Frank

Thank you for joining us.
This is episode 50 of Amateur 3D Podcast, a podcast by amateur printers for amateur printers, where we share our thoughts and experience.
The panelists this week are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Chris Webber, Andy Codham, and Kevin Buckner decided that going to a Metallica concert was more important than hanging out with us.

Andy

You couldn’t even convince him to bring his 3D printer.
I can’t believe this.
It’s like he’s not even a part of the podcast here.

Chris

I have a feeling he’d have a hard time setting up with the Phoenix heat and everything.
His plastic might not even make it to the printer.

Frank

As much as I love doing this podcast, I have to say I think Metallica would take a priority from me, too.

Chris

Le Gasp!

Andy

Le Gasp?
I love that.

Frank

Because apparently now, well, again, because I think Chris was French.
Episode 3? 4?

Andy

Not surprised.
It was bound to happen.

Chris

I was French in the previous life.

Frank

I thought Webber was Irish or Scottish?

Chris

German.

Frank

German.

Chris

Yep, it’s German.
Yeah.
Webber, which explains a lot.
My family is really good with numbers and patterns.
So.

Andy

That’s neat.

Frank

I accept that.

Andy

How are you guys doing?

Frank

I’m tired.

Chris

I’m doing.
I’m doing.
Lots of doing.
Yes.

Frank

We actually talked before the podcast.
I was up late, not as late as you, but then I woke up shortly after you went to bed.

Andy

Yeah.
It’s unusual for me to stay up.
I kind of enjoy those times when it’s just quiet in the house and you get to sit and get lost in the flow state working on a project or something better than that.

Chris

Oh yeah.
I love.
I love a little personal project and a couple of a couple of beers.

Andy

Yeah.

Frank

Indeed.

Andy

That’s one thing that could have made last night a lot better is to have a couple of beers.
I didn’t even think about it.

Frank

In Utah, even has something that resembles normal beer.

Andy

Yeah.
I still got some bottles of vinegar I’m trying to finish off, so.

Frank

Spend the 20 bucks and just get a new box, dude.
Get a six pack this time instead of a 32 pack.

Andy

There you go.
There you go.

Chris

If you always, if you want something fresh, you can always stop by my place.
I’ve always got at least one or two in my beer fridge.

Andy

I appreciate that.
I haven’t bought Utah beer and as sad as it is, because I drink, but I never do.
I refuse to say that I don’t drink, but maybe once or half a time a year, I like to get a buzz on, but that’s about it, so it’s very rare.

Frank

That’s because you got all of your irresponsible drinking done in your 20s.

Andy

No kidding.
This whole time, anytime you guys would go out of state or anything like that, I always try to get you to get me some real beer, because if I’m going to have a beer, I want a nice beer even if I’m drinking piss water bud that I like.
Not bud light, just straight bud.
I think it’s because I got memories attached to that.
That’s why I enjoy it.
The flavor is absolutely terrible, but there’s a lot of memories.

Frank

I like bud.
You talk crap, but I like bud.
It’s okay.

Andy

I haven’t bought bud in Utah here yet since the big change.
I know that was like five or six years ago, but can I just go and get?

Frank

It might have been closer to five because pandemic time.

Andy

But is our beer here in Utah fairly normal now as far as our alcohol ratings?

Frank

It’s it’s because there was three states left that had the lower three point five.
Was it Chris?

Chris

Yeah, and I think Minnesota was one of them and Minnesota was opting out.
So it would have been just the two states.
And so the suppliers were just like, we’re just not going to sell in those states.

Frank

Anheuser Busch was like, we’re not going to do special beer for you guys anymore.
And Utah was like, fine!

Andy

OK, so our beer now is just normal beer.

Frank

Well, it’s still on the low end for like the average for the country, but it’s because it’s a I mean, a large production of beer instead of a micro brewer or something like that.

Chris

Yeah, it’s not special for Utah anymore.

Andy

So it’s perfect.
OK, that makes me feel good.
OK, I’m going to buy some more beer so I can stop drinking the vinegar.

Frank

I I guess I’ve never waited for beer to turn.
I didn’t realize it turned to vinegar.
I knew wine did.

Andy

I think it does.
It doesn’t taste normal, but I’ll still drink it.
It’s like 10 years old past the expiration.

Chris

Yeah, that’s true.
They do put expiration dates on those on the bottles.
Usually they’re usually they’re about six to six to nine months after production, after, you know, it being bottled.

Andy

Yeah.
Yeah, I think I need to get me some new beer just to have.

Frank

I get a six pack this time, like I said, so it has a…

Andy

reasonable shelf life because it’ll be used up within a year.

Frank

Yeah, you’ll you’ll drink it all before it goes bad.

Chris

Yeah, or at least maybe most of it.

Frank

Or or because you live walking distance away from the the local corner, quicker corner store, just walk in and get a can or two.
It’s all boy and do that whenever you feel like it.

Andy

You’ve got a really good point.
That is such a better way.
And that’s only like a five minute walk to.

Chris

Oh, yeah.
And even the even the buds or the pub beers are like two dollars or two dollars a can.
So those bigger ones.
Yeah.

Chris

OK, I think I’m going to change it…

Frank

Beats the hell outa going to the bar where you spend ten dollars for a pint.

Andy

Yeah, yeah, no kidding.
I got a lot of a lot of good memories at the bar.
Is Bogey’s still around, you know?

Frank

Yeah, or at least it was… seven years ago.

Andy

That was my bar choice back then.

Frank

That was how it was much more dance club the last time I was there so.

Andy

Was it?
Oh, OK.

Frank

Unless I’m thinking of a different bar, I could be.

Chris

Yeah…

Frank

it was in the Old Union Station in Layton.

Andy

Yeah, no, no, it was.

Frank

Or by there

Andy

Off of state.
Off of.. No, it wasn’t off of…
I don’t remember.

Chris

It was it was it was in South Clearfield.
Yeah, but OK, yeah.

Andy

Really, if it was in Clearfield, then it’s not there anymore because I I spend most of my days in Clearfield now.

Chris

Yeah, it was in South Clearfield.
And I think they’ve closed up since.
No

Frank

I think it was.
I think it was the Old Union Station.

Andy

Anyway, I got to look this up on Google Maps here and see.
There and Bogey’s is supposedly Irish, but, you know, they’re not real.
They’re not really.

Frank

They’re Utah Irish now.

Chris

It’s not like I’m trying to think of that other one we used to go go to when we worked for the windmill company.

Frank

Um, I didn’t ever go with everybody for that, actually.

Chris

But that one, that one was a real Irish pub, you know.

Frank

OK, slow down, slow down.
You say real Irish pub when I was in Chicago in Naval training, all that stuff.
Just down the street was a real Chicago Irish, you know, let’s be honest, a real Irish pub is in Ireland.

Chris

Yeah, but this was as much like Ireland.
Yeah, it wasn’t all of the it was actually home homely like you’d expect in Ireland.
It didn’t have all of the special of the little knickknacks and, you know

Frank

fewer leprechauns on the walls.

Chris

Yeah.

Chris

More orange grain beer.

Frank

Yeah.
Anyway, yeah, I liked that pub.
Can’t remember what it was called.
I’m going to have to look that up.
You make any progress there, Andy?

Andy

No, you know, there’s a there’s a grill in Clearfield called Bogy’s Social Club.
But it ain’t Bogy’s.
That’s like a single single level building.
I didn’t even know that was a club.
I thought it was like a warehouse.

Chris

I think they I think maybe they closed up and moved, which is probably why we’re all thinking.

Andy

Yeah, because the old Bogy’s was two story.

Chris

Yeah.

Frank

Yeah.
The one I went to, I think it was seven years ago, I went.

Andy

The big water feature of the stage.

Chris

Yeah.

Andy

You have waterfall on the back of the stage.

Frank

I don’t remember that.
Yeah, I was not really paying attention to where I was, honestly.
I was more concerned with who I was there with.

Andy

So most of my memories were up the table I sat at.
I think whenever I go, I just spent a lot of time just sitting at the table just enjoying the atmosphere, because I’m not a dancer.

Frank

That defeats the purpose of going to a club, dude.

Andy

Yeah, even with a lot of beer in me, I’m not much of a dancer.

Frank

Yeah, I mean, either.
But I’m one of those.

Chris

I’m always up for karaoke.

Frank

Actually, I have come to appreciate that I’m tone deaf.

Andy

Yeah.

Frank

And I think it’s hilarious that I’ve spent so much time in band and choir and musicals and all that stuff.
And I’m freaking tone deaf.
It explains why I was never a first chair or anything like that.
I mean, and it’s also high school.
They were good, but they were high school.
You know, I was never going to make a career out of it.

Andy

It’s not a problem.
It’s just a handicap.
Well, not the right word for that, but it is the right word for that.
It’s like a handicap when playing golf, kind of handycap.

Frank

right, right, right.

Andy

It makes things harder, but yeah, you can’t still enjoy it.

Chris

And I do well.

Frank

I was thinking about it last night because I went to our high school’s football game and sang the Banner with a bunch of people that had graduated.
It was an alumni choir that got together.
And we had 20 of us got together and it was students as far back as ’89.
We’re singing in the choir.

Andy

Oh, really?

Frank

Yeah.

Andy

Wow.

Frank

That was that was unique and fun.

Andy

Was this for Bonneville High?

Frank

Yeah, I wasn’t going to say the school.

Andy

Oh, well, yeah. People know what city we live in so it’s easy to deduce.

Frank

Fair.
Anyway, yeah, it was their game.
I can’t I feel like it was an important game, but I didn’t know it wasn’t like homecoming or something.
I don’t know what it was.
But yeah, we all showed up for the alumni choir and sang for that.

Andy

Oh that’s cool.

Frank

And I realized I am.

Andy

I wish they had an alumni band.

Frank

I’ve always, well, you have to have a band worthy of calling an alumni band.

Frank

Good point.

Frank

And teachers that teach for more than two years in a row.

Andy

Yeah.
Yeah.

Frank

Yeah, the choir teacher, she’s been teaching since ’98.

Andy

Oh, my gosh, she’s still there.

Frank

Oh, she’s still there.

Andy

Oh, that’s so cool.

Frank

And she was pregnant for your graduating class.

Andy

Yeah

Frank

her daughter is graduating and going to be an educator for music.

Andy

Oh, that’s so weird.
That is so weird.

Frank

It’s like, ew, there’s that aspect of it.
And she was like, well, when I retire and I was like, no, you have to get old to retire.
And she looks the same as she did 20 years ago.

Chris

So well, and, you know, those girls that were pregnant in our in our high school classes, their kids are up and graduated in in college now.

Frank

Yeah, we’ve got one friend in particular who became a parent his senior year.

Andy

Yeah.

Chris

And he’s still who lives in the Terrace.
And…

Andy

No. He moved.

Frank

Oh, did he?
I know he was close, though.
Anyway, yeah, their kid graduated before our 20th high school anniversary.

Chris

Yeah.

Andy

That was crazy.

Frank

A little odd to think of, too.

Chris

Surreal. Yeah.

Frank

but then uh…

Andy

The thing is we started getting old that you would be in a different mindset.
It’s weird to still be that high schooler is still up here between my ears.
You know, it’s the same person still.
And with responsibilities, he should have never been given.

Frank

I would accept that there’s an aspect of cognitive dissonance for it, for sure.
I’m not the same person I was a year ago, let alone 20.

Andy

Really.

Frank

At the same time, there’s definite personality traits that have not changed since I was five.
So probably will never change.

Andy

Yeah.

Frank

And it’s never the things that people want to say the same.

Andy

That’s true, unfortunately.
A lot of times, it’s the negative stuff that sticks around.

Frank

Conscious or not.

Andy

Yeah.
Yeah.
Makes us…

Frank

well.
This podcast has gone from music theory.
No, we didn’t start with music theory.
We started with…

Chris

Beer.
No, it was something before that.

Frank

Anyway, we’ve covered a whole string of stuff besides 3D printing.

Andy

Yeah.

Chris

Yeah.

Frank

I kind of wonder if we should.
Well, we’re only 15 minutes in, give or take.
But maybe we should do an actual podcast.

Andy

Sounds good.
I think we can go ahead and start it if you want.
That’s fine by me.

Chris

OK, Frank, start it.
What have you been doing?

Frank

All I did this week, actually, was I found some tops, you know, some spin tops and printed them off.
And they actually came out really good.
I’ve been playing just kind of to get through the material that I’m not too happy with.
I’ve been playing with solid prints.

Andy

OK.

Frank

And I kind of like the outcome.

Andy

Oh really?

Frank

Like…

Andy

I like the heft of the plastic of solid plastic.
Yeah.

Frank

Yeah.
Like these tops, though, they’re solid plastic and they spin real good.
I’ve thought about maybe trying to do some dice.
I talked about my the Game of Ur that I printed off certain that I created out of a plank a little while ago and having some really good binary dice.
I think I could do 3D and they’d be pretty, you know, reasonably balanced.
So I’m going to play with that a little more.

Chris

Oh, we shoul0d make a triceratops that’s got three little three little points sticking out and, you know, it’s kind of dinosaur horn shaped around the around the sides.

Andy

OK

Chris

triceratops.

Andy

Oh! OK.
I’m sorry.
That parted of my hair.

Frank

It wasn’t close enough to over my head to part my hair its…
Pretty far out there…

Chris

Yeah, give it kind of some some horn frills around the outside and three points.
Triceratops.

Andy

I like that.

Frank

But yeah, you’re really printed

Andy

Your humor is just… more advanced than what I can receive.
That’s that’s the problem.

Frank

You broadcast.
You broadcast loud, Chris.
I just don’t have my receiver turned on half the time.
So.
There was one thing my mother-in-law found the dragon in the grocery store that you talked about a couple of weeks ago, Chris.

Chris

Oh, yeah.

Frank

And she took some pictures and sent it to me.
And it’s like I would not let something like that.
Out of my office.

Chris

Let alone try to sell it for 20 bucks at that quality.
Right.
Yeah.

Frank

Right.
So I was talking to my mother-in-law about that last night and she’s like, oh, so so you can print one for me.
And it’s like I could and I showed her I showed her.

Chris

Yeah, I found the exact one on I think it was Cults 3D and it was like two dollars or four dollars or something to buy.

Frank

Well, there’s the one that I bought for my wife and print it off.
And I think I shared it if that’s the one that you found.
Basically, just a dragon made out of roses, right?
And what she remembered was a ten dollars for this print.
Oh, wow.
And I was just thinking, you know, OK, so I can give her the same dragon I gave my wife, let her choose the plastic and just, you know, spend two dollars in plastic to print it off.
And she gave me ten.
It’s like, yeah, I don’t need this, you know.

Andy

Yeah.

Frank

But if she’s going to give me ten dollars for this print, I’m going to do a ten dollar job on it.

Andy

Yeah, definitely.

Frank

And she chose a granite PETG.
So that’ll be fun to print the dragon out of.

Andy

Yeah, that’ll be kind of cool.

Frank

She’s a she’s an amateur.
It’s not geologists.
Who is it that studies rocks and stones?

Chris

That’s geologists.

Frank

I thought geologists was the the people that studied bigger features, land features.
Oh, I guess it would be a geologist like a gemologist or no, not even a gemologist, just a anyway.

Andy

A rock scientist.

Frank

Yeah, everywhere she goes, the joke is like even when me and my wife went to the Redwoods over the summer, she was like, give me some dirt.
And we’re like…

Chris

I’ll tell you what, I’ll get you a nice rock.

Frank

And so like they went to a salt mine in Central Utah a couple of weeks ago, and they came home with some head sized chunks of salt.
OK, that they pulled out of the mine that, you know, they were there and they were told, yeah, go ahead, grab a stone or two.
So she’s got those on display and she just picks up these rocks everywhere she goes.
So I… she chose the the granite looking plastic.
And it’s like, I’m not even going to ask.
I know why you chose this.
I’m just going to print it for you.

Andy

Yeah.

Frank

And like I said, the most I’ve been playing with more solid prints anyway.
And I had the thought like even this morning, it’s like, yeah, I’m going to print it in solid PETG and still not spend anywhere near… because my expectation is cost of production tripled to be at the point of sale.
Right.

Andy

OK

Frank

that includes the middlemen and all that.

Chris

Yeah, because stores have like a 35 percent markup.
For most of their things…

Frank

Or they’re not going to waste their time to sell it for you.
Right.
So 3X feels about right.
So as long as because I’m not going to spend three dollars in plastic, even printing it solid, I’m just going to put time into it and sand it smooth and all that stuff and still do.
Make sure that she gets ten dollars worth of product.

Andy

Yeah

Frank

out of solid plastic.

Andy

That sounds good.
That’d be a nice high quality version of what she saw in the store.

Frank

Yeah, for sure.
I wasn’t happy with the size of the head on that dragon either.
I feel like it took up a third of the the length of the dragon.
Is that does that feel right, Chris?
Maybe a quarter.
I feel like the head was super big for the dragon either way.

Chris

Yeah, on the rose dragon, it was on the on the crystal dragon.
It was a little bit smaller, but…

Frank

OK.
Yeah, the one that she showed me was the rose dragon.
And it’s like, oh, come on, dude, I get it.
You went full production.
You have the contacts to put it in the grocery store.
And all other details aside, that’s quite an accomplishment.

Andy

Yeah

Frank

It shouldn’t be this hard to put out…

Andy

Well, It’s more than we could have done.

Frank

Well, more than we care to try to do, I’m sure that if we work together, the four of us could figure something out.

Andy

Yeah, you got a good point.
It wouldn’t be worth the money.
But yeah.

Frank

um, but if you’re going to do something like that and sell it, you need to do some post.
Yeah, I’m kidding.

Andy

Sounds like they were just selling it because it was a 3D printed item.
So having it look 3D printed was probably a benefit for what they were going for.

Frank

Well, and the one 3D printing podcast that I have, like I’ve talked about them before, they’re very much more commercial oriented, 3D printing.
But they’ve talked about things like printing for the sake of saying it’s 3D printed.

Andy

Yeah.

Frank

And it’s not necessarily good quality or a good idea, even.

Andy

Yeah.

Frank

And I feel like whoever it is that did this dragon was right there on the cusp of probably shouldn’t have even put the effort into it.

Andy

Geez, that’s awful.
That but poor quality.
Yeah, you get some really nice 3D printed stuff out there.
But this these dragons were not one of them.
Anyway, that’s my week.
Just the tops and taking orders, I guess, from my mother-in-law.
Commission, getting a commission from my mother-in-law, she doesn’t order me to do anything.

Andy

Yeah, yeah.
Some of it’s just an idea about it, too.

Chris

At least you’re.
Yeah, at least your in-laws are accepting that your effort is worth some monetary value.
You know, I had to bang that into my in-laws head a little bit.
You know, if I’m going to fix your car, you’re going to pay me something for it.
You know

Andy

yeah, no kidding.

Frank

Yeah.
Oh, I was just reminded there was another thing.
I’ve been kind of passively researching for a little while.
And it’s these tube knitters, tube knitting machines.
I shared a video in the discord.

Chris

You know, it’s funny just on this topic.
When you when you posted that earlier this week, it reminded me of a my daughter has a simplified version of that, that you actually just buy at the local craft store that she got as a as a gift.
And you use it to knit hats with yarn.
OK, that’s basically a simple.
And I look at that and I’m like, oh, wow, I could print something just as good and just as sturdy very easily for like third cheap versus the, you know, 15 bucks that it was sold for.

Andy

Yeah.

Frank

So the one that I shared.

Chris

It has like a third of as many teeth or splines as it’s kind of smallish this one.
Anyway, the guys of Blacksmith, that’s what he does most of his videos about.
And he decided to play with his CAD machine and design his own version of this.
Most of the knitting machines have got like a crank on the side of the machine instead of separated the way his has.

Andy

Yeah.

Frank

But they’re still the same basic design.
Anyway, I would like to design something like that.

Andy

That would be fun to put something like that together.

Frank

Yeah.
Maybe actually finish the project I’ve been working on for my mom for the last eight years down and spend 10 minutes just cranking the thing and get it done.

Chris

Yeah, I totally.
Yeah, I totally hear you.
Because like, you know, sometimes you just get projects thrown on you.
Like you’re like, I didn’t even want this to be a project, but now it is.
And so it gets put on the back burner and now you’re, you know, list a 10 or 20 things deep and you’re like, OK, one at a time, get one finished before you even think about accepting another.

Andy

Yeah.

Frank

Well, and in my case, it’s really a matter of then crocheting this scarf out of yarn that my mom has had since she was at university.
And I think that some of it might have even come from my grandmother now that I think about it.
Anyway, the whole point was I was going to do this thing for her because it had been sitting in storage my whole life.

Andy

Yeah.

Frank

And I’ve got 10 inches worth of crochet done.
Length.
And it’s like, if I can just get this done and crank it out, literally, you know, crank the thing and spit it out and give it to her before she dies of old age.
Um, I think I can be happy with that.
And as much as much knitting as I have done and crochet, I just for whatever reason, I haven’t put time into this project.
And I’m feeling the the deadline.

Andy

Oh, yeah.

Frank

Yeah.

Chris

Isn’t that a pun? dead-line.

Frank

It wasn’t.
But I guess it can be.

Chris

it is now.

Andy

Our parents are getting older.

Frank

Yeah, there’s that, too.
But anyway, that’s all I’ve done this week.

Chris

Wow.
Nice.

Andy

You’ve been slightly productive.
That’s good.

Frank

Moderately.
Yeah.

Andy

Yeah.

Frank

Andy, have you been productive this week?

Andy

No.
Nope? not at all?

Chris

I know before the podcast, you were talking about your frustrations because you’re still playing with the programming on the fish tank.

Andy

Yeah.
Yeah.
So I’ve been working on that.
I I got a lot of a lot of project time this week.
I didn’t really put any in during the week.
But last night, I put a good like three and a half, four hours in middle of the night.
It was wonderful.
Got into the flow state for a good long time.
It was great.
And then decided my approach for what I was trying to do was atrocious.
And so I spent the last half hour of the night removing all that work that I did.
And now I’m sitting almost in the exact same place.
And I feel kind of defeated because, you know, when I think about how long it would take me to do a certain project, I’ve got a time frame in my head.
I know about how long it would take me to code something.
And I have been just so wrong when it comes to these microcontrollers.
It takes so much more time.

Chris

A small bit of advice here, Andy.
So you sometimes actually just have to accept that that it happens sometimes, right?
But, you know, you forget a tiny little thing and you have to backpedal a lot of work.
Because I’m going to…
OK, so…

Frank

We understand that you haven’t experienced a lot of failure like this in your life.

Chris

Like you you you normally do with the way you do things, you’re so meticulously accurate that you don’t have to backpedal very often, at least from our point of view.
And this happens to me every, I would say, one out of every 10 car jobs that I end up having to do, like things get intricate.
Well, let’s I misplace a little sensor or a specific a specific nut or something.

Andy

Yeah.

Chris

And I don’t put it on and I put two words and I and I and I and I do another two hours worth of work or whatever, putting it back together.
And then I get to my tray and I’m like, where does this go?
Oh, I have to take all that stuff back off, spend another hour or two getting that stuff back off, putting the one thing back where it should have been.
And then putting the rest of it back together.
Yeah, I’m not one of those guys that is going to say it’s not a big deal because, you know, it’s it’s not going to affect anything, blah, blah, blah.
If it was there, it has to go back.

Frank

Unlike the vending machine, if you have extra parts, something is wrong.

Chris

Yeah, that’s actually one of my favorite jokes is is like, I’ll take a few a few of the extra nuts or nuts or bolts that I collect from the junkyard that I’ve gotten my drawer.
I’ll I’ll take a couple of those and leave them on my tray on purpose.
And then when they come to pick up their car, I’ll be like, oh, yeah, yeah, it’s all done, but I had a couple extra nuts and bolts.
You don’t need to worry about that.
Yeah, that’s one of my favorite jokes.

Frank

Yeah, that’s in the realm of getting a can of elbow grease for the new person, you know.
Yeah, yeah, or a…

Andy

rack stretcher…

Frank

or the pipe stretcher.
Yeah

Andy

yep, yep, yep.

Frank

My favorite one is actually from the Navy.
It’s a sound-powered phone batteries.

Andy

I love it.
A good one.

Frank

Yeah, it’s probably apocryphal, but there’s a story of a kid that spent a whole day running around the ship trying to find the batteries.
And every department he went to, they were like, ah, no, we don’t have any.
But maybe there’s some at the other end of the ship and this other department.
So they run over there.

Andy

Nice.

Chris

Yeah, you know, yeah.
Well, thinking about it, I am I am gullible.
And I think the best of anybody when I first meet them and whatever else.
And yeah, that would totally be me.
And I’d be doing it happily going…

Andy

yeah, yeah.
I got I got sent on one of those journeys for one job so far.
It was only once, but it did last like half an hour, which is a long time looking for a rack stretcher.
And everybody played along perfectly and convinced me.
And I never caught on.

Frank

The only other one that comes to mind is when my mom tells this story.
When she was young… for all of our.
Our younger listeners, the auto parts store used to not have computers.
It used to have a reference book.

Chris

A big thing of the Bible, except maybe three times as thick.

Frank

You know, the pictures of the the abridged Cliff’s notes on how to understand women and it’s the four foot tall book.
Yeah, it’s like that.

Chris

So or they’d have a stack of five of five of those, you know, and they’d have to see which part you were looking for with to know which book to reference.

Frank

So so my mother while my uncle was helping my mother by working on the car.
And she probably meant well, but I can imagine that she was getting in the way more than she was helping.

Andy

OK

Frank

so my uncle asked her to run to the parts store and get a clockwise chrome plated muffler bearing.

Andy

Oh, that’s awesome.

Chris

Which is funny, because now you can get those.

Frank

So she got in there and the guy behind the counter obviously knew that someone was just trying to get her out of their hair for a couple of minutes.
So he cracks open the book and he says, OK, what model year?
And he flips to, you know, OK.
Geez, these ones are brass.
Oh, model year.
I think that worked with this model year.
So we went to the other side of the book and flipped around.
OK, that one’s chrome.
You said he needed clockwise.
Where’s the clockwise ones?
You know.

Andy

Oh, that’s beautiful.
I’ve never heard of that particular one, the chrome plated clockwise turning muffler bearing.
That’s that’s a beautiful thing right there.

Chris

But now you can get muffler bearings.
People put them in their mufflers on purpose now.

Frank

Oh, really, to make them louder.
Yeah, it’s got a thing on it.
The spins with the…

Chris

yep.

Andy

I believe it.
I don’t get why people do that to their cars.
It sounds like there’s something wrong with all the exhaust with the catalytic converter thefts that are going on.
You hear cars running down the road like that.
You always just think, ah, they must have got their cat stolen.
And that sounds exactly.

Chris

I had a Nissan behind me yesterday that was doing that.
But yeah, it’s like I’m making my car.
I am taking a part of my car and I am breaking it because the muffler is meant to make the car quiet.
And I am doing the opposite.
I am making my car louder.
OK, it’s like people that, you know, lower their, you know, make low riders out of their trucks.
I’m like, you just completely ruined the concept of that truck because now you cannot haul anything in it because it’s so low to the ground.
If you put any more weight in it, you can’t go over a speed bump.
You know

Frank

I saw a short the other day.
Somebody had a high, presumably a highly tuned car.
They at least had the ground effects and it was lower and all that stuff.
Right.

Andy

OK.

Frank

And they’re driving.
And I think it was the freeway, but there was a decent bump that they hit.
And they caught air.
And then they came down and moved to the left lane.
But I’m just going, OK.
Number one, I’ve never understood why the racers have the the camber.
Like they have a serious amount of inside camber.
Like you look at it and go, I could have done better than that with a spirit level.

Chris

Well, not only that, I look at it

Frank

I could eyeball…

Chris

Having busted tires, you know, for even a couple of years, I looked at that and go, they’re going to last for like two weeks.

Frank

And they’re low profile tires, too.
So there’s literally an inch between the bottom of the tread and the rim.
And with that low profile, they got like a quarter inch.
It’s like, why would you do this?
It doesn’t serve any purpose.
You’re not on the oval track.
There is no reason for you to have this kind of castor… or camber.
Right.

Chris

Yeah.

Frank

If you were doing ovals, if you were on the oval track, I would get it because you’re trying to cancel that outside force.
But no, just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
Yeah.
No.

Andy

But yeah.

Frank

So what did you do?
What did you do this with Andy?
Or did you want to comment on on some something that we got distracted by?
Because Kevin isn’t here to glare at us.

Andy

Because I just had a brain fart during that interrupt.
So I apologize for that.
That wasn’t the correct way to approach that.
But yeah, so stayed up last night, worked on my thing.
It looks good.
It’s coming along great.
The menu structure is really pretty.
It’s it’s a lot prettier than when I look to see examples of what other people have done with similar setups, like they don’t really do like this scrolling menu structure and all that.
And like my whole thing is only about five or six hundred bytes so far.
It’s really small and still doing all this stuff.
So it’s being coded well and will be easily moved into different projects.
So even though this is kind of stupid for the fan, I don’t have a nice like menu structure for components like this I could use.
So it’d be something I’d be able to push down later.
So I am coding it in a way that would make it really easy for me to move it into a different project or reuse it by screen.

Chris

Yeah, and he’s going to upgrade his thermostat with a potentiometer.

Frank

Oh, why would he do that?
All he wants to do is say, yes, turn on for the next half an hour and then.

Andy

Well, I’ve showed you guys my thermostat, right?
Like it’s not dorky.

Frank

No, it’s it’s it’s pretty nerdy, admittedly.
But the interface is like super mundane.

Andy

Yeah, that was the first interface I ever tried to do before.
So that’s what you get on the first first trial with with that particular kind of display.
So well, and a little bit better at it.

Frank

But there’s the other point where it was the replacement for the timer.

Andy

Yeah, yeah.

Frank

And the timer was just to like you had the thermostat set at a low temperature.
And the timer was just if the house is cold, run the heater like it would run the heater full time for however long you crank it up and then just slowly work its way back down to neutral low.
And your new thermostat does the same thing, right?
It’s just harder to interfere with.

Andy

Yeah, we fell in love with it.
So like back in the day had a normal thermostat and we’re trying to save money.
You know, there wasn’t a lot of money going around.
So and heat is really expensive.
And so after a little while of using a normal thermostat, I wound up putting replacing the thermostat with a not replacing, but adding a timer to a wall mechanical timer switch for an hour to it.
And I took the buttons off of the thermostat so people couldn’t adjust the temperature and I turned the temperature down to 55 degrees because the thermostats job was now to stop the house from freezing not to keep comfortable temperatures.
If you are cold, you can come up and you could turn the knob.
Now, the idea with that is to get longer burn times out of the furnace.
You know, these little 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, burn time was a lot of heat going up the exhaust during the start up and shutdown.
So let’s do longer time, longer burn times, keep the heat exchanger hot and also keep it around for longer because you cause damage to the heat exchanger by the cool up and the heat up and the cooling down, not keeping it hot.
So so it seemed to have a lot of good things.
We put that hour timer on there.
And then that year, my heating bill was about half.
I paid…

Chris

Super effective.

Andy

Yeah.
And and on top of it, too, I stopped having to complain about people turning up the heat.
They could turn up the heat anytime they were cold and nobody would complain or anything like that, because it was so much cheaper and you could abuse it if you wanted to.
And that was fine, because even abusing it was less than running it on thermostat.

Chris

Yeah So…

Frank

I remember your your favorite complaint was people turning on the heat to warm up their room.

Andy

Yeah, no kidding.
They’d go turn up the that was terrible.

Chris

It was so effective, though, that, you know, when I bought a house, I ended up adopting it.
You know, having you help

Andy

you still use it to this day?

Chris

No, no, I ended up upgrading to my nest so I can do the same thing, but just from my phone.
So…

Andy

nice.
Nice.
Does the nest give timer options or are you just set in the thermostat?

Chris

It has all kinds of programmable options.
So…

Andy

but are they all temperature based?

Chris

Yeah, they are temperature based, or you can just or you can just manually kick it on for you can set timers for it, too.

Frank

Yeah, and and the nice thing that I found, I mean, I could do it with the other heater that we had.
But with the nest, you can set the schedule however you want it.

Andy

OK.

Frank

And we had it integrated with our security system.
So when we were gone, it would just let the temperature get to a minimum temperature.

Andy

OK.

Frank

And then when we came in and disarmed the alarm, it would warm up the condo.
And if we had the foresight to turn it on before, then it would warm up the condo and then we’d walk in and everything’s hunky dory.

Chris

Yeah.
And because ours is and, yeah, because ours is linked to our Google accounts.
And if we have location services turned on on our phones when it knows that me and Holly are away, it’ll do the same thing.

Andy

That’s convenient.
That’s neat.
That’s neat.
I’m glad that a lot of those things have come around to that just because of how much it saves.
This last year, I paid $250 for the furnace for the whole year last year.
So it’s just like the amount of money that that saves is huge.
And then since I made my own upstairs, like I can let the kids use it all they want.
They go up there, it’s touch screen.
You can hit it to start it up for an hour.
It’s really simple and it’ll do things like if the temperature gets a little bit too high, it won’t turn on with the timer mode, you know.
To make it so the kids are just playing with it or whatnot.
And I’ve got real young kids that like to go up and just hear it beep.
So like detecting like this button has been pushed five or six times all within the last, you know, two seconds.
Let’s just ignore these presses here for a little while and maybe disable for five minutes until they get bored of it and then unlock again, you know.
And so it’s been great having those kind of.

Chris

Wow, you’ve got a kids mode on your thermostat.
That’s that’s incredible.

Andy

Oh, yeah, totally.
If you ever go to like use my thermostat and you hit it too many times, it’ll lock you out for a minute.
And that’s to let the kids get bored and walk away because it stops beeping and doing things.
You know

Frank

right.
I bet they don’t even do that anymore.
Do they?

Andy

No, not really.
And the kids run the furnace when they’re cold.
It’s really nice.
I mean, right now I got it shut off downstairs during the summertime.
So I control the winter and summertime shut off and turn on and stuff.
But when the furnace is functionable, when it’s on, they can go up and hit it anytime they want.
And my kids are, you know, my youngest is four and he will turn on the furnace.
And that’s OK in our household.
It’s not a problem at all.
And it’s it doesn’t really cost any money because it’s just so cheap to heat the house now.
And now I’m running into the problems of I’ve got all single pane glass in my house.
I need new windows in my house.

Frank

because your house is 80 years old.

Andy

Yeah, but there’s no financial reason to get them.
It’s not going to really save me in the heating bill.
That two fifty a year charge might go down to like two hundred dollars a year.
And great.
So over the course of, you know, 20 years, I’ve saved what, you know, thousand dollars or something over 20 years by changing the windows.
That’s not worth the fifteen thousand dollars it’s going to cost to get the windows done.

Frank

And part of that cost, honestly, is because you’re going to have to dig out a well and put a window bigger than your head to crawl out of in the event of an emergency.
So…

Andy

thankfully, I did that with my downstairs rooms already.
So both of my rooms that are downstairs, too, because the big one that you lived in is a air quotes office.

Frank

Oh, in other words, the roommate that lived in there wasn’t as important as the person that owned the house.
I got you.

Chris

Hey, Being expendable
That’s being expendable.
Yeah.
Being expendable is not.

Andy

I’m sure you could have climbed your butt out of that tiny little window when you lived here, right, Frankie?

Chris

If the house was on fire, I’m pretty sure you could have.

Frank

Honestly, I compromised that window after your three or four living there.

Andy

Yeah

Frank

by screwing some boards together around an AC unit.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I couldn’t have gotten out.

Andy

The air conditioner is still there.
It’s still there.
And I put an air conditioner, a window air conditioner in my room, too, in the tiny window, because it’s got two windows in that room, a big one you can climb out of in a tiny one.
But I used the old way the windows fold out to attach to the air conditioner.
So the air conditioner can just lift out if you needed to.
And I’ve got it caulked in place, so it’s not moving anywhere, but it wouldn’t take very much to just push on it and, you know, let the clock the caulk release and have it undo.
But because during a fire, me and my wife are probably likely more likely to use the small window to get out of the house if something was wrong than the big window.
But

Frank

honestly, you guys being who you are, I would expect you both to run upstairs and make sure that the kids are safe rather than jump out.
So…

Andy

oh, yeah

Frank

the windows are almost pointless as an escape route.
Anyway, yeah, unless to a degree.

Andy

I mean, I imagine if the hallway area was engulfed in flames or something, we probably would be going out the windows and into the windows that their rooms are at the end of the mountain.
But yeah, yeah.
At least my son that lives down here in these small windows knows how to escape out the window if needed.
So…

Frank

you learned the hard way that sounded like experience there.
Well, you know, it’s not I wouldn’t show them how to do it.
So it’s it’s not really that big.
Like if there’s any reason you can’t get out your door.
This is another exit.
Let me show you how to push the screen out.
You open the window and push.
Those windows are nice and simple ones.
There’s nothing to actually have to do.
You physically push the screen out and it pops out and then it’s good.
So he doesn’t have to know a whole lot.
And the the whole the window well is like two feet.
I think it’s maybe even less like 18 inches or so.
So it’s plenty easy enough to be able to climb out as long as you can climb up to his window.
And he’s done that before.
So I think he’s good there.

Chris

You guys are reminding me of the time we we all escaped out that window because we didn’t want the girls to know we were trying to get down to the corner store or something.
I can’t remember what.

Andy

Yeah, no, it was

Frank

was I back then?

Andy

They thought that so the girls thought it would be funny to take one of our roommates and dress him up.
And they loved that so much in his big dress.
This was before started doing it on his own that that they were trying to get the rest of us to join in and cross dress.
And they chased us down the stairs and we went out the window and to the store.

Chris

That’s right.
Yeah, I wasn’t there for that I don’t think.

Andy

it was funny from our perspective, I think, jumping out the window and stuff.
But I remember coming back in and talking to the wife and stuff like that.
It was like an insulting thing for them that we all just bolted like that.
So it wasn’t necessarily too positive from their perspective that they just wanted to bring us in and have fun.
And then we just took a took off, you know, so.

Frank

Yeah, I feel like my wife participated in that.
So when we were dating, I don’t remember escaping out that window at all.
This is weird.
And we did talk earlier before the podcast.
I have been categorized as being in the bottom 10th percentile for memory.

Andy

Yeah

Frank

I hate this is an answer for not remembering something.
But that might be why or an explanation for why I don’t remember this.

Andy

Not a big deal

Chris

Anyway

Andy

That one was pretty burned into my memory on that particular one.
I remember that one well.
So…

Chris

I think it was a learning lesson for for both of us girls learning that, you know, that’s just something that we we weren’t particularly interested in doing and that we shouldn’t just up and ditch them.

Andy

Yeah.
Yeah.
No kidding.
But I mean, we were young, too.
So it wasn’t no big deal.
It wasn’t bad.
It wasn’t necessarily good, but it was just something.
But yeah, onto the 3D printing thing again.
I I ordered a Elagoo Mars.

Frank

OK.
Good deal.

Andy

And get the SLA printer that’s coming in the mail here.
Before I use it, though, I’ve got some FDM builds I need to do.
I need to come up with the three way for the dryer exhaust vent.
And I’ve decided to do your check valve system that you thought about there, Frank.
I think your idea would have been best for that than a manual valve.
I’ve got my ducted fan or I’ve got a fan that I’m going to make ducted.
And so that should give me the airflow that I need.
It’s going to do a simple project for this.
I’m going to use a microcontroller to control it.
But I am just going to be done with it.
Use a speed.
I’m not going to go complicated on it.
I am going to use a development board, though, so that I can have the USB sticking out.
So if I do want to change it later, I can.
But yeah, we’re going to go with this.
And I’m also contemplating putting a magnet on the check valve on the three way and using a hall sensor to detect how far open the valve goes and then have the speed controller actually base it off of the air flow through the system and not the speed of the fan and have it automatically control the speed of the fan.
So if the drier is running at the same time and you have less airflow, it can push out, it’ll overcompensate automatically to make sure I’m getting the air flow I want and whatnot.
So and this motor here, I mean, it’s a it’s a three phase motor will push well more than I would ever need.
So I should be able to run this slowly.

Chris

I’m like, I’m looking at that.
And that looks like drone parts.
Oh, yes, it is.
It’s not for a drone.
They’re typically used for like RC or RC airplanes.
But they’re pretty nice.
But these are cheap like seven dollars for this.
And it’s a very high powered motor.

Frank

So especially when it comes to drones, it’s just an electric motor with a blade on it.
So

Chris

well-balanced blade, by the way.

Andy

Yeah.
Yeah.
So we’re going to go with that.
And as far as the the units themselves, I noticed a lot of these SLA printers, when they do the air purification and stuff like that, they’re not like venting the air from the inside of the unit.
I looked at a lot of these and it’s like a air filter that plugs into the printer.
But it’s just filtering the air around the printer.
They’re dumb.
I don’t see why they would even work.

Frank

Air around the printer or in the like inside of the chamber.

Chris

Doesn’t even have a hood.

Andy

Nope.
Yeah.
Well, they got a hood, but it’s not like sucking air from inside the hood.
It’s just on the outside, plugged into the printer for power.
And it’s like an air filter that’s just purifying the air in the vicinity.

Chris

Oh, well, then again, if you’ve got a positive airflow, it’s going to get most of that anyway.

Andy

with what I’m going to do, I’m going to go down to the lows here and get some plexiglass.
As soon as I know how big the footprint, both the cleaning station, the cleaning, cure station and the Mars is next to each other.
So I can have a footprint.
I’m going to go down and get some plexiglass cut that I can make a box that’s open on the bottom that I can just caulk together.
Nice and simple.
Drill a couple of holes near the top on the front of the box.
I could 3D print some plastic vents on it so I can, you know, let it suck air in through those.
And then on the back of the bottom of this box, I’m going to cut like a U shape.
And then as far as the vent goes, I’m going to have the vent have a plastic U shape that the box just sits on top of.
So whenever I want to use the printer, I pull the box, the big hood off, the big plexiglass hood off, use the printer, do whatever I need to do, put the hood back on and then turn on the vent and it will just, you know, be sucking the air out of the hood itself.
And I think that will get rid of the smell, but the stupid little air filter that they give you, I doubt it does a whole lot.
It doesn’t look like it would.
No different than if you just bought a normal carbon air filter with, you know, a fan on it that you stuck near the printer.
That’s what they seem to be.
So

Frank

um, I think it’s an interesting detail.
I, I, I, I, Occam’s razor, the assumption or the, what is it?

Chris

The simplest version.

Frank

No, no, no, no.
That’s the colloquial media version.
Um, the answer that requires the fewest assumptions is preferable to one that requires a lot of assumptions.

Andy

Yeah.

Frank

I would say let’s double check when it comes in because we’re making assumptions that it just plugs in.
Maybe there’s something that you couldn’t see in the photos.
And if…

Andy

possibly

Frank

uh, yeah.
Let’s, let’s table this until you can take it apart and actually inspect it and give it an actual feedback so that we’re not starting with, this is going to be an issue.

Andy

Yeah, that’s true.
Um, I, I’m not saying it’s just related to the Mars here that has this problem.
I think it’s what most of these SLA printer companies are doing.
I don’t, it doesn’t really look like a lot of them have a filter that filters the air, but then there’s two.
Like if you’re sucking the air out of the unit itself out from under its hood and filtering that out, you’re just giving away more room, more ability of the resin to, um, um, I’ll, I’ll optimize, uh, to particleize, to get into the air.

Chris

Yeah.

Andy

You know, so it wouldn’t make sense for it to pull the air out of the unit and filter it anyway.
So I, I don’t think that would be a solution either.
It’s just the, that’s what I thought it did for some reason, but knowing now, or seeing some of these ones where the filters just got USB power from the thing and it’s just filtering the air around it, I can’t, I mean, unless you’re going to go complicated, like with what I’m doing and putting a hood in, um, to vent it out to outside, if it’s just going to be inside, I don’t know any other better way to do it than the way they’ve done it.
So it’s just, I don’t suspect that it’s going to work to my wife’s requirements and that’s why I’m going to build a hood for mine.

Chris

So I was thinking actually it would be real easy to upgrade your filter system just with an air box from, from a junkyard, you know, like a car air box.
They have the round, you know, setup that they’d have, that they, they have the round filter through,

Frank

Oh, you mean like for the, uh

Chris

though an actual air filter, like you use for your car engine.

Frank

I haven’t seen, I haven’t seen a proper, I haven’t seen a proper round air filters on a car that’s newer than like 89, 90.

Chris

No, that’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking to the whole air box.
The box itself has, has round input and round output on a lot of cars.
So the filter itself is still square, rectangular, whatever, but the connectors on either side of it are still round-ish.

Frank

So the filter doesn’t have any ports on it.

Andy

Yeah.
So I’m showing a picture of, uh, let’s see.
I believe these are ones that Elegoo uses.
And you can see the bottom of the filter there.
It doesn’t have any airflow into it.
It’s just using it for power.
And it’s just, I mean, that, that bottom section does have a bunch of vent holes in it.

Frank

Was that a port that it slides into though?
Like the whole filter, or is it just the USB?

Andy

Yeah, it’s just the USB.
And it just sits on top of the machine.
You can kind of see the top of the machine there.

Frank

Yeah.

Andy

But, um, uh, but I don’t know, I think it would be bad if it was pulling air from the inside of the machine and filtering it.
That wouldn’t make any sense either.
This actually looks like the best solution for it.
It’s just not a solution that I think would work well enough.

Chris

Right.

Andy

I want, I want to be able to use a resin printer inside of a living area, not a living, yeah, a living area of my home.
And I think the only way I’m going to do that is to make sure all the air that’s around that printer is always been, yeah, active with a vent outside.

Chris

Oh, okay.
And so you’re not going to put a filter in between this at all.
It’s just going to have a hood with a fan, just blowing it out.
Okay.

Andy

Yep.
Just, just sucking, just keeping a little bit of negative air pressure inside of the hood.
So I’m not like drawing a lot of air past the printer because I don’t want to cycle new air into it that then can get, you know, fumed with the resin.
So if I can keep it just enough where it’s not leaking outside of the box, that generally it’s sucking air into the box is all I really need.
Another reason why I’m thinking about doing the fan based off of the velocity of the air and not the speed of the fan itself.

Chris

Right.
And which case, yeah, you can completely disregard what I said about the filter because I’m like, Oh yeah.
Well, you can easily put a car filter in line with your outside venting stuff.

Andy

No, I mean, and that would work.
And I’ve got another thing that could wind up being a problem that I’m going to have to see.
And that is that side of the house has my water cooler on it.
So as my water cooler going to go and pull that smell back into the house and put it back upstairs, you know, so I’ve got a little bit of experimenting to do.
I don’t know if this is something that I will only be able to use when I’ve got the cooler off upstairs or what?
So because yeah, we use water cooling for the house during the summertime.
We keep the air circulating through the house.
I got a big cooler that blows in through a window and that circulates around the entire main living room and then goes up the attic and out through the attic fence that keeps my attic nice and cool.
My attic is only a couple of degrees warmer than the upstairs in the house.
So it’s nice and cool.
And then I’ve got my son’s room downstairs that we leave the window open.
And since there’s a positive air pressure in the house, I’ve got some of that air is moving downstairs, moving through the basement to the very last room in the house blowing out.
So almost the entire house is the same temperature when it’s being cooled like this.
But it’s all open windows, air moving out, constantly moving through the house.
So if I’m blowing fumes out the back, you know, of it, then that could be an issue.
So doing something like an air filter might be something I might try to visit.
If I can just build a 3D printed air filter where I could just bi-activate a charcoal, fill it up inside of a cell or whatever that I could just slip into the unit before, you know, as it’s blowing it out.
And that might be something that would make it getting sucked back in a little better.
So…

Chris

I was thinking something more along the lines of a K&N filter, something that you can clean out yourself anytime you want.

Andy

Well, that might work like dust particles and stuff, but do you think it would work well for the resin fumes?

Frank

It’s basically a Heppa filter, isn’t it, Chris?

Chris

It’s well, K&N filters are oil based.
So when you clean them, you spray them back down with oil.
And then so I would think the particulates would grab really well to that, like on a K&N filter.
Yeah.

Andy

OK.

Chris

Yeah.

Andy

Yeah, let’s put that on the list.
Let’s consider that.
I think I’m going to start first off with the simple hood design and just blowing it outside that I’m pretty certain will solve any smell issues from the laundry room in further into the house.
I think that’ll keep it outside.
But if I have a problem with it coming back inside, then I might check into filters and stuff like that.
I bet a little bit of searching online.
I bet there’s a lot of people that have tried to find the best ways to filter it out.
I do think the filters that like that I was showing you guys here, I think they are activated carbon, but I’m not 100 percent sure.
They just look like activated carbon filters.
But I don’t know for sure.

Chris

This is a this is a nice time to not have the Kevin.

Andy

Yeah, no kidding.
No kidding.
But I’m excited.
I’m starting my journey into SLA printing.
And we’ll hopefully be able to soon join Kevin being, what would you call it, multi high res type?

Frank

Ambidextrous

Chris

4K printer.

Andy

Nine, the Mars that I got to 9K.
So, oh, man, it’s a smaller one.
And it’s supposedly one of the highest resolution you can buy because it’s 9K, but it’s in a smaller bed.
It’s the same almost the same size as Kevin’s is, which Kevin was saying that that was too small that he wanted to go bigger.
But, you know, after all the talking and stuff that we did, I think it’s actually sticking to the smaller one would be better for me.
Yes, because I’m much more likely to use the printer a lot less and use it for small things and…

Frank

use it for smaller fittings, whereas he’s trying to do

Andy

figures

Frank

and statues.
Yeah.

Andy

Yeah.
So that’s that’s that’s my day, I think, with my 3D printing, hoping to work on my project.
The wife has got me on a project.
The projects keep on adding up and I just can’t get through them fast enough for the fun projects, you know, not even the to-do list stuff, but…

Frank

I have to alternate because if I don’t alternate, I it ends up feeling like a chore and I don’t want my printer to be a chore.
So I alternate things that need to get done with things that I want to do.

Andy

Yeah.
So she’s going to be doing for her what’s it called, FanEx Comic Con that’s coming out.

Frank

Cosplay, the Salt Lake version of Comic Con.

Chris

Yeah.
So my boss does FanEx, too.
And we can’t call it Comic Con.

Andy

Yeah, I think I think you’re right, too.
Because

Frank

San Diego

Andy

They’ve got a lawsuit going on with that.
Yeah.

Frank

Well, so what happened was FanEx.

Chris

Yeah.

Frank

So what happened was the folks at Salt Lake were calling it Comic Con, but they sent people down to advertise for the Salt Lake Comic Con at the San Diego Comic Con and the San Diego people took issue with it.

Andy

I wonder why.

Frank

Yeah, I mean, whatever.
Anyway, so now they’re not nobody else is allowed to use Comic Con because San Diego or at least the people that organized it have the right to use the name and everybody else just calls it FanExperience now.

Andy

Yeah.
Yeah.
That sounds good.
Anyway, she’s going to be doing Beetlejuice for one of her cosplays and like female like gender bending across doing Beetlejuice herself.
Not Libby, I think is the name.
But so that’s that’s that’s something for her.
But she she was worried about the costume being recognizable.
And so she thought she would get a sandworm plushie that she could wear on her shoulder or something, call it a sandworm baby or something.
And then that led into we should make it animatronic.
So it moves around in things.

Frank

Actually, here’s a crazy bad idea for you to run by her because all she needs is that visual cue, right?
Because some of the younger people may not recognize Beetlejuice.
If she just had a pin, that would be enough of the visual cue and she wouldn’t have to handle it.

Andy

A pin.

Chris

I was.

Frank

Yeah.
Just like something that she pins on the the blazer.

Andy

Oh, oh.
Well, I don’t think she wants to spell it out to people.
She just wants to make it more recognizable as a costume.

Frank

Well, and that’s what I’m saying.
Well, when it’s, you know, on her shoulder and animatronic, it’s something that she has to be mindful of in handle.
Whereas if it’s a pin, it’s just on the costume.
Like

Chris

have you guys seen those?
Have you guys seen those costumes with the dragon handler where they actually make a dragon puppet out of one of their arms and have the fake arm?

Andy

Yeah.
Yeah.

Chris

That would be fun to do with the that would be fun to do with the sandworm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But, you know, well, so my wife with her costumes are really big into prop building.
So…

Frank

yeah, I do remember that

Andy

anytime she does a prop, like if she does a character that’s got a sword or something, expect the sword to be like two and a half times bigger than it is in the video game or whatever.
So…

Frank

or at least bigger than the character, because all video games have swords and times as big as characters.

Andy

Yeah.
Yeah.
But like last year, one of the ones that she did was they there was the whole Mario thing with the crowns that turned you into princesses or whatever.
And so she was going to be part of a group that did some of the different characters as this princess thing.
And so she decided to do the the what’s it called the piranha plant, which sounds fun at first.
You look online.
There’s a lot of people that did like a piranha plant kind of costume.
But Jenny has got to be one of the only ones I’ve ever seen that dressed herself mostly as a green tube so that only her head popped out as the piranha plant.
And just and it’s got to dress with it and all that.
In fact, like that’s part of it right there, you know.
But so she’s really big into these big costume things.
So it’s on top of making the costume recognizable, she’s trying to add to the costume as well and make it funner to do.
So just spelling it out on the costume, I’m Beetlejuice or whatever is, you know, a little bit far for what she’s normally done.

Frank

and it really wasn’t taking that into account.

Andy

So no, no, you’re fine.
But so I was talking to her about it’s like that would be a fun project to do.
We’ve talked about doing animatronics before for Halloween outside here and stuff.
And this was back when I was using the Stelares microcontrollers and stuff back.
I think when you were even living with me and I was kind of starting to learn that stuff.
And so I could see the I could see the ability to be able to do that stuff and with Jenny’s cosplay stuff.
And me and the wife are two totally different kinds of people.
So when we can find stuff that we can do together, that’s both exciting for us.
Animatronics sounded like something that would be because that involves like the 3D printing and DIY side and electronics that I love to deal with.
And totally involves her cosplay skill and prop building and stuff.
But every any time we sat down and tried to do something, it was just too big and we didn’t have any basis to really branch off of.
Nothing small to really start from.
So that’s where this came about.
It’s like, wow, that’s just a worm.
And it’s just a plushie that she bought.
It’s that’s, you know, the sandworm.

Frank

OK, yeah…

Chris

I think it would be really easy to adapt one of those animatronic tails, except just flip it the other direction.
Right.

Andy

Oh, well, I’m just going to build the whole thing.
I’m not using anybody else’s stuff.
You know, that’s not my way.

Frank

Well, and to be fair, I was confusing the sandworm from Dune with the sandworm from, yeah, the Beetlejuice.

Chris

One is the one with so with with two jaws and teeth and stripes.

Andy

Yeah, but looking it over, the the jaws in it, that’s the first pair of jaws are more like a neck, like in the claymation that they did.
The second, the first jaw doesn’t really do anything.
It’s like the second jaw is the real head.
But, you know, you thought that would be an easy thing to do because we bought two of these plushies so she can still do her costume as is.
And if I’m able to make it animatronic, she’ll swap it out for that and make it good.
And I’ve got like 10 of these tiny servos here, these little tiny servos, and these are cheaper than dirt.
You can buy 10 for like $15 and they’re fairly strong.
And so I’m hoping I’ll be able to like 3D print like two or three of these together to make up the skeleton of the worm.
I could pull the stuffing out of the worm itself and put these in here.
Having a couple bend certain ways, a couple rotate, you know, maybe four total or so, maybe five if I try to do something with the jaw.
But once I get all these set up, it’s not hard to run these on microcontrollers.
In fact, the day we came home and we’re talking about it, I set one of these up to just go back and forth real quick just so we can see how strong these things really are.
And if I add a couple of capacitors in line to give them a little bit more amperage available to them, they get pretty strong, so I think these will work.

Chris

OK, so you’re going to 3D print a little round interface to go from the center of the servo to.

Andy

Yeah, so I’m just going to pretty much use the servo as like a hinge.
And so I’ll have some of the skeleton come up and attached to the servo.
And then from the edge will be another section to skell… of the skeleton.
And maybe I’ll have one sitting forward so it can like rotate part of it and just build the skeleton inside of it that can move a couple ways.
I mean, in the movie, there’s not a whole lot of movement from the sandworm as far as looking around and stuff.
So it doesn’t have to look around a whole lot.
And the plushie that she’s got has plastic eyes.
So I can take some of those addressable LEDs and I can do some neat stuff with the eyes.
And that’s running LEDs is something I’ve done a lot of on other projects, too.
So all this is stuff I’ve done before.
And as long as I don’t add a freaking display and over complicate it, I think this might be a fun thing to do.
So I’m going to start with that.
And then I also want to build the same kind of skeleton with hinges in the same way using potentiometers.
And that way, instead of figuring out what degrees these should be going out when they’re doing a playback for movement, you know, where you got like recorded movement positions every half a second or something like that that these follow.
One of the things I was thinking to do is if I am able to 3D print the same or a similar kind of stick skeleton where I’m using potentiometers for those hinges, I would be able to make that a controller for it so I can record motions by hand using that controller that’s being driven by potentiometers and then make it these work the same way.
And I’ve done stuff where I’ve mixed these things two together and it works just fine.
So and then if I want to go even further into it, I’ve got let’s see, where are these here?
I’ve got some neat little boards.
These are part of a development kit for kids learning how to use these.
But some of these little modules are pretty cool.
I’ve got this little module here that is an MP3 player, just a tiny little MP3 player.
It’s already got the SD card keyed out to it.
And I don’t interface with the SD card.
I interface with the chip telling it like what index number to play.
It’s really simple to interface with and tiny little speakers.
And I think I could make our sandworm even make noise.
So that would be a lot of ideas.
I’ve never played with interface yet.
So I don’t know how well it works, but that might be if this works.
Maybe I’ll do it again.
But I don’t think I’m going to make the dates for Jenny’s costume that she needs done because the FanEx is coming up here in like three weeks.
And I’m not I can’t really start until I get the plushies themselves.
But I got my own sandworm plushie that I can mutilate without affecting her costume.
So I’m just going to try and see what comes of it.
And I’m hoping, really hoping this will lead me and the wife into being able to do more stuff like this.
Because if this works well, then if we go to do another one, we’ll kind of have a basis of where to start from and be a little bit more, you know, able to do it.
So that’s a project.
But, you know, you guys know me, we’re good at coming up with ideas.
But the follow through is often the hardest part.
So we’ll see what actually comes of it.

Frank

Yeah, you got to finish the fish tank project.

Andy

Yeah, first in I’m hoping today when I sit down, I’ve got to finish my chores after our podcast here.
But I’m hoping to be able to sit down and revisit again.
And because it’s starting to feel like work.
So there’s a chance I might kind of finish up the project a little bit early versus what I want to make it to it.

Chris

Yeah, make it functionable and then leave it alone until you want to revisit.
And it’ll be fun again.

Andy

The only problem that middle ground is when

Chris

you don’t revisit up

Andy

when you revisit a coding project, you most of like a good portion of your time is re learning how you built it to begin redesigning the whole thing.

Chris

There’s nothing more, more, more permanent than where you left it.

Andy

Kind of.
Yeah, exactly.
So I’m hoping to actually finish that project, even if it becomes a little bit of work, but I think I’m going to not do a lot of the extras.
I want to do because I still need the damn fan, you know, my my fish tanks, water levels are are pretty hard to keep up with.
I’ve got a big like five gallon jug in there that I keep bubbled.
So I keep the stuff out of it from the tap water, the chlorine out of it, bubble the chlorine out of it.
But then I got that five gallons and a little pump that I can turn on to top off the fish tanks.
And I’m going through like five gallons, about maybe one and a half weeks.
Every one and a half weeks, I dump five gallons into my tank.
That’s a lot of evaporation.
And today or this weekend, I’ve got to go and change out my water because I probably put a good 20 gallons into that 20 gallon tank.
So right now I’ve with doing that, that means I’ve doubled the amount of mineral content in the water.
And I don’t have a way to really check the mineral content other than checking the hard water.
And my hard water on it has gone up quite a lot.
Still within reason for my fish, but there’s stuff in mineral wise in our water that I can’t measure that’s fine if you’re not condensing it.
So I got to I got to do something with that.
But yeah, sorry about that.
Did we did we visit with Chris and what he did on his printer?
I don’t Remember.
Oh, well, what did you do?
I’ll keep talking if you let me.
That’s not fair to anybody.

Frank

That’s why we have a podcast, Andy.

Andy

Oh, my gosh.
Yeah, I was talking to my brother the other yesterday.
And one of the things that we came up with there that we were talking about is my… we’re talking about flaws that we’ve had.
And that’s why it was funny that you brought up flaws earlier that you keep when you grow up.
And one of mine is like wanting to like the little kid, like you have a relative come over and you see the little kids run out wanting to show every toy they have to their their relative, right?
That has never left me.
I’m still that annoying kid just show everything off.
And look what I can do, you know, all the time.
So this podcast has been a hell of an event for that.
But…

Chris

that’s why I’m friends.
One of my friends.

Andy

I know this is a flaw of mine.
I appreciate you guys putting up with me and in saying the nice things on the message board when I leave novels and you’re like, that’s great, Andy.
Good job.
And then let’s move on now, because that’s the 10th time I’ve had to say that today.

Frank

And you’re also still super self-conscious about it.
And you end them all with thanks for letting me share.

Andy

Yeah, well

Frank

like we had a choice in the matter.

Andy

Oh, yeah, that’s what I’m trying to avoid right there.
I don’t want to be a burden.

Chris

We’re interested in a lot of the same kind of things.
So we end up going, that’s actually genuinely cool.
We think it’s like, that’s actually pretty dang cool.
You know, I mean, I end up wanting to do half of the things you post.
So, I mean…

Andy

oh, that makes me feel good.

Frank

You got me wondering how I can fit some coding projects into my intensive schedule.
So…

Andy

yeah, OK.
Well, anyway, we’re saying before I fell off and started talking…

Frank

before he redirected us again Chris.

Chris

OK, so, yeah, so immediately immediately after our podcast last week, you guys remember, I was showing you off that purple dragon and figuring out what was going on with.
So I I decided that before saying that my nozzle is bad, I took it off and put it on the optical comparator at work.

Andy

Oh, that’s a neat thing that you’ve got to do.

Chris

And it’s not really worn out, you know, it’s within like a couple of tenths of what you’d expect.
So, no, not really.

Frank

And it’s brass on a hobby printer.
So that’s probably about as accurate as you can expect from a brand new nozzle.

Chris

Yeah.

Andy

Yeah.

Chris

Well, I mean, it’s an artillery, so it’s not like high end, but it’s not like, you know, cheap, cheapo either it’s like somewhere in the middle.
But OK, it’s a higher end of the cheaper printers.
And so, yeah, so I, yeah.
So I checked the nozzle on the optical comparator.
It’s it’s fine.
So I determined that it’s probably that I haven’t been storing my plastic like at all.
There’s no dessicant packets or I like I have dessicant packets and stuff.
And I keep them kind of in the same drawer, but there’s no actual sealed enclosure that I keep them in.

Andy

OK.

Chris

And this this this is stuff I bought last November.

Andy

OK,

Frank

so you’re having the same realization I did with aging plastic then.

Chris

Yep.
And so some of the pink stuff that I had bought in May, I ended up printing with.
It turned out quite a bit better because I printed the dragon.
I had a little bit of webbing, but I think again, that’s probably temperature.
So I kicked my temperature down for the next print and no webbing.
Everything looked fine.
So it was it’s the plastic itself is just I didn’t store it well.
But anyway, so yeah, I printed a articulated dragon, just like the purple one.
But this time in shiny pink for the kid, because the kid was so enamored with it.
And I’m like, no, dear, that that one’s for mom, but I will I will make you your own.
She she has been, you know, look, look what dad did all week.
You know, OK, she’s been enamored with it.
She she tried to sleep with it one night and I’m like, no, dear, let’s put it on.
Oh, that’s let’s go put it on the headboard.
I don’t need that thing poking your eye while you’re asleep.

Andy

No kidding.

Frank

right!

Chris

So I did that and she got a little quote, quote, lock box.
But after I couldn’t tell if the locking mechanism actually worked or not, because there was no key.
So I found in 3D printed a little diary key, you know, again, out of the pink plastic and was able to use the key to determine that this thing did not actually have an actual locking mechanism in it.
It just looked like it did.
So…

Frank

I mean, yeah, that sounds about right.

Chris

So I mean, it’s a nice box.
And so that’s why I wasn’t sure, you know, it’s the kind of thing where you’d like, this is a really nice box.
I would keep my my my bit sets in this, you know, to make them look nice.

Andy

Yeah

Chris

kind of thing.
So that’s why I printed that 3D key.
And then I am currently printing.
Oh, I did print a hex holder for my drill.
So OK, I was so you guys know, I was putting up drywall last week.
Yeah.
And then I needed to switch bits from the drywall bit to a regular Phillips bit, because I needed to take those extensions off my trailer and put my trailer back together.
And I’m like, I know where I keep my bits.
But I’ve been using my my my bits on a couple of different projects lately.
So I could not find the regular Phillips bit, even though I have probably dozens of them and that irritated me.
So I 3D printed a little hex bit holder to put on my drill.

Andy

OK

Chris

so I actually still need to glue it to the side of my drill.
But I printed it and it’s getting glued to my drill today.
And I’m going to have some of my bits in there so that they are with my drill when I need them.

Frank

Good deal.

Andy

That works.
That’s good.

Chris

I am currently printing, so my printer is still going right now.
That sword that I I posted for you guys, that collapsible sword.
It looks so cool.
I’m like, OK, I’ve got to have that.

Frank

Yeah, you’ll have to be sure to show it off when it’s done.

Andy

I’ve seen a lot of people print those before and they look really neat, especially when they go from being still stuck to the bed and you see them pop it off the bed and then flick it.
It’s just like already ready to go with with no post work at all on it.
You know, that’s cool.
Yeah, you’ll have to show us how that turns out.
I’m really interested in that.
That looks neat.

Chris

Yeah.
And well, looking at the STL is really cool, because if you if you if you load it into Cura and then you go look at the bottom of the bed to see how it’s going to adhere to the bed, you can actually see the way that it’s it’s it’s like a it’s like a cross, right?
But it’s slightly twisted and you can see each layer as it goes down.
And you’re like, wow, that is really well thought out.
That is that is really cool.

Andy

That’s neat.
I wouldn’t know where to start designing something like that.
I mean, making it like an old school radio antenna is about the first thing that comes to mind.
But I know a lot of them do like twisting stuff with it on the inside.

Chris

Yeah, yeah.
So it looks.
Yeah, so it wouldn’t.
I don’t think it would work quite right if you if it didn’t twist the way it did.

Andy

So yeah, that’s that’s someone who is way better than we are at CAD, comes up with that kind of stuff.
That’s impressive.

Frank

And here I’m thinking you could probably do that with the scale option.
Just have it taper.
And then copy the component and scale it up or down or whatever.
Yeah, and rotated so it’s not interfering with the other part.
Yeah, the hardest part would be getting the right twist and the right, you know, the right not quite cone shape.
Yeah, for the the extensible component.
But once you do that, it’s just scaling I would think.

Andy

Yeah, you might have a point that might not be as hard as I’m thinking about it.

Chris

Yeah, as long as there’s yeah,

Frank

it’s hard or, as easy as you want it to be there, Andy

Chris

as as long as they’re truncated and scaled so that the end of one interferes with the very tip of the other.

Frank

Right.

Andy

Yeah.
So that makes sense.
That’s good.
I like those kind of ideas that people come up with or need some of the stuff that designs that people are originating now online, where you can just see the people who do just sit at home who will probably not do that kind of stuff for a job, you could really see the skill come out in those kind of designs.
I keep on coming back to the design of my stupid CO2 detector and how well I think the case was designed for this and and like trying to meet these standards on my own projects and things.
But then you go online and you see mostly stuff that’s not very good.
I mean, ninety nine percent of it is is reasonable, but not great…

Frank

you find something that’s hacked together.
And it’s like, yeah, no, we’re not going to do that one.

Andy

But then there’s that one percent of stuff out there that’s like, wow, tens of maybe even, you know, hours went into designing this and everything is so thought through

Frank

dialed in.

Andy

Yeah, I wonder how many times they printed this before they got it to work the way they wanted it to work.

Frank

How many tests did they run?

Chris

And you can see, yeah.
And you can see some of those that have gone through several iterations, you know, because they’ll post it and then they’ll get comments and feedback from people and they’ll go.
They’ll there’s two kinds of people at this point.
There’s the people that are like, well, I designed it for me and it works for me.
And if it doesn’t work for you, well, you can fix it yourself or

Frank

tough

Chris

or tough.
Yeah, or and then there’s the other kind of people that are like, you know what, you’re right, you know, I can improve this and let’s let’s do that.
And then there’s well, and then there’s the third kind of people that are like, hey, I improved this for you, you know.

Frank

What do you think?
I find actually putting that there’s been quite a few prints.
I need to do more of it.
But there’s been quite a few times I’ve taken pictures of my print and then shared them with the creator so that they can see how somebody else did it.
And I’ve gotten some comments from the creator going, no, that’s cool.
I like it, you know, so…

Andy

that’s good.
I a while back when I used to publish all my stuff to Thingverse, even even if it was something just for me, because maybe somebody could use it.
I wound up printing some really small toothpaste tube rollers that had a locking mechanism so you can roll them up and then push it in and out to lock it into place and whatnot.
And it was it was a very minimalist trying to keep it small and whatnot.
And when I put it up there, I put up a couple of different sizes, you know, because the key in the housing came in different sizes.
And then the nut at the end was always the same for the nut screws down.
And and I had somebody message me like a month after I had it posted asking if I could make one that was that would, you know, be this big for a particular tube.
And I’ve never been asked to change my models before.
And I’m sure some people who get asked a lot are probably annoyed by it.
But in that one moment, it was like, dude, I would love to do that for you.
I’ll sit down right now and design whatever you need.
That’s that’s awesome that you even asked me that my thing was good enough for you to even ask me if I’d make something a little bit custom, you know?
And so I did that one particular size and a couple extra sizes around it and added those to the one one thing.
I wish I was good enough.
Some of the people out there use the ones that use what is it, open CAD or whatever to make it so you can adjust parts of the object.

Frank

Yeah, open.

Chris

FreeCAD

Frank

I don’t think it’s OpenCAD.
No, it’s not FreeCAD.

Andy

No, it’s not FreeCad.

Frank

there is one that allows you to parameterize.

Chris

And yeah, that’s that one I was showing you with the with the picture with the with the outlet covers.

Chris

Yeah, those are neat.
I wish I knew how to do those.
I I don’t publish my stuff anymore just because I wasn’t really getting any downloads.
I was putting a lot of work into describing what it was and things.
And since I wasn’t really getting a download, I felt like it wasn’t really being the amount of work I was putting into publishing them was not being used by someone else or benefited by someone else.
So I stopped doing it.
But I tell you what, that would have been a neat skill to have to be able to put something out like that one piece where I could have said, yeah, enter in whatever size you want.
And all it is is just shrinking those components.
And that would have been hard to do.
But that’s that’s a little bit beyond my skill level there.
So I admire the people who can come up with stuff like that.

Chris

Well, Thingiverse does have the customizer now where if you can program something sort of like that, you can just leave it on their website.
And then people can just do it by themselves.
And then they don’t need to.
Yeah, they don’t need to try to use OpenSCAD or anything.
They can just do it straight on the website.
And the website generates it for you for you to download.

Andy

Oh, that’s cool.

Chris

Yeah, Thingiverse customizer does does that.

Andy

I wonder how they implement that.
I haven’t even played with that.

Frank

I imagine it would use the same process as OpenSCAD.
So you have to have the parameters file.
And I know like Fusion 360 doesn’t make it available.
I mean, you can parameterize everything.
I use the parameters a lot.

Andy

Yeah

Frank

I just.
It doesn’t have a file that you can modify after the fact that at least not with the free version.
Maybe it does for the paid version.
OK, yeah.
So I use the parameters all the time.
I just haven’t found a way to tie.
The resulting file to the parameters file.

Chris

And and they don’t always work right either, you know, like that.
The key ring thing I had was was broken when you tried to get it to use use any other font than the default font.
But you had to go down to one of the lines and edit it yourself to something that you had already installed on your on your computer for it to work.

Frank

because it had to pull the file from somewhere.
Right?

Chris

And in the customizer.
On Thingiverse, it had like five different options.
And those would work on the customizer.
But when you downloaded the OpenSCAD file, they wouldn’t work weird.
But but if you go down to that line of code and you type in whatever font that you have installed on your computer locally, it could still find those and still generate a 3D custom text on this based on whatever font you had.
As long as, you know, which line to go down to and tap, tap, tap.

Frank

Sure.

Andy

Yeah.

Frank

So looking at this timer, guys, we’re at almost two hours.

Andy

That’s unusual for us.
It is missing Kevin.

Frank

Yeah.

Andy

I mean, Kevin doesn’t talk a whole lot either way.
But when his chimes in for stuff, he is interested in to add up.

Frank

He breaks this up from ranting so much.

Chris

Yeah, yeah, he does do it.

Frank

And he glares at us whenever we see something too absurd.

Andy

You can fill it from a different room.
It’s weird.

Frank

That’s one reason we like him, though.
He keeps us honest.

Andy

Oh, definitely.

Chris

He keeps us on point.
Like the wife just came over here and glared at me.

Frank

No.

Andy

You’ve got to come around surrounded by people who keep you on track.
So that’s good.

Frank

Yeah.

Chris

Yeah, I think you will have a little bit of cutting to do, probably.

Frank

We’ll see

Chris

the beginning of the episode.

Frank

But yeah, maybe I’ll actually cut your rant out there, Andy, for once.

Andy

Which rant is that?

Frank

I don’t know.

Andy

Which one?

Frank

Four.
Well, I was like, I think there was four in this episode.
So I may cut one of them out, maybe two.

Andy

Well, it might not be anything left of the podcast if you do too much.

Frank

Well, and I made the point a couple of weeks ago, you make up so much of this podcast.
I think all of our fans are actually your fans.

Andy

Oh, that’s kind of a scary thought.

Chris

Well, you’ve ruined it because now you told him.

Frank

Oh, yeah.
Now that I’ve pointed at it, he’s going to be so super self-conscious about it, huh?

Andy

Just, as long as I’m a tool that’s actually being productive and not making a mess, that’s all I care about.

Frank

Hey, that’s questionable all on its own.
Anyway

Andy

I try to be a sharp tool, but nothing does any good if I’m sharpening the wrong end.

Frank

Double-edged sword.

Andy

Yeah, I’m thinking more like a shank-style screwdriver.

Frank

Yeah, that would do it, too.

Andy

I got the back end of the handle nice and pointy, but it doesn’t do you a whole lot of good for being useful.

Frank

Just make sure that you’re something longer than the little stubby.
Because it’s like a sharp handle.
The short handle, there’s nothing left if you sharpen it.
So

Andy

oh, yes, true, true.

Frank

All right, let’s wrap this up and I’ll see what I can fix in post.

Andy

All right.

Frank

We’d like to thank you for listening to the very end.

Chris

The very, very end.
Holy crap!

Frank

all two hours of it, if I leave it in…
If you like what you hear, please give us all the stars and subscribe.
We are available through a wide variety of podcast vendors, and so we’re easy to share.
If you have feedback or if you have content requests, please let us know.
You can find us in our Facebook group, Amateur 3D Pod, or you can email us at panelists@amateur3dpod.com, or you can email us individually at Franklin, Kevin, Andy or Chris @amateur3dpod.com.
Kevin Buckner is the one that wrote the music for this episode.
Open AI’s Whisperer completed the heavy lifting for the transcripts, which you can find linked into 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.

Chris

Use hairspray.

Chris

Apparently, Andy’s the blunt end of a short crayon.

Andy

God! can I at least be a bright one?

Frank

No, you’re the you’re the puke green one.

Andy

You know, it’s better than being the white crayon that nobody ever uses.

Frank

Maybe… the white crayon usually gets broken more than anything.

Andy

Got a good point.
I never remember using my white crayon.
I never colored on anything other than white paper, so it was useless.

Frank

Turn it into a candle.

Andy

There you go.
Crayon will burn for what, 45 minutes or something?

Frank

I don’t know.
I think it would depend on if there’s a wick.

Andy

I’ve never tried to burn a crayon before.
I’ve seen YouTube videos.
I watch some weird YouTube videos.

Frank

We knew this already.

Andy

Just watching someone burn a crayon.

Frank

I mean, that sounds about right.