Frank
Thank you for joining us.
This is episode 49 of Amateur 3D Podcast, a podcast by amateur printers, for amateur printers, where we share our thoughts and experiences.
Our panelist this week are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Kevin Buckner, Andy Cottam, and Chris Weber.
How’s it going guys?
Andy
Doing pretty good.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
Breathing still.
It’s a good step.
Frank
Yeah.
That’s in line with being vertical.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Breathing.
Well, I guess you can breathe without being vertical.
Andy
Yeah.
Kevin
Still on the green side of the grass, pushing it down, not up.
Andy
That’s good.
That’s good.
How about yourself?
Frank
I got the podcast from last week, often scheduled, just before joining this call.
Andy
Oh, beautiful.
Way to…
Frank
So, that was procrastinating for six days for me.
Andy
At least you give yourself a good window so that you can utilize it.
That’s good preparation there.
Frank
Just listening to that episode though, you were talking about rounding for integers and how challenging it was, and you said it, and I thought, why doesn’t he just use the modulo?
Andy
The modulo?
Frank
Yeah.
Explain the modulo.
Chris
Is it like a juggolo?
Frank
Well, in your C languages, it’s the percent sign, but in visual basic, it’s just mod is the…
Andy
Oh, that.
That’s not an option.
Yeah.
I don’t even have divide, Frank.
I can’t even natively divide, so…
I can divide by two.
I can do a bit shift and divide by two, but that’s all you get.
So, stuff like mod, yeah, that’s not a thing.
Frank
I don’t expect it is a library from C++.
Now, granted, C++ is where my experience is, not C, but your chip, your processor is designed specifically to do complex math.
Andy
No.
So, these PIC controllers I’m using are very, very basic, so they don’t do a whole lot natively themselves.
I can put in libraries to do stuff like divide, like, of course, I’m going to be using divide from time to time, but it doesn’t happen natively.
So, if I have to use a divide, I’m going to lose tens of, 20s of cycles to do a proper divide.
I think…
I mean, it’s like 30 or 40 milliseconds to do a simple divide.
It’s a long time.
Frank
Okay.
I need to apologize then, Andy.
Andy
Oh, don’t apologize.
I just assumed that my experience with C++ was enough to tell you how to do things that you know better to do than I do.
No, it’s perfect.
What you thought of is exactly like a way to do it, yeah, but it’s just there’s a lot of restrictions when you’re doing microcontrollers, you’re really limited, so…
Frank
That’s how I did it in C++.
It should work on C, right?
Andy
Oh, no, I mean, the code is there.
It’s just if you use it, it won’t work natively on the controller, and so you’ll get these weird hang-ups.
Frank
Yeah.
Andy
A great example, and I don’t know the reason for this yet, but I had to do a very funny work around that we were kind of talking about when it comes to separating or compartmentalizing with functions, you know, making a bunch of smaller pieces.
I found a problem with that, and that is when you call a semi-larger function, that function has to be loaded into memory in order to run.
That takes a lot of time, a lot of time, so on my system here, I tried to make it event-driven, so I’ve got an update display, the initial draw for the display, and input event for the display.
So If I click my little knob, and then in the loop side of my program, senses that, and it calls the event for that particular screen, then that function gets that event and executes it, so I make the changes to the structure that I need, like moving the cursor down, and then I call the update to update the screen with those changes, and just simply calling the update was taking, it was varying, sometimes it was like around 40 to 80 milliseconds, other times it was like 300 to 500 milliseconds, because my update function was kind of large, and that made it really noticeable when you would turn to click, you wouldn’t see the cursor drop down or up to half a second, which is very noticeable.
So my update function and my input event are now the same routine, so they’re all loaded at the same time, so even doing something simple as like calling a function takes time, and yeah, so it just worked differently with them, I think.
Frank
So my controller for my printer does that, actually, with the Arduino and the Marlin on it.
Andy
Because you guys remember the video that I showed of my cursor doing its thing on it, and how there was a little bit of a delay, and now when you look at it, it’s pretty much, as I turn it, it’s pretty responsive.
Chris
Oh yeah, so visual listeners here.
Andy
Oh yeah, I’m just demonstrating the responsiveness of the little cursor, selecting through the menu, but not being able to compartmentalize like that, it was kind of a surprise too, like I didn’t ever realize why it was.
I mentioned to you guys when I first did it, like, hey, look what I did, I got a cursor that moves now, but there’s this weird delay, I don’t understand.
All I do is change the variable for the cursor position, and then I call my update thing, it goes through like three if statements to decide what it needs to update, and then when it gets to that third if statement, it starts executing.
So I started putting timers everywhere, you know, stored the time right before the call to the update, and then followed it, and it’s just like from storing the time, and then the next call was the function for the update, and then in the update function was evaluating the time difference, that short a period of time was where I was getting about 800 or up to about half a second, and from what I read, if it had already loaded that function once before, and it was still in memory, then it might jump to it.
So that would explain the 80 or so millisecond delay, but if it had to reload it, that would explain the 300 to 500 millisecond delay.
And whether just whatever state it was in, whether it decided it could use the old version or if it had to reload it was the difference, but just little things like that kind of delay is a real surprise when you’re also working at such slow speeds as this.
This controllers, eight megahertz, no, 16 megahertz I believe, and that’s it, so.
Frank
And I guess technically that is, that’s an issue I’ve run into when you talk with devs about micro services and that sort of thing.
The idea is it’s very modular, like you get almost no code in each function.
And just have a function chain to do whatever you need to do, and the first time it runs, it does go a little bit slow, but after that, it’s fairly quickly because it’s all in memory, but we’re also dealing with immensely more memory than you are.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got two kilobytes.
Actually, since I switched over to the 4809, I now have six kilobytes.
So the world has opened up for me with these new ICs, I got a whole 6k to work with.
Chris
Just take them out to the bar, we can all get them all loaded at the same time.
Andy
That means these new ones I’m even having problems with, I’ve already emailed the place I bought them from, I’m buying these on dev boards because it’s like a 32 pin IC and it’s all SMD, and that’s kind of beyond my skill level.
I can work with like through-board ICs as big as you want, and the SMD, like the biggest SMD I’ve ever did was a 16 pin and that was tough to work with, you know, and soldering those on boards is messy, so I try to avoid the SMD, so I’m only buying these on a breakout development board, and the development board has a programmer on it, which is really convenient because I don’t have to use a separate programmer, and it’s got a USB port right on the development board, so when I go to make my project, I can stick the USB port right up to the edge of the case, and that way if I ever need to update the firmware, I just plug it in right there, you know, so it is convenient, but out of the three boards that I’ve wound up buying, one programmer was completely DOA, and then last night while I was working on this one here, the programmer seemed to be working fine, but then it started glitching out on me and disconnecting and reconnecting the serial port on the computer, and so this morning I wound up sending a second email that says, hey, we need to add this to my problems because even though the first one was DOA, the second one is now going bad, and so now I’m on my third one that I bought, and so I love these chips, but the programmer on them really sucks.
Chris
So do you ever know what a pirate tends to program in?
Kevin
R?
Andy
R++?
Frank
I’m assuming it’s C.
Chris
His first love is always the C.
Kevin
See, I said R because that’s, I use R more than any other programming language.
The way I heard that joke was actually what’s a pirate’s favorite letter, and a lot of people go R, and the response is R be a good letter, but C be the pirate’s first love.
Andy
I like that, I like that, but so as far as what I’ve done with 3D printing this week is I haven’t, I’ve been working with this project for my fans, kind of every time I come home from work I’ve been putting 5, 10 minutes into it.
I probably got maybe 6 hours so far into this project.
Last night I got into the flow, what’s that?
Frank
Let’s be honest, Andy, I know I cut in on you, sorry for that, but most of our listeners are your fans.
Andy
Yeah, I got fans
Chris
but you’ve been doing great this week Andy, I’ve been keeping up on your posts to make sure I get to sleep on time.
Andy
Oh, burn, burn burn burn.
Last night I put a good, no you’re fine, I put a good 2 hours into it, I got to solder the headers on the development board and stuff like that, and remap everything over.
When I was working on the old 286s, I think they’re called, it’s a completely different pinout when I moved to the larger AT Mega that I was working on while I waited for these ones and then these ones were even more different, so it feels like I get it working on one controller and then move to the next and then have to jumble things up so I can keep on working on it again and then move to the next and then have to do it all over again.
Most of my work with it, like the last 2 hours, maybe 3 hours on it, has just been trying to get my code that I’ve written so far to function on the controller.
Chris
It’s not spaghetti code if it looks like it was knitted.
Andy
You know what? With the problems I described with not being able to make the code very modular, it actually is looking a lot more like spaghetti code, but I think in this situation, you can’t really blame me too much because it’s intentional and if it’s intentional, then it’s not necessarily bad programming if you’re purposely doing it that way.
Kevin
A couple things here.
A, I’ve seen photos of people knitting spaghetti, so Chris it can be knitted and still could be spaghetti code and B, when I was learning R, the instructor said, okay, when you’re programming, first, make it work, second, make it fast, third, make it pretty.
So if you just make it work, that’s fine.
Who cares if it’s ugly?
Chris
That reminds me of that meme with Johnny Depp as Captain Sparrow.
He goes, yours is the worst code I’ve ever seen run.
Andy
But it runs.
Chris
But it runs.
Frank
But you have heard of me.
Yeah.
And it really, we talk about the difference between my training and yours.
I actually, where I am at my bachelor’s degree that I’ve been working on for 15 years, has had almost nothing to do with code and everything to do with prerequisites.
Okay? I got stopped at calculus.
So official training, I have very little, but on the job training, I’ve got a couple of years worth of experience working with other devs and all that stuff.
And with that experience, there’s a lot of procedural approaches, where if you think of it in terms of, I want this to be maintainable later, you start coding in terms of modular design as you’re making it work.
There’s a process called test-driven development, where you write the test and then you break it.
And you break it and break it and break it until you’ve covered as many contingencies you can.
And when it starts to work, you know you’re in a good place.
Andy
There you go.
Chris
Like popping a balloon until it stops popping.
Yeah.
Frank
Right.
But if all you’re doing is testing that it works, you don’t necessarily know why it works.
It’s the idea behind that.
But the point is, especially with tests in your code, the more modular it is, the easier it is to test functionality.
Because then you’re checking just one zone of that functionality, instead of, I want to make sure that this massive function does this one thing, even though it does these other 10 things, you know?
So in the end, that’s really the relationship, is you want to be able to test it and build it.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
So I would say that Kevin’s teacher’s approach as, what’s the word I used before, as primitive as it is, it works.
But a more high-level approach is, I’m going to have it look as good as possible in the beginning.
And when it works, I don’t have to refactor it later.
Andy
Yeah.
That’s true.
Frank
So, sorry.
I didn’t mean to go off on my own rant on that.
It was a little frustrating that a teacher would tell students, it doesn’t matter how I look.
So.
Kevin
I think he was just saying, because it’s easy to get frustrated if what you’re writing looks ugly.
Frank
And that’s kind of a trade-off, right?
Devs get stuck going down their freaking rabbit hole, trying to fix everything as they go.
And there is ultimately a business need, too.
So there needs to be a balance.
It’s just that the tendency is either this is absolutely pretty code that does nothing, or this code is ugly as hell and nobody wants to maintain it because if you fart up wind, it’s going to break.
But it works for now, so just leave it alone.
And very seldom, it feels like, do you find anything in the middle?
Any devs listening to this will go, yeah, there’s one program that nobody touches because it’s 15 years old and it works and we just leave it alone.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
No kidding.
Chris
But then when it breaks, you’ve got to look through employee records and call this guy that moved to Ohio or something.
Frank
When it breaks, you find out who made the update and tells them to fix what they did, they broke it, instead of messing with your function.
Kevin
Right.
Andy
So true.
Chris
So
Kevin
of course, that all being said, I thought I was making ugly but workable code and then I needed help making an app.
And so I called, I got in contact with the instructor, he put me in contact with an expert and I shared the screen and as I was going through it, he said, you know, I just need to pause you and say that your code looks beautiful.
I can look at this and know exactly what you’re doing.
Andy
Oh, that’s good.
Frank
Good.
Chris
Wow.
Kevin
That’s awesome.
That made me feel good.
Chris
Should feel very flattered.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Well, and that’s the nice thing about code is when you have experience with it, you can look at it and go, this is going to be a pain in the butt to fix.
Oh, this is going to be so nice to work with.
I appreciate people that start their business with nice looking code because my job is relatively easy at the beginning.
I’m only going to spend eight hours trying to figure out this problem instead of eight days.
Chris
Yeah.
And that totally comes into application at my job.
So I program CMMs for geometric dimensioning and like I pull up old programs from predecessors that are long gone and there is no continuity between what they programmed and the print.
Like all the stuff is there, but you have to go digging through this program and spend days doing it to figure out what the program meant versus what the blueprint is.
So everything’s there, but they didn’t program it in a way that you can just look at the readout after everything’s done running and say, okay, this is this dimension on this area of the print.
This is this dimension on this area of the print.
And so as we’re programming now, me and the other two guys we got doing this, we are saying, okay, it’s this call out, this size and range, and it’s on this area of the print.
And when stuff gets printed out, you can see it.
And that’s another thing is they’ve had this functionality of Excel exports on this program for like, since they got the program in the first place, and none of these old programs have any Excel exports added on the end of them.
And so I’ve been adding that to our programs, and it’s been amazing.
So not only does it show you what dimension it is, what the tolerances are, and it prints everything, it just populates everything to an Excel sheet so that when you’re done running all the parts, you can just pull up this Excel sheet and do it run a quick macro, and it’ll highlight everything, either green, yellow, or red.
And you know what’s wrong immediately, what dimensions don’t look good immediately on which parts and how far out they are, and all of that.
And it’s…
Andy
That’s cool.
Frank
Or at least it gives you a good starting point.
Chris
Yeah.
I’ve been digging three days, digging through PDF reports, looking for it to mention it.
Frank
Well, you keep hearing every once in a while about some tech who got hired for a job and it’s super mundane and repetitive.
So they write a couple of scripts and they get paid for 40 hours of work to sit and run a script twice a day, sift through the output and move files.
Andy
I was doing that with my job for like the last two years before they ended a particular program.
Oh my God, it was great.
Frank
And, and people don’t like that for some reason.
It’s like, I’m doing the job you paid me for.
I’m just not putting 40 hours a week into it.
You should continue to pay me for the job I’m doing.
Andy
Yeah.
Gonna have to pay anybody else the full time for it anyway.
Chris
Yep.
Yeah.
So, yeah, there’s this one particular part that we’re ramping up production on.
So we just barely doubled production.
And I was informed that we were going to be upping production.
And at the time to, to run through a single order of these things was taking almost two full shifts on, on one machine because we were running one part at a time.
And so I fixed that.
I made it so we’re running four at a time.
And so whoever’s running the machine can push, go on the program.
Takes about 12, 12 minutes to run so they can go diddle, doddle for something.
Well, for the 12 minutes while it’s running and then come back and look, look at it and then grab the parts and flip on the next one.
And it took it down from a 16 to 16 to 20 hour job down to a five to six hour job.
Andy
Oh, nice.
Chris
Per, per order.
It’s kind of nice.
Andy
That’s good.
Chris
Cause I was like, I am not getting buried with these things.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
I cannot say that I blame you at all.
Andy
So on to 3D printing topic.
Chris
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
So Kevin made some really cool stuff this week, right?
Kevin
Yes, I did.
Chris
Sorry, sorry, Andy.
Andy
Oh, no, you’re fine.
The only thing I was going to say is I’m back to thinking I’m wanting to get the Elegoo Mars SLA printer.
That’s all I had, but I’m sure it’ll change by next week’s podcast.
So we’ll go from there.
They just got one I’m eyeballing lately and I’m thinking going with a slightly smaller bed would probably be more useful to me in my current situation since I only want to occasionally be able to print SLA.
So.
Kevin
Right.
Yeah.
You don’t need a huge bed for the occasion, especially if you’re in small parts.
Andy
Yeah.
And one of the things that you do mention about yours is it would be nice if you had more resolution.
The one I’m looking at is 9k.
So.
Kevin
Wow.
Yeah.
I think that’s one of, I think mine’s only like 2k.
Andy
Okay.
Um, that’s just back to the whole idea of, I don’t want to be in the same situation like in with my Tivo, where I really would have loved to have bought and started out with the Core X, Y, than getting a bed slinger this whole time.
You know, I was hoping to skip that step with the SLA too, by taking your experience, using it as mine to make, you know, a judgment on what would be best for me down as a second printer instead of a first printer.
Kevin
Sure.
Yeah.
Uh, makes it.
Perfect sense.
Uh, but anyway, yeah.
So, uh, at, at, uh, the, the latest Pathfinder game I was playing with my group, um, I was telling my friends all about Titancraft and one of them asked if they had a giant mechanical spider.
And I was like, you know, it doesn’t hurt to look.
So I logged in and saw that they didn’t have anything that they called a mechanical spider that they had an armored spider, which looked kind of mechanical-ish.
And so I queued that up and then I went to see what leg options they had and they had robotic leg options.
And so I was like, dude, yes.
Right here.
So, uh, he paid me, uh, for the assets that I needed to pay to unlock and, um, and then I took that and I pulled it into Blender to make the eyes look a little bit more cybernetic because it, it didn’t have any cybernetic eye options.
It only had the cybernetic legs.
Andy
You know, it’s only cybernetic.
If you got like the laser bore guy kind of crap, right?
Kevin
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it’s, it helps.
It helps to make it look more cybernetic that way.
So I pulled it into Blender and I modified two of the smaller eyes, uh, to make, to look a bit more cybernetic.
And then I printed it up and, uh, uh, I had to scale it down because the native size of this spider was a 56 millimeter base.
And my friend said that he wanted it to be a 32 millimeter base because it’s a medium sized giant spider, uh, for those of you who understand D&D size terminology, he wanted it a size medium, not size large, 56 millimeter base would be a size large.
So I scaled it down and printed it up.
And, um, you can’t tell that I did anything to the eyes.
So then just to see if I wasted my time in Blender, I printed one at full scale, and you can kind of see that I did something to the eyes, but still not very well.
And so I looked at that and said, I really should have, um, made the two biggest eyes look more cybernetic.
And so I think I’m actually going to do that.
Cause I think that would show up.
But the resolution of my printer, I mean, it is fantastic as we discussed before, but it is not, it’s not good enough to show that fine of a detail.
I mean, the, the little tiny eyes that I did, we’re talking, they’ve got, they’re like a millimeter in diameter.
Andy
Got a lot of detail in that one millimeter too with those eyes.
Kevin
Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh, so I mean, the, you can see the eyes just fine.
Like they’re, they look like spider eyeballs, but, um, that you can’t tell that I made the two smallest ones look at all more cybernetic.
And then let me tell you, cleaning that up, getting it off the supports.
That was a bit of a beast.
Um, as we were discussing before we started recording, uh, the supports on those two spiders that I had printed up, um, are about the same thickness as the legs for the spiders.
And then one of the spiders I, I decided I would have it having a snack.
And my, my first instinct was to do a dog, but the only dog option that, um, that Titan craft had is a robot dog.
So I gave the other one a cat to be, eaten, and the dead cat’s legs were, uh, actually smaller than the supports, and there were just so many supports between the base and the body of the spider.
I ended up with the one that had the cat on it.
I ended up having to cut the spider off of the base to turn it around to be able to get to all the, all of the supports, um, without, cause I, I was afraid if I didn’t do that, that the pressure that I was putting on it with the exacto knife and with the jeweler’s dykes and everything would cause the leg to break in a less ideal space, spot than where it attached to the base.
So I was like, I’ll cut it off at the base and then I can get under there and clean it up.
The other one though, that I didn’t give a snack to it’s just the spider.
I was, I was able to clean that one up without cutting it off of the base, but it did break a foot because it’s just such a tiny, tiny thing.
Andy
Now do you use the resin when for glue in situations like that?
Or do you use some other kind of glue?
Kevin
So for, for that, I used super glue, but another thing I did yesterday was I, I mounted, I put together the, the, um, goblin bat rider that I’m going to be using for my Nightmare Chess set.
And I super glued the, the bat to the base and it took just way too long.
To hold it still.
And then there, there, and that was with a socket and like a tab and socket kind of thing.
Andy
Okay.
And so I could just hold it in place and then get the water on it to set the glue immediately, but then there, there’s not any kind of thing like that for the goblin is just, so I, I got a little bit of resin on the goblin’s feet and, and held it on top of the bat.
And then I got a black light and shined it on the, on the goblins feet.
And then I put it in my cure station.
And so now the goblin is welded to the, the bat there.
So I do a, a mixture of both really, depending on the situation, how long I want to hold the super, the pieces together.
Cause my concern with this goblin was if, without it having any kind of socket to fit into on the bat, back of the bat, I’d just be holding that there for several minutes, hoping against all hope that I don’t twitch.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
That’s you.
Frank
Um, what are they called?
Third hand or whatever.
Andy, I know you’ve talked about like a, a holding rig with the, the alligator clips on them or something like that.
I imagine it would be…
Andy
I need to get one for my soldering station.
Frank
It would be very useful in that situation where you can set it and then you’re not physically touching it anymore, while it cures.
Chris
Yeah.
I just got to make sure you don’t accidentally bump your desk or something, you know…
Frank
as opposed to breathing.
Andy
Well, good deal.
I’m glad that the spider worked out.
That is pretty insane.
How difficult sometimes even an SLA supports can be.
Kevin
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it’s a fact of life with SLA.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
Lots of post processing.
Andy
Are they easier to take off than, uh, FDM supports or are they just as hard or hard?
Kevin
Um, so with, I haven’t done a whole lot with supports on FDM, but I’ve had some supports on FDM just fall right off.
And when I’ve gone to remove them, others have been kind of hard to remove.
So…
Chris
yeah, I think it just depends on the, on the, on the print and the program.
I know that some of my FDM’s supports have been, again, same thing.
Some of them just fall right off.
Others take a little bit of effort and, and then cleaning up on the, on the, on the part afterward, you know.
Kevin
Yeah.
So I would say the one for the ones that don’t just fall off.
Um, it’s easier to remove the supports from the SLA printer than it is or printed part, but for the ones that do fall off, uh, the FDM is easier.
Andy
Is that okay.
Just wondering what I’m getting my butt into.
Chris
Yeah.
Sounds like it’s like kind of like a medium amount of work.
Kevin
Yeah.
Chris
Than getting supports off resin prints.
Andy
Okay.
Kevin
I mean, then the biggest, the biggest trouble I’ve had is that when I’m doing the tiny parts, trying to get the support off without damaging the print.
Andy
Okay.
Chris
Um, you know, I just had a thought, maybe you want to get, um, invest in some, uh, nylon, uh, nylon tipped pliers or something like that.
Andy
Something tells me those wouldn’t be very good at cutting.
Oh, pliers.
Okay.
Chris
Yeah.
For, for holding plastic parts while you, while you cut bits off of it.
Andy
That’s a good idea.
Heck, you got an FDM printer.
Can you print nylon?
Kevin
Uh, I don’t have, I don’t have an enclosure.
Chris
Ah, but, um, then again, PLA would probably work just as, just as well in this situation, you just print up a pair of pliers for holding.
Frank
You remember…
Kevin
The big problem I have though, is that the, the cutting tools I use are a bit too big.
Andy
Okay.
Kevin
Like it’s not a problem of holding the, the model as I’m trying to get the supports off, it’s getting the tools into the proper place to put just the right amount of pressure on it to separate the support without bringing a piece of the printed model with it.
Andy
That makes sense.
Chris
Have you looked into a watchmakers toolkit on like Amazon or something?
Kevin
I have not.
And, and I was just thinking a jeweler’s kit would probably do the same thing.
So, yeah, on the same thought there, Chris.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
Um, on the subject of holding stuff, though, you remember that, uh, lathe chuck that I printed off a while ago?
Kevin
Uh-huh.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
That was actually kind of a part of the same idea.
And I’ve seen them on Thingiverse where you have a desk mounted chuck to hold whatever you’re working on.
So you can use both hands and, um, part of why I ended up on the idea of that other, um, like the bowl chuck and that sort of thing.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Just so that you can hold whatever you’re working on in a steady place and in your case, something small, um, and use both of your hands to position and cut as needed, but, um, especially with the small precision requirements of the parts you work on there, Kev, I wonder if a, like Chris was saying, if the jeweler’s kit would be a benefit to look into.
Kevin
Probably actually.
Chris
And they’re pretty cheap too.
I know I was looking at, a watchmakers kit, um, back when, cause, uh, I got my grand pa, my grand pa’s, uh, stopped, uh, pocket watch and needed to replace the mainspring sometime ago, you know, and they were, they were pretty cheap.
It was only like 15 bucks for a whole kit.
So yeah, not, not, not that bad.
Kevin
Okay.
Frank
Uh, you guys managed to burn through everything and I didn’t even have to prompt anyone.
I guess I should go without prompting myself, huh?
Or at least to prompt myself.
Something like that.
Um, uh, just not an entire shift, but Adam Savage has gotten himself a 3D printer and he’s been trying to figure out how to print a bust for, of himself, of course.
Um, for like the last month and a half, and he’s been having some trouble with it.
And all I can think was, wouldn’t it be great if one of our 30 listeners was close enough to Adam Savage to, you know, get a meetup and have him be on our amateur podcast.
Andy
Oh, that would be fun.
And you know what, if he knew about it, I could see just his kind of character.
I bet he would do little things like that too.
Frank
I agree.
I think he would.
And because it technically at this point, he’s an amateur too, even though he’s got the celebrity.
Andy
He would definitely respect the name of the podcast here.
Frank
Cause we try to own that, right?
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Um, yeah, just one of those random thoughts that I had this week.
Um, as far as printing stuff off, you saw the dice cups that I made.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Yeah.
Well, okay.
So I created my own version of a game.
The game is called the Royal Game of Ur.
Andy
Oh, okay.
Chris
I thought you were going to make a, Yahtzee, these cups I all made.
Frank
It’s been intriguing to me because it’s a 5,000 year old game that inspired backgammon, which inspired chess.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
And, um, anthropologists have been trying to figure out, you know, they came up with their own hypotheses on how it was played, but it was so common that nobody wrote down the rules.
Everybody just knew how to play.
Chris
Yeah.
Everybody knows, knows where Avon is.
Frank
Um, so they had all the pieces.
They had the dice, they had the markers and they had the board, but that they couldn’t figure out what the official rules were until relatively recently.
I want to say in the last 50 years or so, maybe.
Andy
Okay.
Chris
Um, just from nuances on like cuneiform tablets or something.
Frank
No, they actually found where somebody had a tablet, uh, specifically to give to a friend who was not acquainted with the game.
Oh, and it was just one of those random.
Hey, look what we found situations.
Um, like I said, it was so common they found the game all over the place and all the pieces all over the place, but they, they just couldn’t figure out the rules because nobody ever wrote it down.
Um, so I created my own version of this game.
I want to say a year and a half ago or so, maybe two pandemic time messes with your head, um…
Kevin
for sure.
Frank
And I created a leather dice cup to go with the game.
Okay.
And recently I was playing… my roundabout way of getting to the point.
I was playing, uh, backgammon with my nephew and I kept thinking, you know, it’s not like the end of the world to have to pass the dice cup back and forth.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
But it would be nice if there were two dice cups.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
So I created nesting dice cups and, um, ended up doing them in two different colors and they fit really nice into each other.
So I made two sets and one of them is back with my royal game of Ur and the backgammon set.
And the other one is sitting in my office where I accidentally put them together and couldn’t figure out how to get them apart because I didn’t put handles on them.
So, uh…
Chris
put them in the freezer.
Frank
But they’re nested so tightly that the, the, uh, hydro, it’s not hydraulic.
What is it?
The, the pneumatic vacuum doesn’t let me just tap it out.
Andy
Yeah.
You know, on YouTube, somebody showed the idiot thing on how to get five gallon buckets apart with just compressed air.
Maybe you can try shooting some air into the side of it and see if that’ll break it loose.
Frank
I tried to get a piece of paper in there to see if I can get a little more grip from the bottom.
They’re so tight that the paper doesn’t go in.
Andy
Okay.
And I would, I would question why it worked too, but just seeing some YouTube videos of them just shooting it against the edge and the pressure does work its way in, I don’t know.
Chris
Yeah.
I mean, paper is kind of thick when you’re, when you’re talking about that kind of scale, if you’re shooting air down the side, you, and if you have millions of, uh, of inches of space in there, any, any microns of space in the, in there, the air will, will get in and alleviate that pressure.
That, yeah.
Frank
I did heat up, um, I’ve got a, an exacto knife set that I have this got four handles and one of them’s got an awl poker thing.
Okay.
It’s spelled A-W-L not A-L-L.
Anyway, um, and so I was thinking I would heat that up and poke a hole in it.
Okay.
And, uh, see if I could pressurize it, but, uh, that, that’s kind of down the road for me too.
I’ll figure it out.
I’ll get there.
Um, I guess I don’t even necessarily.
I only have to pull it back out.
I can stick the thing in, let it cool, and hopefully it’ll be sticky enough to pull out the, the part.
Andy
Yeah, maybe.
Frank
We’ll see.
Just one of those, I, I didn’t expect it to be that tight and it did get me to thinking about like, uh, somebody gave me a marshmallow launcher, just like a little hand pump marshmallow launcher for the mini marshmallows?
Andy
Okay.
Frank
And I was thinking, you know, it wouldn’t be that far of a stretch and I wouldn’t even have to create gaskets for it.
Right.
It would be tight enough just with a regular hard plastic that I could get pressure in vacuum as needed and create a, uh, toy for my nephews.
So we’ll see how that goes.
Andy
That’s actually not a bad idea.
That’s kind of a really neat idea.
I like that idea.
Chris
Those are 3d printed guns that I’ll, I’ll go with it all day.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
And, uh, we’ve talked about your potato launcher.
Oh, that’s a good thing.
I think we’ve at least referenced it once or twice.
And we talked about shooting marshmallows with it.
And it’s like, you wouldn’t get the kind of pressure from a hand pump as what you did from the, um, air compressor.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
It’ll work.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
For a little toy like that, that’s actually, that actually sounds like a lot of fun.
I’m going to have to go look into see if anybody’s come up with some neat designs for that, that you can kind of go off up and redesign.
Chris
Yeah.
So I mean, the, the, the one I bought like ages ago, that shoots those little, little marshmallows, it’s just a hand pump one, but it’ll shoot those things like 50 foot.
Frank
You get some range on it.
Now, as long as the marshmallow gets a good decent seal on it, if there’s a little bit of, um, breakaway there, then it obviously doesn’t go as far.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
And I made the mistake.
I made the mistake of letting our marshmallow age in mine.
And I, I, I…
Chris
got stuck.
Frank
I couldn’t get it out.
Yeah.
Actually, I think it was you that gave it to me, um, for one of the Christmas get-togethers we gave this for.
Um, so the little marshmallow thing only works when the marshmallow is soft.
Andy
okay.
Chris
You got to use fresh marshmallows or it doesn’t work.
And yeah, I, I had one stuck in my gun.
I couldn’t get it out, get it out either.
Andy
So does it, um, does it just have like a little rim around the end of the barrel to hold the marshmallow in place until the pressure from the piston in the back builds enough to push it through?
Frank
With those, the bigger part of the piston was the expected size of the smaller marshmallow.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
So the small part of the piston was just to create pressure behind it.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
And, um, once it broke through the little ring at the end, all that, um, pressure was allowed to push it as far as your little hand pump can make it go.
Andy
Yeah.
That makes sense.
That makes sense.
So that sounds like a fun project to look into, to be able to do.
Chris
Yep.
And you’ll be cleaning marshmallows out from under your couch for years.
Frank
I’m already there.
So I don’t even have kids.
I don’t know how you guys do.
Chris
Oh, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s a monthly thing.
And we go through and flip over all the couches and clean and vacuum underneath them.
And I only have a one kid.
Frank
Yeah.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
But you do have like 50 couches.
So I can see how that would be problematic real quick.
Andy
Yeah.
Hey, just as a quick thing of what we were talking about before, I just, uh, uh, ran some numbers here.
We’re talking about these AT, uh, mega controllers being slow on divide.
To divide a long into a float, um, takes on average about three to 400 milliseconds for one operation.
Chris
Wow.
Andy
Because it’s, because it’s non-native.
Frank
Might as well just use a hand calculator at that point.
Andy
Oh, I know.
No kidding, right?
Yeah, they’re, they’re not that fast.
And that’s what makes them fun.
Because like when you’re building what libraries you want to use, I mean, you got some native, but you got so little native that you really got to start being picky with what you’re adding because of space availability and stuff.
And, you know, how long is it going to take to do some of these kinds of things?
I mean, I, I, I got, there’s libraries to do higher math, you know, sin, cosine, stuff like that.
But just the time that it takes to process that kind of stuff is a long time.
And so if you’re like graphing something, then it could be a problem, you know, but if you’re not doing stuff like graphing and you’re just doing one operation, it might not be that bad of a thing to include, but.
Well, and to be fair, most of your, your front end users are okay with it taking a third of a second to process a divide process, you know.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
If you’re doing just one iteration of it, then no big deal at all, but.
Frank
Yeah.
When you’re doing it with code that comes out to, especially if you’re keeping a log, like you were saying, every five seconds, the sensors, then that is what?
10%, 5% of the processing just on that.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
And it starts to be harder to justify when you get to that point.
Andy
Yeah.
We were talking about debugging with an output.
One of the things I like to use as a, as a serial communication, then I could just open a serial like plotter and just read incoming serial data from it.
That way I can push out whatever I want from the controller.
And it’s really easy to debug that way.
But one of the things I’m always doing is in the lower underneath the event driven stuff, I’ve got a timer that just tells me how many cycles through the events loops it does per second.
That way I can kind of keep an eye on my code.
Because if I’m doing something in one event that takes a long time, I’m going to start affecting others.
So there’s like a minimal, a minimum amount of time.
And it’s like that, the way I’m designing it too, with it being event driven, that means like all of the thermostat parts of it are still completely working in the background when you’re in the menu structure and stuff like that.
And that’ll allow me to do neat things.
Like, like one of the things I need to do is to set a minimum and maximum fan speeds.
Well, while I’m in the menu doing that particular adjustment, I can have it just set the fan speed at that time.
So you could see exactly live what the fan will do at what speed, you know.
Frank
Okay.
Andy
And little things like that.
And since the driver for the fan is still operating in the background while you’re adjusting it, you know, that’s
Frank
that’s kind of like how what I think of for that is my phone when I’m working, trying to change the ringtone or something.
I can test how loud I want it to be for an alarm.
But once I exit that menu, all my volumes return to normal.
Andy
Yeah, yeah
Frank
that’s a good, I like that functionality.
It’s fun.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, I do.
I think it’ll be good.
And another fun thing that was kind of neat was I noticed that the photo, the photo resistor I put in there is very sensitive to dark light.
So like one of the things I’m going to put in there is a threshold value, you know.
And in that menu, I will just display what the current reading is for it.
So you know what threshold it is that way I can go in there, I can turn the lights on, see the reading, turn the lights off.
And then what I might actually put is a recommended threshold where while you’re inside the menu, it will read the max and the minimum and suggest the middle, you know, of the two as the threshold kind of stuff.
But it’s OK, it’s I’m using a 10 bit analog to digital converter.
And so that’s zero to 1023 for that.
But with the lights on, it’s put it’s reading between like eight and nine hundred and with the lights off, it’s down to like 100.
So it seems to be real, really be able to tell whether the lights on or not, which will be neat because I’ll be able to…
Frank
Or if there’s moonlight coming through your window or something like that.
Andy
Yeah, yeah.
But one of the things I’ll be able to do is since it is so sensitive, I can take some of my semi-transparent PETG filament that I got and I can make a window cover inside of the case for that sensor using FDM and making glass out of it.
Because I mean, it’s it’s foggy, not a whole lot of lights going to come through, but the sensor is sensitive enough that I think I’ll be able to make that work.
Frank
Yeah, that sounds like it’ll be fun.
This is being a fun project.
And for anybody who says I’m being ridiculous about making a thermostat so complicated, that’s the point I’m trying to I’m trying to do stuff that I haven’t done for a while or don’t completely understand that still fits with the scope of the project.
That way I can learn neat things to be able to have that as a skill set for later.
Frank
You know, that’s one of the things about a hobbyist, that’s one of the things about being a hobbyist that’s nice, though, is you don’t need to justify the complexity or lack thereof.
But when you’re doing it professionally, you have to find ways to justify less complexity because you work faster.
But when it’s your project, no one cares.
Andy
Yeah
Frank
you’re the one that cares.
So yes, go explore.
Chris
We know this stopped being about your fish quite a while ago.
Andy
It kind of hit me last what was it last night, I think.
I sent you guys the proposed menu structure that I’m going to be using with this.
And at time when I was writing, it’s like, oh, this makes sense.
I need this, this, this, this, you know, it’s just a tabbed bulleted document kind of how I want the mini structure set up.
But then when I sent it on Discord, it was like several scrolls through it to get through it.
It’s like, oh, OK, that’s that’s a lot bigger than I was expecting it to be.
No one needs this.
Frank
Yeah, the official developer term for that is called scope bloat
Andy
scope bloat.
I like that.
Frank
Or uh, Scope Creep works, too.
Chris
I’ll have a fan fan one manual with a site of actual temp off your menu here.
Andy
Yeah.
And another thing I’m including in the menu that might not made sense there is being able to adjust and control the temperature as or as far as the reading goes is the reading accurate to a good thermo thermometer that’s in there.
And even if you have like a bad thermometer in the tank, it might be the one that you’re used to using or what not, you know, and having to read different values is kind of a pain in the butt.
And the outputs for the thermostat, the for the from the analog digital converter is is on a curve.
So like at the low end of seventy… sixty five degrees or so, I’ve got a resolution of point one, two degrees.
But as I get closer to the eighty, I’ve only got a resolution of point one, six degrees.
So you can kind of see it’s on a on a curve for the temperature.
It’s not linear.
And doing a curve is kind of hard.
So one of the things I thought I would do is make it a linear adjustment I can make.
So I’ve I’ve taken I decided let me let me do four samples in the menu structure that you can add to correct temperatures where in one of the samples you put what the current temperature, what the what the unit says the current temperature is and what the actual temperature is in the tank.
And then it’ll take those four and then as soon as you exit that screen, it’ll automatically sort them by the lowest at largest number.
And then I can take actual like minimum temperature and maximum temperature and plot those as being identical.
So like let’s say I’m doing I’m I’m planning on storing this data in nine bits, which will give me five hundred and twelve options, which when I reduce to a point one precision, that gives me fifty one degrees of precision that I could use to store these.
So if my target temperature is about seventy five degrees, I can go twenty five degrees below that and twenty five degrees above that for my store temperature.
Those minimum and maximum values I’m going to say are correct with whatever my unit is reading.
And then when I go to read the temperature, I can say is the current reading temperature between the lowest and the first editable one or between the first editable one and the second editable one all the way through.
As soon as I find where it’s at, I can use those two temperatures to linearly correct the the temperature to what it is.
So if I’m looking at my tank and it says it seventy degree or seventy five degrees in there and the actual thermometer says it seventy six and a half degrees, I can go in and say, hey, at this point, my unit is saying seventy five, but it’s actually seventy six point five degrees and then so it will linearly adjust it from the lowest part up to that particular point and that from that particular point, linearly adjust it to the top most.
That way it can kind of correct the temperatures on the fly and you don’t have to sit there and calculate the curve and input that to adjust the temperature correctly.
I just realized I got off on a very kind of techie rant.
I apologize for that.
I got excited about this idea.
Frank
So we’re all about the exciting TED talks there, Andy.
I think the Kevin has been the least TED talkie of all of us, but we’ve all done it.
Andy
That makes me makes me feel better.
I just said I was talking to another buddy last night and I started out with TL;DR.
He was asking me why I was using the controllers I was.
If I was complaining about having so little memory, why aren’t I using something like a pie, you know, and I’m all about using like the individual ICs, you’ll really small controllers.
Frank
Absolute minimum you can get away with because it’s less expensive for your project.
Right.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
I’m like, I’m riding a bicycle here saying I just upgraded my bicycle here and you’re saying, why don’t you just fly the jet?
You know, it’s like you’re missing the point.
But when I was when I was talking about that, I had a novel to write that I started out with TL;DR and put a little thing of what I was writing about.
Or if I write a novel, going back up and doing a TL;DR, because I know I like even our chat, I tend to spam novels all the time.
And I’m trying to make little short things about it for the people who don’t give a crap what the details are.
Frank
Well, and…
First things first, TL;DR, when you look at it, has anybody else noticed that the semicolon is placed on purpose?
What do you mean?
Chris
TL;DR.
Frank
Mm hmm.
Andy
Too long; didn’t read.
Frank
Because the semicolon and the D make a big smiley face with a wink.
Andy
Oh, I didn’t notice that.
Chris
Oh.
Frank
The second thing is you talk to your phone, Andy, you hit record, and then you rant at your phone and then you send it to us.
We all understand this.
And so we forgive you.
Andy
Yeah, I do.
Frank
And the third thing is this is drawing from my media writing class from the university 20 years ago.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Look up the inverted pyramid writing scheme.
It’s what it’s what journalism is supposed to be.
With a capital S.
Yeah.
Andy
I know what you’re talking about, where you get your your most important points out of the way at the very top and then go into detail as you go down the paragraph, right?
That way, somebody only reads the top of the paragraph or whatever they’ve gotten the point quickly as possible.
Frank
And honestly
Chris
ice cream sandwich.
Frank
Yeah, that’s the difference between putting your TL;DR at the thing or putting it at the end of your rant.
So.
So really, I know, I mean, if you just start with the TL;DR, everything’s fine.
You got the inverted pyramid and you get to rant and everybody else understands what you’re talking about.
Andy
I like that.
And anybody actually interested could could read the scope of my the details.
Frank
Yeah absolutely.
No reason not to.
Andy
Good deal.
Thanks for helping me correct how to properly be socialized when texting.
I appreciate that.
Frank
I am all about forcing you into my little box.
Andy
It’s so cramped in here.
Chris
Put a couple of nails on that coffin there.
There we go.
Frank
Well, I I’m demeaning and degrading, but I try to be nice about it.
No.
Andy
No, no.
You know how it goes.
If you ever actually ever said anything insulting or something like that, I’d pull you aside and just say, hey, that that didn’t feel.
Chris
Not cool, dude.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, but you never heard me do that.
Then it’s because it’s never needed to be your fine.
Frank
Wow.
Of all the tangents, we could have gone down.
Andy
Well, yeah, I’m feeling talked out and I haven’t even talked about how you guys feeling about it.
Andy
About what?
Frank
Being talked out.
Chris
Sort of.
I didn’t even show you guys what I did this week.
I mean, I kind of did before the podcast.
Frank
I kind of felt like I kind of felt like you talking about work was the right time for you to bring that up.
And I figured you hadn’t done anything else.
Andy
Yeah, what did you do?
Chris
OK, so I found this nice little articulated Spyro on Cults 3D.
Kind of nice.
Andy
OK.
Frank
From the game, right?
What… Spyro
Chris
yeah, Spyro the dragon.
Frank
OK, so I’m not missing more of the title or anything.
It’s just Spyro anyway, continue.
Chris
So I decided to pick that one as my articulated one because it wasn’t too complicated, looked like it was going to fit on the bed well and everything.
And so I’m still having a little bit of over extrusion problems.
But stuff sticking to my bed I used hairspray.
Andy
We need to mis you and Frank together.
Chris
Yeah, so I have a textured bed.
I did one quick spray over my bed with the Aquanet on a textured bed.
And holy cow, that that stuck really good.
I had for the first time in a while, I had to use the spatula to, you know, pull my print off of the bed and left a nice little mark.
I showed you, I sent you guys a picture of what my bed looked like after I pulled it off.
So…
Andy
yeah, in looking at that, that’s the way my bed looks all the time.
So at the beginning of every print, I usually run my scraper across the bed to scrape off all the the bits that stick up or whatever or might be thick and then spray down a new layer of hair spray and then keep on going.
And that’s the build up that I talk about every 30 or so prints.
You need to get a wet rag and just wipe the bed down to clean it off.
If you don’t like it, it does just come off with water.
Chris
Yeah, well, I’ve been keeping a glass cleaner handy and isopropyl alcohol.
So
Andy
OK
Frank
it comes off real easy unless you’re…
Andy
Oh, missed you.
Can you say that one more time?
Frank
Unless you’re using the super glue.
Andy
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don’t know how well it would dissolve in propylene or in alcohol.
It might not dissolve as well.
Chris
I don’t know.
I’ll probably just use glass cleaner.
You know, I’ve used glass cleaner mostly.
Alcohol is usually been for like I usually just use it for cleaning up my tools and things.
You know, I would not really use that on my printer.
Andy
Yeah, well, I’m sure it’s fine.
I mean, it helps get the fingerprints off.
But as far as getting hair spray residue off from past prints, I think water, the water just dissolves it.
I mean, hairsprays made to be dissolved in water anyway.
So it kind of is, you know, formulated to work well with with that.
So I know with mine, like it’s it’s stuck on there really good.
And when you’re scraping it, it’s like you’re scraping off not a plastic.
But, you know, it is definitely something is stuck to the bed very hard.
And it’s hard that stuck to the bed, too.
But as soon as you do a little bit of water on it, it just it instantly dissolves into the water and then just wipe it off the paper towel.
I think you only need usually when I do it, I get usually a little cup of water or just a little bit on the bed and then smear it all out over the bed.
And I like using toilet paper because I’m just downstairs right next to the bathroom.
And a toilet piece of toilet paper to wipe off the bed, pour a little bit of more water on there, smooth the water out again, another wipe down.
It’s like by the third time it’s done and then hit it with some with a glass cleaner, like you say.
Chris
OK, I’ll probably just get a grab a grab a little spray bottle of just water.
Andy
And I’m sorry, I didn’t need this.
Yeah, yeah, I didn’t mean to sit here and say, you’re doing it wrong.
You need to do it this way.
So I apologize.
Chris
Well, I haven’t even cleaned my bed from the air spray yet.
The first first first time I’ve used it.
So I definitely want that advice.
But just going to go in to show you that the Aquanet works great for textured beds.
Don’t.
And if you rave four is even better than maybe don’t use or have four on textured beds.
Andy
OK
Chris
this stuff sticks really good.
Andy
So I’m I’m glad it’s I’m glad I found someone that can start preaching the benefits of hair spray alongside me here.
Frank
So yeah, I ignore preachers anyway.
It’s my default.
What was it?
I found a song that I shared and it’s not on there anymore.
Chris
That’s well, I just kind of I just kind of chopped up the hair spray.
So, you know, it’s it’s a quirky thing, a quirky, Andy thing, you know, because you do lots of quirky things that work great, you know, and until I saw that somebody was like, OK, I was reading an article about a guy that says, OK, these are the things you should have in your home printer kit.
And I’m going through it.
I’m like, OK, I’ve got the scrapers, I’ve got this, I’ve got that… hair spray?
Frank
Well, and Kevin said it first, but I’m going to voice it here.
If I ever start having bed adhesion issues, I’ll think about it, maybe.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
And that’s exactly the road I went down, is I was like, I’ll think about it when I start having bed adhesion issues.
And it turns out that, you know, when when I got some of that crummyer kind of plastic, I should have had some hair spray.
Definitely would have solved my problem, you know, and allowed me to at least use up the crummy plastic and then not buy it again.
You know
Andy
yeah, yeah.
And if you don’t use the hair spray, then you don’t have to worry about the residue because you probably notice when you pull stuff off the bed, the hair spray, at least in my case, yours might be different since yours is textured.
But the hair spray refers to stick to the print a little bit more than the bed.
So every single piece, like part of my getting rid of supports and stuff like that is taking it into the bathroom and rinsing off the bottom where it was making contact with the bed.
So if you can normally print without the hair spray, I don’t think that’s bad at all because you save yourself this entire step of not needing to wash off the bottom, you know, not that that’s a big deal.
Because, like I say, as soon as hair spray hits water, it instantly, you know, it melts away.
So it’s not like it’s hard at all, but it is one more step if you are using hair spray with every print like I do.
Chris
Yeah, I’m just thinking hair spray is probably one of those take it as needed tools, you know, I’m going to be I’m going to be using it and just taking it as as needed.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, either way, whatever works.
I’m glad that you got some really good, positive experience with it for those times where you have adhesion issues, where you’ve got, you know, a what I call it a nuclear option, especially with Rave four on a textured bed.
You’ve got a nuclear option.
If it’s coming off, it ain’t going to come off anymore.
Chris
Yeah, so, yeah.
So that that took care of one problem, but I’m still got to chase this other one this this coming week is I’m having a bit of over extrusion.
I’m going to play with my printing temperature a little bit.
The plastic I used, I’ve been printing at two twenty.
And that’s worked well for this particular plastic in the past.
I mean, you guys, some of that’s you guys saw some of that stuff.
I’d printed over Christmas.
This is that same plastic and now now it’s just all of a sudden it’s stringing and leaving, you know, pimples and stuff on on the print really bad.
So I’m going to play down the temperature a little bit.
See if that changes anything.
If it doesn’t, then I’m going to go ahead and switch out my nozzle because I think I may have actually just worn this nozzle through finally.
Frank
Before you go that far, Chris, I would go back to the test towers print a temp tower, a flow tower and a speed tower and see if it improves with any of those.
Chris
And then we’ll go from there and try try high tower and see if Police Academy shows up.
Andy
But yeah, the tower things would be good.
You know, as much as we know that this would be a good idea, I’ve been having a hard time doing this and that is to come up with a G code like a sliced file that’s ready to go that’s got a couple of the towers on it that you’re used to using on your machine, you know, where you do one complete tower on its own and printing by itself with the temperature changes and then, you know, going in and then doing some some bridging testing and stuff like that so you can get your settings dialed in using as little bit of plastic as possible.
That way, whenever you break out a new roll, you could just throw that G code in there that you’re used to using every time and and have it run its tests and then you dial it in and then you’re good to go.
You know, yeah, I’ve never done that.
I usually just open a new roll, throw it in.
And if it messes up, then you go back and figure out why with wasting work plastic on towers.
Chris
Well, that’s what I’ve been doing.
Frank
I really do a test print with any new roles anyway, or I try to.
Andy
Yeah, you’ve been mentioning that.
Frank
I’ve got the benches.
I’ve got the benches that I use for color swatches afterwards.
And I’ve got this little dragon that I found fairly early on that I’ve been printing with each new color as well and giving it to my wife if she wants it.
But above and beyond that, just the the the extensions that do test towers are fine and they don’t really use a lot of plastic anyway.
It’s only one wall for however many layers.
So…
Andy
nice, very nice.
Frank
At least the one that I have
Chris
I think benchies are going to be the new POGs.
Andy
The only…
Chris
they’re going to be inundated with them.
Frank
There are so many different benchmark prints that the Benchy has almost like it’s like, uh programming hello world.
You know, everybody does it at least once.
And then most people just move on to something else.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, in fact, whenever I start with a new language or something, it feels wrong not to just print a hello world somewhere just to say, OK, we’re going now, you know.
Frank
every tutorial I’ve done, every book I’ve read on a language, all of it, they all start with hello world.
It’s a tradition.
Andy
Yeah, and I think it’s worth worth keeping when I showed my boy when we were first starting to to code a little bit in VB.
That’s the first thing I did is I showed him how to how to make a button that displays a message box that says “hello world.”
But yeah, that’s that’s a that’s a good way to go.
Frank
For sure.
Andy
And the Benchy, I think, is the equivalent that or or is it the calibration cube, the X, Y, Z calibration cube?
Frank
Well, I would say the Benchy is one that everybody prints at least once.
But the calibration cube, I feel is a little more useful.
Andy
Yeah
Frank
maybe it’s at least not as hard to read, right?
You have to know all the features of the Benchy to understand what feature you’re looking at, what is wrong with it.
Whereas with the cube, you measure it and go, oh, this is out in this spot.
This X, Y, Z doesn’t quite look right.
Andy
Yeah
Frank
you know, stuff like that.
So it’s easier to read, but it’s also not as complex as the Benchy.
Andy
So that is true.
In fact, it’s probably how you’re using the printer to Kevin might benefit from the Benchy, where you as I probably benefit from the cube, just with the types of things we print.
Frank
And it depends on what you’re trying to dial in.
That’s why I’ve actually switched to the towers as much as I have, because my… the things I’m trying to fix are a little more complex than either the Benchy or the cube could give me information on.
Andy
I completely agree.
And that’s another thought, Chris, if you do wind up doing a tower, just note that the tower object, even though it gives you a list of temperatures, it’s not actually changing the temperatures.
You got to do that with a post process.
Chris
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Got to fix the fix that in the G code.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, but I mean, no, the post process, like part of Cura can do post processes.
There’s a couple of them in there that can automatically vary the temperature for you at certain layer levels.
And so if you go in and and look at what layer levels the model is changing temperatures at, then you can just point that at the post process script.
And it will do it for you.
That way you don’t have to actually hunt through the G code at the layer levels to change that kind of stuff.
But that makes you feel more comfortable to do it.
That’s how I started out making my towers too.
And it works fine too.
Plus, if if you are 3D printing and get really into it, kind of understanding the G code and what the printer is actually reading is quite useful as well.
Chris
Ah, right.
Sweet.
Frank
So maybe it’s the extension that you’re using, Andy, but I’m my towers do change temperature and flow and all that stuff.
Andy
Do they really?
Frank
And it’s still a post process.
You know, the Cura creates the G code and then the extension has a post process that it runs itself.
Andy
Oh, okay.
So when you, when you load a, um, let’s say a temp tower, then it loads the, the post process for it as well.
Well, that’s kind of cool.
I’m opening up Cura now to see if the one that I got does that at all.
I remember last time I went to go use it, I assumed that it would do that because it’s a nice pretty plugin for Cura to make the, the tower, but then I noticed that it’s just a pretty object that it is importing.
It might as well just be opening a pretty object and it’s not actually doing any of the post processing stuff.
Frank
Now you’ve got me questioning myself.
I’m assuming it’s been doing because it actually changes the appearance between each of the levels of the tower and that sort of thing.
Andy
Yeah.
So the one I’m using is called Auto Towers.
Is that the one you use?
Frank
Yeah.
And, and my, my speed and my temperature and all of that change at each level.
Different qualities of each layer of the print.
So I, I, I loaded one of the towers and there’s no additional post processing scripts with it, but let me slice it real quick and save it and see if we got any temperature changes in the actual G code.
This will be good to know just in case if it’s just been, um, what’s it called a coincidence and it actually isn’t, or if it actually is.
So let’s look at that there.
Sorry, I’m sure this is highly exciting looking at G code.
Frank
Especially for our visual listeners.
Andy
Yeah, no kidding.
Are you sure you want to open this large file?
I love that message.
Frank
No, I’m not sure.
I only double or right clicked and said to open it as an administrator.
Andy
Yeah.
See, do any of you guys remember what the G code to change temperatures was?
Frank
Um, I feel like it’s M 109.
That’s what it looks like here.
Andy
Yep.
Yep.
M 109 looks like it’s M 104, I think, uh, changes the temperature, but it doesn’t wait for it to change and 109, I think waits for it to change.
So let’s, let’s search both of those through the document.
So I got both of those at the header of the file.
So if I search and mine starting at 230, I didn’t look to see what temperature range I told it to do.
And there’s another one at 230, 230.
Oh, you’re right.
225, 220, 215, 210, it is, it does change the temperature.
Awesome.
All right.
That seems to be working perfectly.
In fact, the little notes in the G code it’s putting in says auto tower generator starting tower section number 10 at Cura layered number 382.
And then there’s the temperature change setting temperature to 185 for this tower section that’s working perfectly.
Awesome.
Well, that makes it even easier.
There you go, Chris.
Use auto towers.
That’ll do it for you.
We just verified.
Chris
bingo!
Andy
Now I got to go back and check my temperature because I did a post script on top of what it was doing there, which I guess whichever one ran last would be correct.
And if I got a layer or two different from the one that was auto generated, I’m sure that’s fine too.
But that’s nice to know.
Chris
You’re doing it the hard way.
Andy
Yeah, I always do it the hard way.
Chris
Yeah, I haven’t been doing it at all.
So…
Kevin
neither of I
Chris
haven’t had a I haven’t had a need, but now I do.
Kevin
I haven’t either.
I’ve just been I’ve just been doing whatever my FDM wants to do.
Like…
Andy
do you have towers or things for print testing in SLA?
Kevin
Um, just the RERF.
Andy
Oh, yeah, we talked about that.
Yeah.
And that’s the very first thing you do.
Yeah, that’s right.
I remember that.
Remember that.
Well, I get paid the end of next week here.
So if I’m still in the mood, I am now about it.
I’ll get a Mars.
Elegoo Mars.
Kevin
Nice.
I think you’ll like it.
Andy
I’m hoping so…
So it’d be nice having that option, but I got to admit, I’ve gone two weeks now without turning on my printer at all.
So well, that’s a lie.
It’s been on this entire time.
It’s just not printing anything with it because I like saving power.
I use it as a as a nightlight for my laundry room.
Frank
I think that you have officially officially reached the most absurd.
“Do not use your printer for this” yet.
Andy
Nightlight.
Kevin
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Andy
I like that.
Frank
Wow.
Yeah, I feel like we’re all talked out.
Let’s wrap this up and we’ll go do other stuff.
Andy
Sounds good.
Kevin
I have to go check on the heart attack log that I’m smoking.
Chris
Ooh
Andy
sounds delicious.
Frank
Heart, heart attack log.
I didn’t know that you had a sensor in your chest for that, dude.
I’m sorry.
Kevin
No, no, no, it’s two pounds of sausage that are wrapped around cheese and onions and bacon, and that’s all wrapped in bacon.
And then you smoke it for eight hours.
Andy
Oh, that sounds really yum.
Chris
Oh, man, put my crock pot meals to shame.
Andy
Now, that’s one thing that sucks about having friends that can actually cook is no matter how excited you get at the how well your macaroni and cheese turned out that night, it’ll never compare.
Frank
Honestly, the thing that changed my mac and cheese the most was when a friend pointed out that if you make the cheese sauce the same way that you make a roux, it changes everything.
Kevin
Oh, yeah, if you’re going to bake mac and cheese, you have to do a roux.
Andy
So you just use the sauce making a roux with a little bit of oil or yeah.
So in the same pan, what I do is I take all the ingredients, so I’m still using butter and a little bit of milk and all that, and I mix it into a roux, boil it down just a little bit, you know, and then you dump the cheese in on top of that and it does better.
Not the cheese, the mac and on top of that makes it like it’s a roux going into the mac and cheese.
Chris
You’re talking about box mac and cheese.
Frank
I do box mac and cheese.
The cheese is usually a powder.
Sometimes I’ll get the Kraft with the not-cheese in it.
But the not-cheese in it.
But yeah, and you mix it up like a roux and it takes the two dollar box and macaroni and cheese and makes it taste at least like five dollar mac and cheese.
So.
Andy
All right, I’ll have to turn out when you when you’re frying it up here initially, you do it without the milk, right?
You just the butter and the powder you make the roux out of that.
Frank
I add the milk too.
And you really mix it up.
And as soon as it starts to boil…
Chris
simmer.
Frank
Well, yeah, but the temperature is at the point where you get some air bubbles in it.
That’s when you add the mac and cheese and pull it off the heat.
Just mix it up and serve it.
Andy
Okay.
I’ll have to try to see how different that tastes sounds.
Chris
Ditto. I’ve been doing the box mac and cheese the hard way when, but I normally try not to do box mac and cheese.
I’ll just, you know, get the pasta and make my own sauce and from real cheese.
Yeah.
Frank
What’s his name… the uh…
Andy
The macaroni and cheese is still one I use the box for.
I like that the helpers are like making manually like tuna casserole helper kind of stuff, you know, I like those manually, but mac and cheese is hard to beat.
I do add hot dogs to it though.
There’s something about my childhood that just brings out memories.
Chris
You gotta.
Yeah.
Frank
One of the guys on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, I know his name when I’m trying to.
Anyway, um, he makes the point, nobody has money for all of this extra stuff.
They just put the powder and the macaroni and cheese in and serve it as is.
And that was my childhood right there.
I’m okay with that.
What?
Andy
Can you put your mic closer to your mouth?
You’re breaking up.
Frank
Okay.
Is that better?
Andy
Yes.
Frank
Okay.
Now I know.
Sorry about that.
I was trying to do it in the video, like boop, your mic.
Frank
I don’t understand pantamime very well.
Andy
Oh, no problem at all.
I don’t know why that was like the initial thought to do it.
Like, oh, there’s no way people, the podcast can hear that we’re having some little audio issues we need to clarify, but we don’t really care.
Frank
Yeah, I’ll just fix it in post.
Andy
No problem at all.
Chris
You know
Andy
if it needs it, this is still podcast conversation anyway.
Chris
If, if we ever actually do do a visual for the first thing we need to do, the first episode we do that, we need to do a game of charades.
Andy
There you go.
Do you think people who audiophiles who do like mic audio podcasts include their prep at all as part of the podcast or does it all just blend together?
Frank
I don’t know.
I think it really depends on the podcast.
Andy
Yeah
Frank
honestly.
Like we’ve talked, I got you and the Jordan Harbinger podcast.
I have a suspicion that he gets really granular and scripts out everything he wants to go over.
And yes, there’s a randomized aspect, depending on who he’s interviewing.
But even in post, if he doesn’t like this little segment, if it doesn’t read the way either his interpretation of the author that he’s interviewing or his own expectation, I imagine that he does a little, you know, audio magic in there.
But I know that there’s some stuff that he’s left in specifically because he knows it was unexpected and it wasn’t what he wanted it to be, but it was important.
So he’ll leave it in on the other side of it.
You don’t hear him warming up his voice or, you know, taking, like, if he leaves himself audible cues on things that he wants to remember for later, then you don’t hear any of that stuff either.
Andy
So we were talking last week about overproduced, well, overproduced podcasts.
And I had mentioned RadioLab is one of those.
And that is one of the things that they do tend to use.
I mean, when you go to listen to it, you’ll kind of understand what I mean because it’s done really done, but they’re audio prep.
They often use as like B roll to the podcast where it works and makes sense that it’s, yeah, if you still haven’t listened to Radio Lab, you got to listen to some of their old stuff.
Just the way it’s produced is wonderful.
Frank
It is on my list.
I’ve just, I have fallen behind on my casts the last two weeks or so.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
And I haven’t been adding backlog at all.
So just new episodes.
I have 42 episodes I need to get caught up on.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
And that’s, that’s podcasts that I’m caught up with.
So I’ve got some listening to do.
Andy
No big deal.
It’s just, just when it comes to like podcasts, a lot of them, like Harbinger, great to look up at and look up to, you know, but to, to see what over-production kind of sounds like too, is that, that one’s really good for, for that view as well.
Like good over-production.
Yeah.
When you really are overdoing it, but it sounds amazing, that kind of stuff.
Frank
High level production.
You say over-production.
And I think of it as a bad thing.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Like, if you’re over-hydrated, you’re drowning.
But high level production, I would accept is a better metric because it’s still, it’s good.
It’s just extremely highly production.
Andy
Yeah.
There’s got to be several thousands of cuts for one episode kind of thing, you know, really piecemeal together.
Frank
They probably like, if they use a program like I do, I use Audacity, but they probably take each segment and separate it to its own track and then bring it all back together for the finished piece too.
Andy
That would, that would make sense.
Frank
Yeah.
I, I, I get four tracks from us and I just leave it alone.
Unless there’s something I want to cut out.
Andy
Yeah.
That’s fine.
That works
Frank
very rarely o I…
Chris
do my entire track?
Frank
Half, half of your track.
When you’re doing stuff and clicky, clackety on your keyboard and it goes over what Kevin’s trying to talk about.
I’ll mute you or something.
Andy
Good deal.
Well, talking about podcasts and how they’re done, got any kind of demonstrations on how to end one properly?
Frank
Um, this is going to get super meta.
Just so you know.
Andy
How do we do it?
Let’s hear it.
Frank
We’d like to thank everyone for listening to the very end.
Chris
The very, very end.
Frank
If you like what you hear, please give us all the stars.
We are available through a wide variety of podcasts, 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, amateur3dpod, or you can email us at panelists@amateur3dpod.com.
You can email us at Franklin, Kevin, Andy or Chris @amateur3dpod.com.
Cause I don’t want to roll back on that too far.
It’s just @amateur3dpod.com for individual feedback.
Kevin Buckner wrote the music for this episode and open AIs whisper completed the heavy lifting for the transcripts, which you can find linked in the description below.
Our panelists are me, Franklin Christensen and my friends, Kevin Buckner, Chris Weber and Andy Codham.
Until next time, we’re going offline.
Kevin
Keep your FEP tight.
Andy
Always use hairspray.
Chris
Hairspray and hairspray accessories.
Frank
And that, my friend, is my best impersonation of a good ending for a podcast.
Andy
I can see that working pretty good.
I like that.
I like that.
You’ll have to use it when you finish this one.
Frank
Yeah, something like that for sure.
Maybe try to stumble a little bit less, but you know.
Oh dear.
Frank
I do know how to speak good English, I promise.
Andy
Oh yeah.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Chris
Karet
Frank
same as our visual listeners, I guess, right?