end of the world.
Like I said, there’s plenty of devs that still work that way.
And I think in modular code, specifically because it has become a kind of tradition for programmers to be the central resource.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
But businesses have learned that when you have a central resource and you lose that central resource, you have to start over.
And there’s a lot of companies that fail because of that.
So the expectation is I want to be able to hire this engineer that has a broad spectrum understanding of how to code and have them write code that can be maintained when they’re not with the organization anymore.
Andy
That makes 100% sense.
Yeah, that does.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
That really does.
Frank
And it actually applies to any industry, right?
Andy
Yeah, true.
Frank
If you’re in the textile industry and you have this one unique weave that is better than everybody else, you’re going to keep it to yourself because it’s basically proprietary and it’s how you make your money, right?
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
But the one person who knows how to do that weave gets hit by a bus and the company’s gone.
Andy
Yeah, you got a good point.
That makes me feel better about that.
Thanks for describing that when it comes to the other devs.
Because I mean, I’m not that bad.
You don’t see me using go-to statements or crap like that.
Frank
No, and to be fair, you even do some stuff that’s more conceptual in my head than what I would call practical.
But some of that is the simplicity of, what’s the saying, technology that is sufficiently advanced reads is magic or something to that effect.
It’s what you’re doing.
I don’t understand why it works.
I just know that it does.
Andy
Okay.
Chris
That’s the important part.
Frank
Right.
And there is definitely an aspect of that in the professional dev world, too.
Nobody cares how it works as long as it does.
Andy
And I’ve always gotten a real big kick on how old game systems used to create their video games because they had such limited resources.
And they had to do all these tricks to trick the system into working as well as it does.
I’ve always loved that kind of stuff.
So back to the thing when I was describing, like a PIC controller here, not having around and instead using just converting data types to the math you want.
Oh, I love stuff like that.
It’s just, it’s so neat making things work that way.
I love that.
Anyway, so off of the programming bit here and back on track here to 3D printing.
I haven’t used my printer since last podcast.
So, no, I haven’t really done anything this week.
Frank
Wow.
Chris
But on the programming thing, though…
Frank
you realize that was 30 minutes of 30 minutes to get around to.
I didn’t do anything with my printer this week.
Right.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
Well, you know what, I like to think that the people that listen to our kind of podcast, if you’re into 3D printing, you’re probably into a broad spectrum of DIY kind of stuff.
Anyway, if you’re the kind of person like me who says you’ve got two different people that buy a 3D printer, ones that live off of like Thingiverse and then others that get involved in the CAD software and they live in two completely and totally different worlds.
And if you’re the kind of person using like the CAD side of things, then you’re probably also like using a lot of these other, you know, wiring up your own components and building your own stuff like that.
Chris
That’s where I was going.
Frank
Maybe somebodies getting ideas for themselves, too, so.
Andy
Yeah, yeah.
Chris
So, I was reading a article just yesterday about converting your 3D printer into a PCB maker.
Andy
Oh, okay.
You know what?
I was, I was, I’m still kind of looking into a CNC machine that does that kind of stuff.
But I’ve been staring at one over the last week here.
I’m not going to get it because it’s $4,000.
But I’ve been drooling all over my phone like I’m watching porn for the last couple of days.
But after looking…
Chris
yeah, but with a couple of, with a couple of components and a little bit of programming know how you can take your 3D printer and turn it into one for PCBs.
Andy
So, if it’s, if it’s using like a Dremel or a drill kind of thing like a CNC would to cut the copper, everything that I’ve seen when I’ve been looking around stuff like that is nothing compared to just using chemicals to do it.
Like if you, if you think what kind of precision I can get off my laser printer making a line, you know, normal laser printer over here, I can cut a trace that thin using etching chemicals.
And so just like the precision you can get out of an image like that that you transfer onto a board than etch, it looks brand new.
And then also you get the benefits of the toner or sitting on top of your traces to keep them protected too.
So, you know, it just works really good.
But I think if you’re, if you’re going to go and get into making your own PCBs, just look into how to do it with a laser printer.
I think the quality is so much better than what you can get from a CNC, except for drilling.
Drilling a board, CNC is definitely the way to go.
Because you look like me sitting there with the drill press out in the shop for, you know, 150 pins later.
Chris
Well, maybe you could use a combination of the two.
You can, you know, set it up, get it done with the, with a laser and then program your modified CNC to just do all the holes.
Andy
Yeah
Chris
make sure, make sure that you have it set up, set up right and lined up straight.
I think the only thing I use my, my 3D printer for is I’ve got, when it comes to etching a board or doing anything with PCBs is I usually put my, my acid and my oxygen stuff, what’s it called, hydrogen peroxide in a tupperware, put it, put the board in it and then I put it on my printer and then I run some G code that just slowly moves the bed back and forth so it keeps agitating the mix.
That’s about as close as my printer gets to making PCBs.
Chris
Things to not use your printer for.
I didn’t think agitator would be on that list.
Andy
Oh yeah, it makes a great agitator too.
The, the code I got ramps up so it kind of, it starts when you start it off, it starts slow and starts moving back and forth.
It’s slightly more aggressive until it reaches its top speed and it’s not jerky either.
It slows down and then gets going again, slows down and gets going again.
It’s awesome and then as it comes to a stop and I think the code I’ve got for it will do it for like four or five hours because I just copied and pasted it for however long felt right.
But, but yeah, yeah, 3D printers is at least our bed slinger kind used as agitators.
It works really, really well.
Chris
Well, people that still use the old fashioned photo developing might be interested in that too.
Andy
Yeah, really.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you bought a professional machine that does agitation if it’s probably about the same price as a 3D printer anyway.
So…
Chris
yeah, probably
Andy
a cheaper bed slinger might be cheaper to buy a printer and just use it for that.
That’s what you need.
Frank
I guess it wouldn’t take that much to compromise the design.
So you just hit a button on the menu and it does the thing instead of you having to keep the silver solution or whatever.
Chris
Yeah, keep the silver solution slightly above room temperature so it works better.
Andy
Yeah, there you go.
There you go.
Yeah.
That’s one thing that I learned this last time.
I haven’t etched one since, but I know it can etch faster if the solution is heated.
I wanted to look into that to see what temperature etching works best at and then also throw that in there to heat the bed up to those temperatures while it’s doing that too.
So that’s another thing that just makes it a really good agitator.
Frank
Well, Chris, have you worked on anything this week?
Chris
With my 3D printer?
No, I’ve been browsing thingyverse and just downloading things that looked fun.
Frank
So Andy, just to be clear, Chris did it in 30 seconds.
You did it in 30 minutes.
Andy
Well, now you know why my wife’s so happy, okay?
Frank
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Andy
What can I say?
Frank
Wow.
I guess that was a really slow pitch, huh?
Chris
Oh, man.
Frank
Yeah, I was actually thinking more.
Andy
Oh, my.
Chris
It sounds more like SMS tones and put them on the sound board.
Frank
We have now pulled the Discord sound board into the podcast.
Yeah, well, it was bound to happen sometime.
We just got to make sure we won’t abuse it.
That’s all.
That’s the biggest thing.
I wish there was a way to lock it down.
Andy
You could just yell at us.
We listened to you about half the time.
Chris
We listened to you more often than not.
Frank
I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s less than half the time there, Andy.
Andy
Okay, 51% is more than half, so a little bit.
Frank
I cut you off, Chris.
What did you work on this week?
Chris
So, well, remodeling the child’s bedroom and yeah, that was pretty much it.
I spent a little bit of my office time this week just perusing Thingiverse and finding some fun things for later.
I think the most recent thing I found was I have a TCL Ruroku TV.
I’ve got two of them, and they’ve got this nice little case for the electronics so that if I want to, say, print it in glow-in-the-dark plastic or something so I can find it easily when it’s dark or whatever, I can do that.
Andy
That kind of makes sense.
That’s kind of cool.
Chris
Yeah, so that was handy to see.
I can’t remember.
I found a couple other fun little things that I thought would be neat.
Oh yeah, it was a controller tree, so it’s kind of like a tree, but you can stick like four controllers around the bottom and then another four controllers around the top.
I got looking at that and I’m like, oh, hey, that’ll take care of all of my Xbox controllers in one stand.
Nice.
Andy
That’s kind of cool.
Chris
All three Xboxes.
That would be nice because you go for, I know you like playing your video games, but I also know part of your collection is displaying the collection.
That would be kind of nice to add to it.
Frank
Indeed.
Kevin
Yep
Chris
so when we’re done here, I’m going to go back to it’s sheetrock time, so I’ll be going on that.
Frank
Sheeprock.
Fun, fun, fun.
Kevin, have you worked in anything this week?
Kevin
Well, not with my 3D printer.
I had surgery on Monday to have a ganglion sister moved from my left wrist and it was large and so my wrist has been hurting a bit too much to give proper support to even take the things that I was printing during the last episode off of their respective build plates, so they’re just waiting to be removed at this point still.
But what I have been working on is converting PDF music into XML files with MUSEscore for the Community Choir I’m in.
Andy
That doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, but can you have you been able to automate it or are you just rewriting it?
So there are 10 songs total that were so far that we’re going to be doing for the Christmas concert and the director was able to convert eight of the PDFs into XML files for me and then I just had to go through and correct any of the errors that the software made when it was doing that.
But there are these, the two longest songs have kind of messed up PDFs and so they’re not convertible.
So what I’m doing with those is I’ve got the PDF on one screen and MUSE score open on the other screen and I’m going through and putting it in note by note and word by word.
Andy
Oh dear, I’m sorry, that sounds like a lot of work.
Kevin
It is, but I think it’ll be worth it.
Andy
Okay, that’s not too monotonous.
Chris
You’re looking pretty good for having gotten rid of a gang of Leons.
Andy
That took a minute to set in.
Frank
I’m assuming that sounded better in your head, Chris.
cyh
Yes, it did.
Andy
Oh dear.
So how long will it take your risk to heal if you don’t mind my asking?
Kevin
A couple of weeks.
Andy
That’s not too bad.
Any danger?
Is it just waiting for the tissue to heal up?
Kevin
It’s just waiting for the tissue to heal up.
Andy
That’s good.
I had no idea you’d gotten in for that.
I would have sent you some best wishes.
Frank
Well, and he did share pictures of the after effects.
His hand was swollen to twice its normal size.
Kevin
I shared those on the band server.
Andy
Oh, okay.
Kevin
As to kind of explain why I haven’t been doing anything with my guitar lately.
Frank
Gotcha.
And Chris, maybe one reason it didn’t hit better with me, at least, is Chris told the joke when you put the picture up there, except for he said it was a gang of lions, not the gang of Leons.
Chris
Well, it’s because of the way you spell ganglion versus the way you say ganglion.
Kevin
That’s true.
Frank
Whatever.
Chris
See, some jokes convert better, said one way via text, and then convert better one way via spoken.
Andy
You got a good point.
Frank
Like your face, Chris?
Andy
What?
Well, that one was aptly put there.
That was a good sign.
Frank
That was well timed.
I accept that one.
Andy
So then what about, oh, go ahead.
Frank
No, I was just going to say, I think that I’m the only one that did anything with my printer this week and didn’t even move the needle.
Andy
Yeah, so what did you do this week?
How did you hold down the fort?
Frank
I found another dragon, one with posts that I think will do better than the gem dragon, Chris.
This one’s more an ice dragon, I guess, longer, smaller arms, all that other fun stuff.
Frank
Oh, cool.
But my blue, I guess, unexpectedly, given the nature of living in the high desert and the temperature lately, my blue filament has not liked being out in the air.
So I’ve run it through my dehydrator, and we’re going to see if that fixes anything.
And I’ve been rerunning test structures to get flow and temperature in a better place.
So yeah, I think that I’m at the point where kind of everything that I’ve said about not storing my filament better might be coming back to bite me in the butt.
Andy
Well, I mean, that’s at least the lesson learned.
Hopefully you’ll be lost to the one roll, really.
Frank
Yeah, and it is, well, my red has been out just as long, so I may have lost it too.
But I do have a couple of projects that are not specifically, I don’t care how well the print is done, dust covers and that sort of thing.
So I can still use the filament.
I’m a little irritated that my expectation has been so misguided, I guess.
I don’t know.
Andy
It could be just that roll of filament just might be a little bit more susceptible to it than, you know, other ones have in the past, and you might just be fine.
You just got a really sensitive roll or something.
Frank
Well, in my mind, that’s enough cause to be super careful in the future and just drop any filament that I’m not using into my bucket, seal it up.
Andy
Yeah, and that’s PLA, right?
Andy
Yeah.
I’ll see, you know, I’m right where they’re with you too.
I don’t do anything with my PLA.
It sets out on the open shelf as well.
And yeah, so I’m making this, the same errors that you are, it’s easy enough to, I think, find a roll that might be just sensitive to it.
Frank
Or three in a row.
Andy
Oh, was it really three that went, that sucks.
That’s money there when it’s three.
Frank
The one I’ve been fighting for the last month or the one I was fighting for the last month, and now the blue and probably the red, which I haven’t done anything with yet.
So yeah, it’s just a little irritating.
Obviously, I’m going to keep fighting my printer until I get the filament used and hope that going to a newer roll is just going to fix the problems I’ve been battling.
Andy
So yeah, it is kind of weird that it affected your, made it for under extrusion.
I wonder what it’s doing inside the machine that would cause under extrusion for a roll like that.
I’m just curious.
Frank
There is the other bit where kind of part of me has been wanting to buy some 0.6 millimeter nozzles.
Andy
Oh, really?
Frank
And I wonder, I wonder if the bigger nozzle would have less issue with the older filament.
Andy
I don’t know.
I don’t suspect it would.
It’s not that much different than the 0.4.
You know, you’re not…
Frank
right.
Andy
The only thing I could think of is like, if the filament was, when it, as it aged, if it got like, not really like slippery, but more difficult for your feeder to grab onto it or something, you know, so it’s, it’s chewing it a lot easier and miss or miss, not missteps, but it’s not pulling it through like it should as much.
And if you’re running a 0.6, it just means the feeder is going to just be moving a little bit faster, you know, but it’s still going to be expecting the same amount to go through per turn.
Frank
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, talking about it, I started thinking maybe that’s why some people make a big deal out of the dual gear extruder instead of the one-sided.
Andy
I, I like the dual gear.
I get a lot less clogs.
And especially too, if you got a trouble filament, you could turn up the amperage on your, on your feeder motor a little bit too, to make it so you’re not skipping steps.
And you can, you can get it so that it will break other things than skip on the filament.
So…
Frank
well, and, you know, that all comes down to, or comes back to the older filament under extruding like it is, the dual gear extruder, or maybe if I just sucked it up and bought the actual hot end that I’ve been thinking of.
Andy
What were you thinking of going with?
I’ve been looking at some that are newer extruders that work well with the Ender 4.
Is it the 4?
Andy
Okay.
Frank
Um, but to this point, it’s been mostly, um, window shopping because I don’t want to spend 40 bucks for the whole cold end, hot end assembly.
Andy
Yeah.
To be absolutely honest, that’s what I wound up settling with was the H2 series extruder.
And it’s kind of an all of a one piece, but you, you saw like, I was trying to get rid of the, you know, wet spaghetti problem with TPU.
So short, short a Bowden and as possible down to, you know, 15 or 20 millimeters.
And I can only kind of achieve that by getting one that’s all designed as one piece.
Yeah.
If you want any like recommendations from me, go with the H2 or the H2O with your water cooling, because I love it.
It uses a smaller stepper motor.
It’s only a 14 millimeter stepper motor, a NEMA 14, but it’s geared down pretty substantially.
Unfortunately, that means you haven’t, you know, if you’re using an 8-bit board, like if you’re using, I mean, you use a Marlin, so that’s, that’s 8-bit.
Um, if you’re using that, you’re going to have a top speed if you use that extruder, though.
Although the top speed, I think I calculated is like 160, 170 millimeters a second, something like that.
It’s a ridiculous speed, but it’s just because with it being geared down, the stepper can only turn so fast.
And that’s, that’s where you run into problems.
But being geared down and dual drive and only 17 millimeters from the bottom of the gear to the, you know, the nozzle, oh, that’s good.
Sorry, I got a little excited about it.
Frank
No, you’re fine.
Andy
It’s all metal gears on the inside too.
Chris
We need to lay some paper down for Andy this week.
Frank
Definitely something I’ve just been window shopping, like I said.
There’s another dual gear, all metal extruder, a little bit less expensive, like the H2 that you’re talking about.
Andy
Yeah, I think that one was like around 80 bucks, if I remember right.
That’s, I think, what I paid for mine.
Frank
It was a bit of a range.
So it, it really depends, I guess, on which generation you’re paying for it.
I see them on here anywhere from 60 to 100 bucks.
Okay.
And the one I was looking at kind of tops out at 30, but it’s still solid steel, it looks like.
So it’d be worth playing with.
Andy
That’s good.
And going to an all metal one, I think you would appreciate more too.
That way you don’t have to play the stupid games with the damn small sections of PE tubing that you have to have cut perfect length, exactly.
And then chamfer the ends of it and all that.
Frank
That, that was all inside of the, or because of the way everything is set up on my printer.
There’s, I’ve noticed that a lot of the, the assemblies have got like a little nut at the top.
Usually that’s where the capture thing is for your Bowden tube.
Okay.
And mine, instead of having that, has got another one of those little slotted circle nuts.
And that’s what my extruder mounts onto.
And so the Bowden tube is literally mostly inside of the cold end.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
And just guides the filament from the extruder, the little, I think I measured it at 60 or 80 millimeters.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
I think it’s 80, 80 millimeters to the hot, to the nozzle.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
So the only thing that I’ve had to be really careful with there is just making sure that it’s making contact the whole length so that I don’t get the loose plastic and under an edge somewhere.
Andy
Yeah.
Okay.
Frank
Anyway, so I did the dragons and those print towers.
And that’s really all I’ve done, printer wise.
So…
Andy
it’s been kind of a little bit more of a quiet week for the 3D printer world of ours here.
Not the projects have ceaced any
It just sounds like we just kind of moved our project time over to something other than 3D printing.
Chris
Happens to me every summer because I’m the, I’m the family mechanic.
Half my weekends through the summer end up being fixing people’s cars.
Andy
Yeah.
And I don’t envy that man.
Chris
And then other house projects again, you know, so every summer.
Andy
Growing up, Chris, I’m sorry for any vehicle I’ve ever asked you to fix for me that wasn’t just like coming out and having a beer and working on it together.
That’s a, you were, people were bad at taking advantage of your hospitality there when it comes to fixing cars.
Chris
Oh yeah.
Now it’s, now it’s really just family.
So…
Frank
I think that Chris really appreciated that when I asked for his help, it was so that I could use this tools and driveway.
Chris
Yeah, pretty.
Frank
Not because I needed him to turn wrenches necessarily.
Andy
And also it probably makes an entirely different thing when the person you’re working on their car is like they’re helping out, even if they’re just dining the flashlight for dad, they’re still there, you know?
Chris
Yep.
Kevin
That’s how I always did it.
Frank
Chris, I need you to fix this and I’m going to go to Hawaii for the next week.
Have it done when I get back, will you?
Andy
No kidding, right?
Chris
Yeah.
I’ve learned that when people want to pull that kind of thing, I’m either going to say no or ask for a good amount of money.
Andy
That’s good.
That’s good.
Chris
You know, and I can get away with that here and there too.
Like the father and I had to do a timing chain for him a little over a month ago.
And because you guys know timing chains are involved jobs, I charged him some money for that one.
Granted, not as much as he had paid out for a shop, but you know.
Andy
Yeah, something.
It’s more about the idea than the actual finance, the money itself that changed me.
I like that a lot.
That’s good.
Frank
Well, I will say it kind of feels like we’re kind of, I guess, ready to wrap this up.
What do you guys think?
Chris
Say the word topic and we’ll all run away from it.
Frank
I did learn that one.
That’s part of why I decided to throw away the topic idea, right?
Chris.
Chris
Sorry?
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
I said right? Chris.
Andy
Yeah, I don’t really have a whole lot left.
My printer’s just sitting there pretty the exact place I left it last week.
Chris
Oh…
Andy
covered in dust.
Chris
At some point in the near future, I am going to apply the hairspray and try it out.
But…
Andy
yeah.
Yeah.
And you know, next time you get it too, it’s this rave, four x rave.
And I really find this stuff is very different compared to the aqua aquanet.
Aquanet did seem to work.
It was just this stuff feels like it’s more like glue than the aquanet was.
Chris
Yeah.
And again, like I said, I may not need the rave versus the aquanet because I have a textured bed.
So…
Andy
yeah, that might change things too.
Chris
Well, we’ll get an analysis, you know, of which one is better for which, I think.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
With me doing that.
Frank
conduct a study.
Print different shapes on each and quantify your findings.
Andy
My N of 1 for a plate glass bed is definitely the rave, the rave four x better than aquanet.
Chris
And usually, so the idea is that if I have my my bed set right, because it’s a textured bed, I shouldn’t even need hairspray.
But I found that some of these filaments I’m using are subpar even brand new.
And so I may need hairspray for those.
Kevin
Burn them.
Andy
I’m hoping it works for you.
Chris
And now I now I have just got to grab my lighter and I’ve got a nice new tool for eliminating spiders.
Andy
I’m hoping that does solve problems just because, you know, after using my printer for like the last two years here after fixing my adhesion issues, it’s it kind of a surprise to think when I go to print something, but like the one of the last things on my mind is adhesion problems.
You know, I just spray the bed down and then start printing and then it’s good.
And then like I say, about every 30 prints or so, it’ll be a good idea to get some water on the bed and wipe it off and start over with the hairspray because the water just dissolves it.
So it’s it’s just getting it wet and letting it sit for, you know, 10 seconds and then just wiping it down with a couple pieces of toilet paper and then hitting it with some glass cleaner and then you’re good to go again.
Chris
So oh yeah, because I I mean, I clean my my bed with glass cleaner about that often anyway.
Yeah, wouldn’t be all that much of change.
Andy
Yeah.
But I completely just not have to worry about adhesion.
That’s kind of something I feel like I’m really lucky to not have to deal with.
And another reason why I preach the hair spray thing so much because that was what made 3d printing a worry that something was going to go wrong and have a spaghetti print to just not worrying about it and having it work all the time.
I mean, there’s the one offs where you come down but when it when you have a felt print, it’s a surprise.
It’s it’s a crime scene.
It’s stop everything.
Let’s figure out what the heck happened because this is unusual, you know.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
Yeah, I experienced that one a few times.
You’ve done this 30 times with no problem.
What changed?
Andy
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Frank
Yeah.
Well, yeah, let’s wrap this up and we’ll just go from there.
Andy
All right, sounds good.
Well, hopefully next week here, I’ll have a little bit more of a report of my controller and I can nerd out on the the PIC controller and stuff a little bit more.
I’m cool.
I think I’m going to etch a board.
I haven’t etched a board for maybe seven or eight months, probably almost a year.
And I’ve only done a handful.
And so I could probably get some better experience, even though this board here will have a lot of headers mostly because if you look at it, I don’t have a lot on here as far as components wise.
I’m going to have like four or five resistors.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
A couple of MOSFETs and…
Chris
you got room for jam on that breadboard.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
So there’s not a lot of components, but I think I’m still going to put it on the breadboard just so I can get the experience of making them because I’ve only had total about three or four.
No, one, two, three, four.
I think five successes and I’ve only gone through like seven or eight of my boards.
The first ones took me like three or four times to figure it out.
But after I done one and then like that second one I did just came out perfect and they just been good ever sinse.
So I think I’ve got it down, but I could use some more experience on that.
So hopefully next podcast here, I’ll be coming up with being able to show that and then the one after that will be the 3D printing housing and putting it all into action.
And then I’ve got more projects after that I want to get to.
So we’ll see what comes.
Frank
So Andy, every time somebody else doesn’t do anything with their printer for the week, you give them crap.
So we do need to do that for you.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
To the extent of how dare you.
Kevin
Oh, don’t you know printing comes first.
Chris
You soiled your printer letting it collect dust like that.
Andy
Oh dear, I have wronged the whole concept here.
I should be punished.
Frank
You need to get your priority straight there, Andy.
Things like I’ve tried twice now and I’m actually going to do it.
We’d like to thank everyone for listening to the very end.
Chris
The very, very end.
Frank
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You can find us in our Facebook group amateur3dpod, or you can email us at panelists@amateur3dpod.com.
For individual feedback, you can email us at Franklin, Kevin, Andy or Chris @amateur3dpod.com.
Kevin Buckner wrote the music for this episode.
OpenAI’s whisper is completed the heavy lifting for the transcripts, which you can find linked in the description.
Our panelists are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Kevin Buckner, Chris Weber and Andy Cottam.
And until next time, we’re going offline.
Kevin
Keep your FEP tight.
Andy
Always use hairspray.
Chris
Bad Andy.
Good printing.