Kevin
Thank you for joining us.
This is episode 51 of Amateur 3D Podcast, a podcast by amateur printers for amateur printers, where we share our thoughts and experience.
Our panelists this week are me, Kevin Buckner, and my friends, Chris Weber and Andy Codham.
We are excusing Frank from this episode because he had some family matters to attend to.
Andy
He’s got priority problems, if you ask me.
Kevin
Given what his matters are, I don’t think so.
Andy
Well, if I take a minute to stop preaching 3D printers 100% of the time, the most important thing in your life, I’m going to stop preaching printers 100% of the time.
Kevin
I guess I can’t argue with that logic.
Andy
We weren’t too close growing up when we were in high school, but Chris knows this.
It was like pulling into a parking lot when we were in high school with our cars that was a road base or an unpaved parking lot.
Even if no one is around, you have to do donuts.
You have to slide around.
Otherwise, you are just doing something wrong.
It’s just something you’ve got to do.
Otherwise, you’re the guy that only does that for attention or showing off, unless you’re doing it all the time, even when no one’s around, even when you don’t want to.
Chris
Yeah, except for that guy that had the Subaru.
He couldn’t if he wanted to.
Kevin
One of the worst things I ever saw was at the parking lot of where I went to high school, and it was wintery.
There was at least six inches of snow on the ground, if not more, and there was some guy in a Mustang doing donuts.
We’re like, dude, you’re going to ruin your car.
You’re supposed to.
You don’t do donuts in a nice car.
Come on, you do donuts in an old beater.
Chris
Yeah, where’s the V-dub rabbit, dude?
Speaking of, actually, I saw one of those yesterday.
It was all decked out and spiffy looking, and I’m like, wow, somebody restored a classic car, rabbit.
Holy crap.
Andy
Yeah, that’s kind of cool.
I like that.
Some of those old styles were really neat.
I really loved the brat back in the day.
That was a fun-looking little car there.
I like those ones.
The Eagle was another car I wish I had growing up.
The car that I wanted that I didn’t have was an Eagle.
I remember the first time looking at the undercarriage of one of those, and it was like, this is a car body on a truck frame, I swear.
Everything about the lower half of that just is a truck, but then it’s got the car body on top.
I just thought it was cool.
Chris
That’s actually true for a lot of cars like the Monte Carlo and the Camino and stuff like that.
They had a truck, basically lowered truck frames with all the differential and the access and rear wheel drive and everything, and they got switched to front wheel drive in the late 70s.
Andy
You don’t even see the smaller pickup trucks anymore.
What used to be a standard-sized Toyota pickup truck, you don’t even see that kind of stuff anymore.
It’s either big or go home.
There’s just none of the small little ones.
Chris
Yeah, even the Tacoma has beefed it up.
Andy
Yeah.
You get some of those older ones from the 80s and stand them against even a lot of our cars nowadays, and it’s tiny, looks weird.
Chris
Yeah, you think the 2500.
Andy
Yeah, exactly.
It’s a tiny little pickup, but you could beat the crap out of those, and they just kept going and going and going.
Chris
You’d run forever.
Andy
No kidding.
No kidding.
Yeah.
So, what have you guys done printing-wise?
Chris
Well, at the end of last episode, I was in the middle of a print, so yeah, I let it finish up.
I think it was the longest print I’ve ever done.
Andy
This was the dragon that you were printing, right?
Chris
No, the print-in-place sword.
Andy
The print-in-place board?
Kevin
Sword.
Andy
Sword.
Oh, yes.
Okay.
I remember now.
Chris
Yeah, I didn’t.
So, remember how I was saying my plastic was kind of old, and I should have dried it before I started the print?
Andy
Okay.
Kevin
Yeah.
Chris
Yep.
So, I printed myself a really, really nice handle.
Andy
Oh, dear.
Kevin
Alrighty then.
Chris
Yeah.
I’m going to have to get some more plastic and some fresh plastic and try it again.
I’m thinking about doing the, oh my gosh, the pumpkin head, headless horseman for Halloween this year.
I want to print a sword for that, but just kind of pull out of my coat and just, there it is.
Andy
That’d be cool.
That’d be really cool.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
What are you doing for the head on the costume?
Chris
I’ve been looking around for a pumpkin head.
I thought, so I’ve got this mini mister that is basically like a miniature version of a fog machine.
Andy
Okay.
Chris
So, I’m thinking about getting like a hamster bottle sort of thing set up inside of it to feed the little mister.
Andy
Oh.
Chris
And running a battery pack to it, and so that the eyes and the eyes and mouth all fog out.
Chris
Yeah.
Chris
I found these LED strip lights on sale from our local grocery store for like $1.50 for a six-foot roll of the LED light stripping.
Andy
Okay.
Chris
So, I was like, heck yeah.
So, I bought a few of those.
And so, you mount some of that inside.
And so, you got the glowing eyes of the mist coming out.
Andy
That’ll be cool.
Kevin
That’ll be way cool.
Yeah.
Andy
I never really thought about too much Halloween decorations to print, but that’s, that is just right around the corner, isn’t it?
Chris
Yep.
The wife and I took a small stroll through Spirit. One of the Spirit Halloween’s that was just on our way home today.
And we were looking at some of the pumpkin head stuff that was available.
And it’s all either a front-faced mask with a strap around it, or it’s that rubbery collapsible stuff.
It’s not a solid piece of plastic that you can, you know, use like a helmet.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
So, I’m like, well, for the get-up I’m looking at, I need to get a solid piece.
I might find like an oversized decoration maybe.
And then just use that and cut out the base and work with that.
Andy
That’ll work.
Kevin
That’s probably what you’re gonna have to end up doing.
Chris
Yep.
Kevin
I mean, because a lot of those things that are meant to be masks are going that squishy latex route.
Andy
Yeah.
Kevin
Just because it’s more comfortable and less awkward to wear, but sometimes looks are more important than comfort.
Andy
Yeah.
Well, how about you, Kev?
You do anything?
Kevin
Yeah, I did a little bit.
So, I went on Titancraft.
Just this was mostly to see if I could do it.
Chris
But don’t know if you should.
Kevin
So, then I’m going to share my screen here real quick to show you what I made.
And while I’m doing that, I’m going to explain for the visual listeners what I did on Titancraft.
Now, it’s important to know that Titancraft has some, it doesn’t have as quite as many options as people would like as far as races of things.
So, I went on there and I made a Twi’lek from Star Wars sitting on a rock.
Andy
Okay.
Now, my wife dresses up as one of those things for the Fan X Comic Con thing all the time with the head tails.
Kevin
Yeah.
So, Twi’lek is not an option on Titancraft by itself.
So, what I had to do was get a human and then attach a couple of tails to her head on the sides of the head because Titancraft will let you do that.
Well, that’s cool.
And then I put the flight cap on there to kind of hide the imperfections associated with that, which is also why they typically have some kind of headdress in the movies and on the TV shows when they’ve got the Twi’leks there because it helps hide the imperfections of attaching a tail to somebody’s head or a pair of tails, rather.
And then the boulder she’s sitting on here was originally about the size of this little rock next to it, but Titancraft lets you play with the size of things as well.
So, it was really neat.
And so, then I tried to print that and my first attempt was on my SLA printer and it kind of flattened out one of the head tails.
They’re called Lekku for the nerds who will jump down my throat if I don’t use the proper word.
So, it flattened out the right side Lekku and then it also amputated one of her legs at the knee.
Andy
It’s so weird some of the ways SLA failures happen.
It just looks silly.
Kevin
So, then I said, okay, well, then let’s try this again and add some supports to it.
Andy
Does that mean you had a leg floating around in there or what, how did that fail?
Kevin
It was just a little thing that was probably one to one and a half centimeters long and about a quarter inch wide stuck to the FEP.
Oh, okay.
Andy
And for our visual listeners, that’s about the size of the leg on the model that he was showing.
Kevin
Yeah.
And well, from the knee down anyway.
So, then I said, okay, well, let’s add some more supports and we’ll duplicate it so that we’ll print two of them at a time, increase the chances of success and well.
Andy
And he got nothing.
Kevin
I got some supports, got some supports, but no, no actual Twi’lek on there.
I also tried printing it on the FDM printer, one at the native size of about 25 millimeter base and the other at a 40 millimeter base.
And though the bigger one had one of the leku break at an end point during printing, but it printed the leku just fine.
It’s just, it’s gone.
It broke off.
Yeah, it like snapped in the middle.
The smaller and the smaller one worked better, but it wrapped them in support plastic.
So I’m not sure how I’m going to get the support off without breaking the model itself.
So that’ll be an interesting thing.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
Uh, a pick Set.
Andy
You just take a little bit of careful work, I’m sure, and prayers that it doesn’t break off when you’re working it.
Kevin
Right?
Because it is it is wrapped all around enveloping this poor thing.
But if I can get the supports off, it will be, it’ll be, I think it’ll look cool when it’s done.
Andy
That’s good.
Kevin
So that’s, that’s what I’ve done.
Chris
So going back to your second, not-success.
Kevin
Okay, you can say the word failure.
Chris
Epic not-success.
Kevin
There you go.
Andy
Epic not-Success.
I like that.
Chris
That reminded me of a article I was reading earlier this week.
So apparently, this guy found a way to print the hook and loop fasteners, also known as Velcro.
Andy
Okay.
Chris
You can’t call it Velcro because you might get sued.
Right.
Hook and loop fasteners.
And I was like, Well, that is, that is really interesting that you can get something that that fine out of your 3d printer.
But apparently by webbing stuff on purpose and printing in such a fashion, you can get the not-Velcro.
Andy
So I’ve seen some people do the, the mushroom ones where they’re both the same kind of thing, but they’re like mushroom shaped.
And so they kind of click together in any way.
And I’ve seen those 3d printed before, but not the actual like little hooked ones.
Don’t they, when they make that Velcro, don’t they do that with heat, make the actual hook on them?
Like I always thought it was just, just the nylon plastic sticking straight up and then they roll it through.
Chris
And then they heat it and they, yeah.
Andy
Yeah.
And then that’s what forms the hooks.
But I wonder if you could do something like that with printing because you, you might be able to print the little lines, you know. um…
Chris
print them straight up straight with just some of the normal, some intentional webbing from just the machine just touching the, the, let’s say you print a, you print a raft, right?
And the head comes down and touches the raft and then slowly moves up with intentional webbing.
And you do that like a whole bunch of times, you could end up with the, with the hook and loops.
Yeah.
Andy
That is cool.
That is neat.
Chris
Yeah.
Anyway, your failure plate looked a lot like, a lot like that.
Kevin
Yeah.
So I’m going to be trying it again because I just don’t like giving up, especially since it’s like, you know, I, I took the time to build this thing in Titancraft and I actually ended up sharing it to the community because I’m like, this is, it’s really cool.
Andy
Yeah.
Kevin
And I think with, with the Ahsoka show going on Disney plus now with her Twilec friend, I’ve been seeing a lot of Twilec related memes and stuff.
And I was like, I think people would appreciate this.
And so I made it and I shared it.
And yeah.
Andy
Yeah.
Is there a, is there a chance you could take a picture of that and post it to the group here?
I would love to show the wife that.
Kevin
Yes.
I, if it’s not too much trouble, I would love the STL for it.
So I could send you the STL.
That’s not a problem.
I was, I was actually, what did you just do?
Well,
Chris
his computer is freaking out.
Andy
Well, he’s looking right at me and panicking.
So yeah, at least that’s what it looks like from my side, which I’m sure you see the same thing as I do.
Kevin
Okay.
So for a visual listener, visual listener, something very bad happened on his screen.
Anyway, so I was planning on taking a picture of it as a brag print picture when it succeeded.
Andy
Yeah.
Kevin
So, but I can take a picture of the amputee.
So you can show your wife.
But yeah, I will also send you the STL.
Andy
Yeah.
I might print a little something like that or, or, because I’m sure she sees the picture she might want me to try to print one for her, because she’s really big into the group doing the head tell things.
And I’ve had to buy a couple of those and they’re not cheap.
Kevin
I believe that.
Chris
It might be a really nice test print to test your abilities on your new Elegoo.
Andy
Yeah.
Well, so I’m not going to get that really anytime soon.
I got almost everything for it.
I’ve got the curing station.
I got my gloves.
I got some resin.
I’ve got a lot of those related things for it.
But the, when I purchased it from Elegoo, the Mars, I was on the September shipment because they’re right now, when you order it, you order, I had the chance.
It gave me, when I went to go buy it, it gave me like versions of the same thing that just had different months on them.
And so I think what they’re doing is they’re selling them by the run.
And that way, that’s kind of how they’re dealing with a brand new release and having not the supply to keep up with as people are buying it.
So I bought the September shipment for it.
So I think that means that I will get it in September.
I’m not 100% sure.
But since I got the curing station and stuff like that over the next couple of weeks here, I think I could just get the measurements for the Elegoo itself.
So I know the footprint that it will take.
And I can go ahead and start creating the vent hood for it.
That way it’ll be ready to go once I receive the machine because I don’t want to use it until I have that set up because it’s only going to take once for the wife to say no more.
So I don’t even want to use it once with that.
And yeah, so we’ll wait until I’ve got a complete working set up rig here before I go and start printing stuff with the machine.
But I am excited.
Chris
It’s my birthday gift to me.
I’m so happy.
Andy
Yes.
In fact, the old birthday is coming up here this month.
And when the wife asked like, what would you like for your birthday?
It was just kind of like, I already spent a lot of money this month.
I think we’re good.
I’ve been buying a lot of components lately.
I’m getting excited about, I was working with a microcontroller to do a project for a while here.
And I wanted to happen to buy another one.
I’ve always had four different ones that I’ve just used because I know those four.
But I needed something that was like in between because I had like a small medium and larger than medium.
And then I had like a super large.
I had like nothing in between those.
So I looked around and I found one that I liked.
I think it’s the 18 Mega 4809.
I think that’s what it was called.
And I fell in love with it.
But it was way more expensive than I want.
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That’s more than I want to pay for those.
But I got it and I fell in love with it.
So it made me look, what else is out there for when I want to do these bigger projects?
Because this one is turning out to be a bigger project just because I decided to cram everything that I wasn’t really good at or didn’t know how to do into it and try to make it work.
So it’s a learning experience.
And I love developing that skill.
So I looked around and I found a couple others that I really like and have purchased.
And you know, when it comes to the finances of our household, we’ve got something called Burger Money.
If it’s under about 20 bucks or something, we usually don’t ask for permission.
But when I’m buying components, it was like 10 bucks here, 15 bucks here, 10 bucks there.
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So when the wife was like, what do you want for your birthday?
It’s like, I don’t deserve anything.
I’m good for the next couple of years.
So…
Kevin
indeed.
Andy
Well, you know, I did wind up actually using my printer this week.
The wife is giving a costume together for Fan, Fan, the Comic-Con that goes on down here.
And yeah, she’s going to be doing Batman, but a gender-bend version of Batman.
And one of the things that she doesn’t like, she got this cape that she really likes.
And she’s modified, it’s a cheap cape.
A lot of the time she’ll buy the cheap stuff if it’s easier, like the fake spirit costume kind of stuff.
And then she will change it and make it a good version of it.
And that’s what she thinks she can do with this cape that she bought.
So she’s going to be using the material from this cape.
And one of the things is the way it attaches around the neck she doesn’t like.
So she asked me if I’d print off a Batman logo for her that she could clip on to the front of the way it attaches to the neck.
And so I sat down and we put together a nice TPU version of the old school round bat logo, yellow on the back and black on the front and printed that out.
And it was just one of those things because it wasn’t complex.
And so the TPU just printed really well.
And just pulling that off, just the bending the rubber and just kind of playing with it.
Ah, TPU is so cool.
I love TPU.
And it just, it was kind of neat to be like, oh yeah, this is something that we can do.
You know, it kind of made me think like I want to print other things now.
I’m going to put my fan project on hold and go find some more things I can print out of this because it’s fun.
But sorry, I printed a Batman logo.
That was about all the action my printer saw this last week.
Been a busy work week for me really.
So I haven’t had a lot of time to do a whole lot of anything.
However, I did manage to mow, weed, eat and edge my lawn over the past three days.
And so I don’t have to do that on the weekend this weekend.
And so I’ll have more time for my little project.
It should be fun.
Kevin
Nice.
Chris
Dun dun dun.
Andy
And it’s conference week for our church too.
So that means I don’t have to go to church this week.
And I can have even more time to work on a project.
So I’m excited for that.
I’ll probably look what I could do.
Look what I did post all weekend and buggy guys about that kind of stuff.
Kevin
Bug away.
Andy
But, but yeah, that’s about all I’ve really done.
I haven’t really done a whole lot.
Chris
Hmm.
Andy
Yeah, sorry.
Not a lot.
I did consider something that this week I sat down and I was thinking I would really like to make the project I was making on the original IC chip that I was planning on use using the the PIC controller that I wanted to use.
And I wanted to make that work even though I had to move it over to the big one.
Like Kevin was saying, we were talking last week about programming and the methods to do it.
And, and, you know, Kevin was talking about, it’s good to just get it out of your head and into the computer.
And then you make it work, you know, efficiently and fast.
And then you can make it pretty.
And Frank came, you know, Frank comes from actually doing this professionally.
And, you know, so he comes from the side like you need to follow these these rules and get it done correctly from the very beginning.
And both of those make kind of sense.
But in my little world, I think I’m a little bit more on Kevin’s side on this because I don’t do it professionally.
So a lot of my pro.
Chris
Sorry, you got to realize that profession professionally, if somebody else leaves and has to deal with your code afterward, that’s why you have all those steps.
Andy
Exactly.
Exactly.
But as far as this project gone, I’m with Kevin and I just got it out of my head and put it on paper.
So this morning, before I went to work here, I was just kind of looking over my code a little bit.
There were a couple of things that I was thinking about really hard.
Like I want to be able to log 24 hours of temperatures on my fish tank, both of them.
And so the numbers I was kind of crunching, I believe I needed a nine bit integer to be able to store, you know, 512 with 512 different, with a range of 512.
And that would give me the ability to, I wish I had these numbers in front of me here.
But that would give me the ability to save in a nine bit, a nine bit number, the temperature anywhere from, don’t correct me on this, it was like between 55 and 95 degrees with a 0.1 precision.
So I could save, you know, 75.1, 75.2, 75.3, anywhere from 55 to 95, only using nine bits of information.
And so I was, I was kind of excited about that.
I’ve never put together a system that doesn’t use a number, a variable type that the system is built to use with.
I’ll have to do some bit shifting to kind of make this work.
And that way I can crunch it down as much as possible.
Because if I save my 512 number in the smallest variable possible, it takes 16 bits.
And so to save an entire 24 hours would take a little over a kilobyte of storage for both tanks.
That’s too much.
So by only doing nine bits, I was able to shrink it down quite a bit.
But I’d have to do funny things to make that work.
Because it would all in the end be stored inside of, you know, a 16 bit number or eight bit number.
But I would have to take, like, you know, a full eight bit and one chunk of another eight bit, make my nine bit and push that out.
So I was kind of excited about this, but then it kind of occurred to me that my resolution going from this for my controller, my resolution is only like 1.2 degrees on the lowest end.
So I will get like, say 55.12.
And then the next one I could do is 55.24 and 55.36.
You can kind of see there.
And then at the high end, because it’s on a curve, my resolution is 0.16 degrees.
And so there’s a lot of missing information there.
So I figured, you know what, if I took the raw data and stored that instead of what I figured the temperature of that raw data would mean, then I could get a full, my full range in only 260.
I would only need 260 values to store that same information, which is really close to 256.
So if I could be comfortable, if I need, if I can go from like 56 some odd degrees to 94 some odd degrees, just a little bit less than my target, just a little bit, then I can fit the entire thing inside of a single byte.
And that means that that brings it from a needing a full kilobyte of space down to only 512 bytes of space.
Chris
Are these metric bytes or us standard bytes?
Andy
Oh, they’re freedom bytes.
What other scale would I use?
But so I did some work with that.
And I was thinking, you know, I might be able to actually move this back to the original chip that I was planning on using, which is only like a $2 controller.
And that would be kind of fun to try to squeeze that in.
And so we’ll see when I’m all done programming right now.
I’m almost at the max of my programmable space that I’ve got memory for.
And so I think I figured out how to deal with the RAM situation.
But the flash memory situation is actually starting to become a problem.
My program for this has gotten kind of big.
So I’ll have to see how much I might have to trim out if I’m going to try to make it fit on that processor.
But if not, I’ll stick to these new middle ones that I was talking about the 4109 or whatever I said.
That’s like three times larger in the space that it has available.
So instead of working with two kilobytes, I get six kilobytes of RAM.
So much space for activities.
You know, I got a couple of little thumb drives.
You want to just duct tape one of them to your IC there and see how it works.
So I have played with talking to an SD card directly and storing or being able to open up a file and store data on it and even read that file back from a normal SD card.
And what’s really awesome, you can just straight up interface with those.
They’re actually pretty easy to talk to.
So I can do that.
If I ever needed that kind of storage, I could have that kind of storage.
But that’s flash memory.
And if I am writing, well, of course, with that much memory, I could just keep on writing brand new data through the whole thing instead of recirculating 24 hours worth.
I could just start from the beginning and, you know, eight years from now, I can pop that into my computer and have eight years record of, you know, five minute intervals of the temperature of my tank.
That actually is kind of cool.
I think you just gave me a new part of this project to do.
Thanks, Chris.
I needed that.
Chris
Consider metric units next time.
Metric bites.
Andy
I think the only problem with that is talking to the chip is kind of slow.
So when you’re inside the little menus, looking at the graphs, the graphs might actually draw a little bit on the slow side.
That’s the only flaw to it I could really think of at the moment.
But then, yeah, I don’t know.
We’ll have to see.
I’ve made this project pretty complicated as is.
And now I’ve kind of almost gotten to the point where I just want to finish it.
I want to get to the part where I can make myself a Gerber file and print it out and start etching circuit boards.
So I want to move on.
I’m kind of done emotionally with the excitement of programming it.
I want to move on.
Thankfully, I think I’ve only got maybe three or four more hours of coding before I’m done programming.
So
Kevin
you’re going to write a baby food file.
Andy
Yep.
That is true.
Kevin
Get it.
Andy
I’m also half tempted.
I can etch my own circuit boards.
I’ve done it before.
I don’t have a lot of experience doing it.
But the first two boards I did didn’t turn out good.
But the four or five boards I did after that turned out perfect.
Trouble is, that’s all I’ve done.
And that was a couple years ago.
So I need to make sure that skill is still there.
But there’s a lot of companies out nowadays that can print out very high quality PCBs for you for a very low cost.
And that’s got me, excuse me, that’s kind of got me a little interested.
Because my boards don’t turn out pretty like those ones.
I mean, they’re okay.
I mean, they’re better than soldering the old school breadboard pin boards.
But it’s neat that for only a couple of dollars, I can have a very professional looking board printed.
So I might want to try that too.
Although I don’t know when I’d really want to use it because I’m really bad at like, screwing up stuff and only identifying the problems after you’ve done the project and realize after you got everything soldered in.
Oh, yeah, I put that trace to the wrong pin, you know, so.
Chris
Oops, gotta scratch it out and run a wire now.
Andy
Yeah, no kidding.
No kidding.
I think I could drag some solder across as part of the board that’s not got no trace, you know.
So, so being able to iterate on that kind of stuff is, is pretty convenient, especially when overall, it only takes about a half hour to an hour to, you know, from, you know, printing the PCB out on paper to having an etched finished project product, you know, an hour.
That’s, that’s not too bad.
So if I make a mistake, it’s pretty quick to fix one where if I’m ordering a board, I’ve lost a couple of dollars and that, but there is always the thing like I’m making something for somebody and want it to look nice.
It might be worthwhile of making my own first until I’ve got a working product and then sending it off to be properly done, you know, might be something because I’m thinking aloud right now.
So.
Chris
Yeah.
Well, I’ve got a serious question for you here, Andy.
So are you thinking about copying like part of this project for, and having a controller set for your hood fan, same kind of setup where you got the little readout and you can just set change the settings and change when it turns on and off and stuff like that?
Andy
Yes, yes, but I don’t know if I’m going to wind up using this.
This one here, I’ve kind of gone a little overboard on making it pretty, like it’s really neat.
I haven’t seen too many people design like a full blown menu structure and the way this works and it’s all event driven and stuff.
So it’s like, it doesn’t even matter where you’re at in the menu or even if you’re adjusting a variable at the time, all the temperature sensing and driving the fans and all that is still happening simultaneously and stuff.
It’s kind of a it’s complicated and I don’t want to have to use the expensive chips to always do this.
However, I’ve got most of the menu structure done right now, like it’s done now and it’s overly complicated for what I’ve finished at this point.
I’m about a third done with adding the, what would you call it?
I’ve got the program complete.
Now I’m adding the data that makes it work, you know, like what parts of the menus do what is what I’m adding, but the actual part that drives the menus I’ve completed already and almost all parts of it.
This weekend, I am going to change the checkbox.
I do have an option in my menu where I could put a checkbox menu item and if you just click that item, it just checks and unchecks the box, but I don’t have a checkbox character.
So I tried to make one and I’m unhappy with what it looks like.
It turned out to be a square with like a plus sign in the middle of it checked and then no plus sign in the middle of it unchecked and I just, I don’t like that now that I’ve seen it for a little while.
So I get a little bit of changes there to do, but as far as the fan for the hood, I definitely want to drive it like this because I was telling or I mentioned last time on the podcast, like I can make something very simple where it just shows me like even a percentage from low to high or something like that on a little screen because I love displays and then I can just have a dial and then have, you know, that run the motor because I’m using a uh…
Chris
0 to 120 or 22% or something like that.
Yeah, yeah, something like that.
You’ve got to make the number arbitrary, like 42.
Andy
It’s got to go to at least 11 no matter what you’re working on, right?
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
And the motor I’m using on a 1 to 100 scale can probably do like 800.
So I’m using a brushless motor because like that’s used for like model airplanes because they’re cheap.
I only spent like seven bucks on it, but it is way overkill for making a four-inch ducted fan.
So I plan on using it really at slow speed, but, you know, having those kind of options would be kind of nice.
And one of the other things I’m doing because this is going to hook up to the vent for our dryer.
So I can exhaust out of that.
I was originally going to do one where you manually changed a flap on a Y, what would you call that?
A Y valve or whatever for the dryer vent.
And then Frank recommended using check valves instead.
That way you wouldn’t have to touch it and that makes some good sense.
And then I got thinking of instead of making it where you’re controlling the speed of the fan, it would be nice if it was actually controlling the amount of air moving through the system and have the board automatically control the fan.
So… uh… sorry, my brain just went away.
Anyway, so instead of controlling the speed of the fan, I would control the airflow.
And so I was looking into all these different ways of measuring the airflow and whatnot, using like a hot wire sensor.
And like there’s a lot of different ways to do it.
And from what I looked at, I think the best ways to do is to actually look at the position of the check valve and use that as a, you know, how much air is flowing through the system, because that check valve will open up more, the more air that’s coming through.
So I wound up picking up some pretty sensitive hall sensors and a small magnet that I could put on the flap there and I could read the position, you know, how far away that magnet is from the sensor.
And then I would be adjusting that, you know, I can go in and say, just turn up the fan all the way to 100 and say, okay, this position of the flap, I’m going to say is the max speed I should be running this, you know, this is the fastest I should go and then turn it down to where it’s just barely starting to blow through.
And then just a little bit past that where it’s actually not blowing through, but the fan is still running and I’m going to call that zero.
So now my zero to 100 is controlling how much air is flowing through it instead of the motor speed.
Chris
Oh, okay.
So it’s kind of half being controlled by the, it’s basically like a float valve, except that it’s attached to a butterfly valve, right?
Andy
It’s not a butterfly valve, it’s a check valve.
So if you imagine just a valve with one hinge that relies on gravity to open and close and so the air that’s kind of blowing through it pulls it up.
Chris
Yeah, okay.
But it’s like a float valve attached to that essentially.
Yeah, or not a float valve, a float sensor.
It’s like what you got in your gas tank.
So…
Andy
yeah, kind of
Chris
it’s got the little it’s got the little electrode that makes contact on on a quarter, yeah, quarter, quarter radial.
Andy
No.
Well, yeah, kind of, I guess you could call it that, but the actual part that is is pulling it up is just going to be the airflow pulling the sensor up.
And instead of using a dial like that, because a check valves, valves have to be very easy to move.
So they can’t weigh anything, and they can’t be sitting there like twisting a potentiometer or something to try to get its position.
Chris
So if you have a small magnetic thing, more like a magnetic sensor on the outside, or yeah, it’s not interfering so much.
Andy
Exactly, exactly.
And a Hall sensor, at least the ones I could do, I could use analog wise.
So I could tell how far away the magnet is.
So I can get a pretty precise reading on how much that valve is open without ever actually touching it.
So that’s the plan.
And so I don’t know if I will use this fancy menu structure and stuff I made for the fans on the tank here in that project.
But who knows, I might, I might strip it out just so I can get rid of the bugs that I’ll encounter while trying to move it from one system to another.
It might be worth doing that.
Even if I’m doing stuff like just some simple variable settings, you know, like, what exactly are you calling zero and 100% you know, little variables like that that you might adjust, you know, here and there might be useful to do a, to do a menu for.
But, but yeah, yeah, there’s that project.
And I got upset at my battery charger.
I hate smart battery chargers.
They’re not smart.
I’ve got a big 200 amp battery charger that I use for the cars that was smart.
It’s been, oh, what’s it called when you separate your brain, they used to do it back in the day where they go in through your eye socket lobotomize
Chris
lobotomy.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah, I gave, I gave my charger a lobotomy.
It’s very dumb now.
And it does exactly what it’s told.
Chris
Well, comparing my my charger is a caveman because it still has two wheels and it’s a big, big handle and you have to cart it around to get it.
Andy
That’s the same thing I got the same thing I got.
And now it’s just like there’s a voltage selector and an on and off switch.
And that’s it.
Chris
That’s what mine is.
Yeah, that’s all mine does is it’s it’s you get the six volt and you get the 12 volt and then you select the amperage and you turn it on.
Andy
Yep, exactly.
That’s what I want it to do.
That’s all I should ever do.
But I’ve got a little two amp one.
It’s just a little small one and it’s really good.
I keep I like keeping one attached to vehicles that I don’t run very often.
Like I got a bus, the short bus that we use as a secondary vehicle.
And it tends to sit a lot of the time.
And so I’ve got a solar cell in there, a small solar panel that just sits on the dash that keeps the battery topped off just to stop that little bit of draining and that that’s great.
But my work van for my private locating stuff that I do can sit for, you know, a week or two at a time.
And so I like keeping that one plugged into the charger.
Now, that stupid battery charger that I got a little two amp battery charger at one point.
Chris
It’s advanced!
Andy
Yeah, advanced my butt.
I wound up taking it out and attaching because it was just sitting right there.
And it was on the weekend.
And I had left something on on my work car halfway through the weekend.
But I realized it before needing the car.
But I killed the battery.
It was I’ve got a small refrigerator in the back of my work car, because I live out of my work car now, that I could keep soda and stuff in.
And when it’s it’s got a battery alarm.
And I think I was outside like mowing the grass or something.
And I heard the high pitch squeal of it panicking that the battery is low.
And the looked at it.
Yeah, the battery was like at nine volts or something.
So it’s it’s bad, but we haven’t destroyed the battery yet.
So okay, let me put it on the charger and fix the situation.
Good thing I caught it before I needed to go to work.
I plugged that stupid battery charger up to it.
And then I left.
And then I came back that morning.
And the battery was completely dead.
And I got looking at it.
And the battery wasn’t just dead, the battery was toast, it would not accept any kind of charge.
And I mean, no charge like left on the charger, the 200 amp charger for five minutes.
And then a minute you turn off the charger, it drops back down to like two or three volts.
It’s, it’s, it’s dead.
The or it’s more than dead.
It’s broken.
The battery is broken.
And so I was really kind of upset, like I don’t know what happened, but this actually hurt the battery.
And now, now I need to get a new one for it.
And so I went to go hook it back up to the van.
And to jump to so I can have a little bit more power to jump the van or to have the van jump my work car, because at least I could drive it off the alternator to get it down to the store to get a new battery, right?
And so I go to hook it up to the, the, the dang van battery.
And that charger is stuck in what’s it called desulfating mode, which doesn’t do anything like desulfating is a fad.
It doesn’t really help batteries that much.
And I think it over desulfated the battery, like just the high frequency power it just put into that the whole time and messed up that battery.
But I could not get it out of that damn mode to just put it on normal charge.
And it upset me a lot.
And so that’s another project down the road, small, little, simple two amp charger that I’ll over complicate, because I will make a dumb smart charger.
If I put it on 12 volts, I want it to push 12 volts.
But, you know, logging the amount of amperage delivered to the battery throughout the night, so you can see the condition of the battery and stuff like that might be useful.
So if it’s smart like that, I like that kind of smart, but I can’t…
Chris
deliver results to you via Wi-Fi.
So you, you don’t even have to get out of your bed.
You can just, okay, it’s all right.
Andy
Yeah.
Here’s a couple.
I haven’t experimented with Wi-Fi cards yet.
That’s above my skill level for these at the moment.
I can talk to an SD card.
I think that’s a pretty good advancement so far.
I’m kind of proud of that.
Chris
Okay.
Well, well, the really low grade 2.4 GHz chips are like dirt cheap.
So you can get, yeah, but it’s not just a single chip that makes the Wi-Fi work.
Like when you’re looking at components, I mean, the best thing you could probably do is find a module or something that is designed for like those, those little kits of teacher kids, electronics kind of kits.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they have stuff like that, that can make it a little bit easier as a module, but there’s not just like a single IC that you could go out that just gives you Wi-Fi connectivity, you know?
Chris
True.
You do got one of those as basically as a whole radio assembly.
Yeah.
Andy
Yeah.
I’ve got some radio modules that run off of the 2.4 GHz spectrum.
They’re pretty much line of sight as far as their range, and I can send 8-bit data through them, and they’re bi-directional, and they’re fun, but it’s a module.
So it’s something that these people teaching kids electronics has made.
And I’m okay with using those because they make things simple, but there’s something about it at the end of the day when you’re showing your final project, and it’s just got a bunch of these pre-made modules you’ve strung together, you know?
I’m not, I don’t really like that.
I like, you know, if I can get just the IC chip itself that is the controller and wire up its crystal and all that other kind of stuff that makes it work, you know, all the different components, capacitors and resistors that it requires to function and stuff like that, those are the kinds of projects I like doing.
So, but there are some things that’s just much easier getting as a module, like those little wireless things.
I don’t have the skill level to wire up an entire, you know, assembly for wireless communication, although I’m sure I could find how that one was made and build it by itself on the board, but, you know, sometimes it’s just easier to use those modules, and I’m sure they got the Wi-Fi ones out there that can give you connectivity, and I do know how to program a lot of Android apps.
I got AB4 language, I know how to program, so that would work, but I get projects that are ridiculous in size and take me a long time.
If you notice, I’ve been talking about this fan project for, like, almost a month now, or is it been more?
Chris
I think it’s been more.
Andy
Yeah.
And so, in the meantime, I just am running my fans on my fish tank manually and having tons of evaporation.
If I just would have chosen the simple route, I would have had this done probably in one week, but I like complicating things.
Chris
Like I said, I thought from the beginning, you were just going to start with a probe and a potentiometer so you can adjust when it kicks on and when it kicks off based on where you have the knob, and it just does that, because I’m like, that’s what I used to use for when you’re, the old Chevy 2.0 liters, late 90s, or I mean late 80s, early 90s, had this issue where their computer would break, and so the temperature sensors would send signal to the computer, or would show resistance in the right range to the computer, but the computer would not send the signal out to the fan relay to kick the fans on.
Andy
Okay.
Chris
You’d have to manually put in this aftermarket probe, you know, into the cooling system somewhere, and there’d be this little potentiometer so that when the probe hit a certain resistance, it would kick on, and then when it went below that resistance, it would kick off.
Andy
Okay.
Chris
And I was thinking you were basically going to do something like that for your fish tanks.
Andy
Yeah, I can see that.
Chris
Simple.
Andy
I’ve been getting into the micro processors here for, it’s actually been quite a few years now.
I started with Stellaris back in the day, the Stellaris Development Board, that was a long time ago, and they moved on to PIC controllers, and then fell in love with these AT Megas.
Oh, they are so much fun.
A lot of our 3D printers use an AT Mega PIC controller to run Marlin on, which is really kind of cool.
In fact, when I was talking about recompiling my Marlin software, it’s because I was already able to throw it on the IDE that I use and open it up right there and then use that IDE that I use for these other controllers to reprogram the board on my printer, which I think was kind of cool that I was able to purchase a new board, a new main board for my 3D printer that didn’t have any software on it and reprogram it and put it on.
And I’m just thinking, I know a lot of 3D printer people are more into that kind of stuff, the DIY kind of stuff, but it was kind of a complicated task.
If someone else burnt out their printer, how many people would be able to just like throw something like that on there and just run with it?
So I was really kind of proud of myself of just knowing what to do or just because of the past experience and recognizing, hey, oh, this is a, I recognize this processor.
What’s going on here?
I must be, what was that?
The 2560, 18 Mega 2560, I think?
I don’t know.
I’m sure listeners who know these processors are probably pulling their hair out because I keep on getting all the numbers wrong, so please forgive me.
Chris
It’s more than I remember, yeah no.
Andy
Yeah, yeah.
But that whole chip assembly, and then there’s another one that’s the AT Tiny that has a lot of neat options.
I’ve gotten a bunch of those and used those, but those AT Megas are used for, what’s it called there, those kits for helping kids learning to program the, they’re not the pies, they’re Arduino.
Chris
Arduinos.
Andy
Yeah, I know they use a lot of those AT Megas too, so there’s a really popular controller.
Chris
Yeah, I saw some of that programming going on with another article I read about people downgrading their computer, their, their 3D printers back to 2D printers and attaching a pen.
Andy
Oh, I see people make those before.
Those are kind of cool.
Chris
Yeah, I don’t know.
To me, it’s, it’s cool in the same way that, you know, people that lower their trucks down, down to where they don’t have any suspension anymore is, you know, you just ruined the whole purpose of a truck by doing this.
You just ruined the purpose of the 3D part of your 3D printer by doing this.
Andy
Yeah, I, I completely agree.
I mean, there’s some out there that just like make a rig attachment to their printer or electrical tape, a pen to their printer, you know, or something.
Those ones, I think I’m okay with.
Chris
Those are fun.
Andy
Destroy the printer to do it.
Yeah, I’m not for that either.
But, you know, there’s a lot of, a lot of the people who started 3D printing a long time ago have, you know, have gotten newer printers because, you know, some of the first models were not the greatest.
Some of the first models were made of wood.
Oh, I wish I had some of the names.
They’re not in my memory right now.
I would love to just ramble those off like I could look like I know what I’m talking about.
But, you know, as soon as they started coming out with a lot of the new ones, I’m sure there’s a lot of old printer parts that those kind of people had that spliced it together.
I would be surprised if a lot of the people we saw actually bought a printer to do that with, unless they’re one of those like YouTube folks who, you know, purposely will like spend a lot of money to get a really good video because the video pays for, you know, the materials that they use to do that.
I could kind of understand that to do a degree.
Chris
Well, it sounds kind of like actually a guy I used to work with.
He was making his own wood CNC from old 3D printer parts too.
Andy
That’s so cool.
Is that the, what’s his name?
He used to smelt metals and things like that too?
Chris
Oh, no, no, not Dave.
No.
Andy
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Chris
This is a guy I worked with at the Aluminum Plant.
Andy
Oh, okay.
Yeah, that Dave guy, that was, he will live through the apocalypse and survive well.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
He’s just one of those people who could figure out anything.
I wish I had some of the skills he had.
I remember going over and visiting with you and just being amazed at what that guy was coming up with just in the backyard, building his own furnaces.
It’s like, if he just needs something, he just built it and that’s all there was to it.
You know, he just built it no matter how complex it was.
But I think that’s, that’s all that I’ve really been doing.
I know it’s mostly 3D printing adjacent with the programming controllers and stuff, but that’s what I’ve been spending that printing time kind of working on is those.
So, and that’s probably even what I’m going to do tonight after the podcast here, sit down and see if I can hammer out some more of that project a little bit.
I’ve been kind of waiting all week to be able to get some time to be able to do it.
Chris
Nice.
Kevin
Nice.
Chris
Yeah.
So I’m having the wife and child look at some new colors of plastic because I showed you guys paint swatches of the paint that I got.
Yeah.
Prepped for this room.
So we’re going to see possibly be printing some different colored glow-in-the-dark 3D plastic or sorry, glow-in-the-dark plastic for the outlet and light covers and things in there.
So…
Andy
that’s going to be neat as you start doing those.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
You know, hearing you and Frank talk a lot about your PLA problems with old PLA, that’s got me kind of wondering because I’m doing the exact same thing you guys are.
I’ve got all the rest of my reels of all the rest of my different kinds of plastics in ziplock bags.
That’s how I keep my plastic from absorbing water.
Everything’s in a ziplock bag except my PLA.
My PLA I’ve always just left open to the air and I got to admit every time before I go to use it, it always, you know, spends a couple hours in the dehydrator to kind of recondition it a little bit before I go.
But I’ve been thinking I must have, I think I’m only been getting kind of lucky with a lot of my PLA.
And then hearing some of what you guys are going through, I think I will probably wind up bagging all of my reels of plastic to be on the safe side.
Just because yeah, I thought we could get away without bagging PLA, but you and Frank have had so many issues with that old stuff that it looks like it could be an actual problem as well.
Chris
Yeah, for me personally, it seems like the age range is right around 10 months from when I unseal it.
If I leave it, right around stuff that I’ve had around 10 months seems to start having problems, but stuff that I’ve opened more recently than that.
Not so much.
Andy
Yeah, so I might do that so I can make sure I don’t lose any PLA either or at least don’t make it worse what I’ve already got because I know I’ve got stuff in there that is probably approaching that 10 month mark since, you know, I opened the reels.
Chris
Yeah, but, you know, I haven’t even tried reconditioning any of mine yet.
Andy
Really?
I think Frank has though.
I wish he was here for that question, but I think he has and still ran into some problems.
Kevin
I seem to remember him saying that, yeah.
Chris
Yeah, so what I’m going to do is before I use any of that plastic again that’s, you know, gotten past that 10 month mark, I’m going to convert my printer into the conditioner.
So basically, I’m going to finish my enclosure and it’s going to double as my dehydrator/conditioner.
Andy
That’s good.
Yeah, all you really need to do is just increase the temperature and a little bit of airflow.
You got a good point.
Chris
Yep, I’m building it anyway.
Yeah, I’m not going to go and blow $200 on a plastic reconditioner or, you know, 80 or 90 on a dehydrator to hack a part.
Andy
Yeah, I think they’re only like around 30 bucks, but I do get your point.
But I think I paid like 50 for mine because I wanted one with a screen because I like screens.
Chris
But I was also, it’s a space issue also so that I can keep the same amount of, you know, reduce the space in my office by using my printer as a two-in-one situation there.
Andy
That sounds good.
I don’t know how I’m going to cram my resin printer into the laundry room.
I’m kind of thinking about it.
I got a spot for the printer itself, but where I’m going to, what I’m going to do with the supplies and stuff, I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I’ve got one huge shelf that goes above your head so that way I can have a shelf in there because my laundry room is skinny and so I can exist underneath the shelf, but that’s really the only room that I’ve got.
So I’m going to have to kind of play around and see if I can’t get some more room in there for something to be able to keep my resins and stuff in because right now I don’t have the room for that kind of stuff and I’ve got too many years before my kids start moving out to start stealing bedrooms.
So although the thought did cross my mind of kicking one of them out of their rooms and making them room with the other and bunk beds and me still in the bedroom, but that would be not nice.
So my wife’s got her own room in the house for her cosplay stuff.
She took the biggest room in the whole house.
She uses it as a private gym.
It’s the room where we keep all of our guinea pigs in and she keeps all of her cosplay supplies in there and then I’ve always had my tool shop out my shed out here, my tool shed, that I’ve kind of turned into a small shop.
I’ve got a big bench in there, a big table in there and stuff and so it’s great for that, but that’s more metallurgy kind of stuff, grinding and welding and stuff like that.
It’s not very good like electronic and 3D printer environment-y.
I’m looking at Kev, he’s got a beautiful there.
You live out of your, is that an office there that you do with your room, Kev, that you’re in?
Kevin
Essentially, I think the intent of the room we’re in originally was that it was supposed to be the master bedroom, but then when they finished the basement, they made just this enormous room in the basement and so that’s what we use as our master bedroom.
We have a California king size bed in our bedroom and the room dwarfs the bed.
If you were to look at a picture of the bedroom, it looks like just a regular bed in this room because the room is so huge.
Chris
This room’s big enough that if you were to flip the bed the other direction, you could fit two of them in the bedroom and still have room to walk around.
Kevin
When we first moved in, we moved into the house from our apartment where we lived for about three and a half years.
The first apartment we had, we lived in for three months right after we got married and then they wanted to raise the rent and it was a one-bedroom apartment, so it was too small for two people.
We went to this less expensive two-bedroom apartment, but all we could afford was a full.
When we moved in, that’s what we had for the first bit was this full and we had to put it at an angle in the corner just to make it look like it wasn’t super tiny, like a Lilliputian-sized bed and it didn’t really do very well.
Then we took what was supposed to be the master bedroom and we call it the hobby room, but it’s got the computers in it and it’s where my wife’s home office is.
Basically, it’s an office that we use as we store our games in it of which we have many and it’s also where my 3D printers live.
Chris
So yeah, it’s like a family office rather than what the wife and I have.
We have equivalent about the same amount of space, but between these two rooms there’s a wall with a pocket door right in the middle of it and so we each have our own office, but we can always, we have that pocket door right between them.
Andy
That’s good.
I like the idea of keeping them separate or at least because then at least you’re in control of your own space a little bit.
Chris
Yeah, I’m a little bit spoiled unlike you guys.
I’ve got the whole two-car garage plus my office that I get.
Andy
Yeah, you got a good setup.
I’m jealous of your place and your view and all that kind of stuff.
It’s great.
I mean, we’ve got the same, so we live in a city that was built by the base, Hill Air Force Base, used this city for barracks and so there’s only like five or six floor plans and those floor plans mirrored within this city of where we live.
And so I’ve got the mirror version of your place, but we got the same size house, I believe, don’t we?
Chris
We did, but then mine had an add-on in the 80s.
Andy
But you’ve got an add-on that’s a two-level add-on that is like half the size of the original house.
On top of having a garage, and I don’t have a garage either, on top of having what, two sheds in the backyard, two big ones, and a view of all because you’re off the edge of the terrace there, so you just got the entire view of the city.
I’m jealous you’re set up.
It’s great.
Chris
Yeah, yeah.
Well, we were looking for the perfect house for over four years and when we saw it, we nabbed it, but the wait sucks.
Andy
No, you did well.
You definitely did well.
But yeah, I think unless I decide to build another shop out in the backyard, which I could, but I’m going on two years now to just put up a fence.
So I don’t know with my timeframe, if I’ll ever get around to doing that, I’ll probably just keep on living out of the laundry room for the 3D printing stuff and working off of the living room table for my electronic kind of stuff until the kids start doing their own thing.
Of course, with today’s market and the way things are going, they’re probably never going to move out.
So I’m probably just stuck with the laundry room.
Kevin
Yeah, I keep talking about wanting to build a workshop outside, like a bigger one, because I’ve got a workshop, but it’s like half of my shed.
And so it keeps getting filled up with other people’s stuff.
And I don’t really get to do a whole lot of work in it like I would like to.
So I’d like to either get a shed so that I can take over what I’ve got now as my workshop or build a workshop.
I also want to build a smokehouse.
Andy
That would be cool.
Kevin
But I’m also conflicted because I don’t want to live here anymore.
It’s like, why go through the effort of building these things if I’m going to move away at some point?
And I’m not saying just in this house either, I’m talking about in the state.
Andy
Oh, really?
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
That’d be a big change.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
Good deal.
Kevin
But I don’t know that I’m ever actually going to get to move because everybody else is content and has the attitude of, well, is any place else really going to be better?
And I say yes, but they don’t believe me.
Chris
Well, you know, there’s places like Oregon, you know.
Kevin
I don’t want to go there.
Andy
I do love their weather, though.
I love depressing weather.
The constant rains, rain and thunderstorms.
I could live there.
I would’n want to work outside there, though.
That part would not be right.
Kevin
I want to go to a more motorcycle friendly place.
I’m thinking like New Mexico.
Andy
Okay.
Kevin
But with your comment about the depressing weather, while I was in my second area on my mission, which doesn’t sound like I was very long, I had been in the land at this point in the mission field for at least a year.
So I was in my first area for seven months.
I was in my second area for seven months.
It was toward the end of my stay in my second area.
I had a trainee and we lived on the 12th floor, which in American terms, we would say 13th floor of the tallest apartment building in the city, really the tallest building in the city.
We had an excellent view and I got dressed one morning and I came out and was ready to go.
I saw my companion just having this thousand yard stare out the window.
I came and I looked out the window also and I was like, what are we looking at?
He said, we don’t have any appointments today.
I said, that’s true.
He said, that means we’re going to have to do knocking on doors all day.
And I said, that’s true.
And he said, it’s going to be a long day.
And I said, well, look on the bright side, look on the bright side.
At least it’s a nice day.
The sky was slate gray, completely overcast.
So he’s like, what?
How can you say that’s a nice day?
I said, easy.
It’s not raining.
It rains a lot in the Netherlands.
So when it’s not raining, that’s a nice day.
Andy
That’s good.
That’s good.
I love the overcast up here when we get like the heat thunderstorms that come through, the heat lightning, or even the big booming rain clouds that kind of come through the storm surges off of the lake and things like that.
I love those.
Oh, I love those.
I get giddy whenever you get a nice, solid, close, thunderclap.
It just makes the house shake.
I get turned to a little school girl, get all giddy about it.
Yay.
Chris
Yeah, I do until I realize that I left the car window down or something.
Andy
That’s the time where I’ll go and sit out at the porch just outside of the rain line, you know, wherever, how far it’s blowing in or whatever, and just sit and just watch it rain.
Oh, I love that.
What I wouldn’t give to, if I had, I wish I had a place that had a pretty big property where I could just sit out at the back porch and watch a storm blow in.
That’s my, I would love that.
We got some property up in the mountains where we want to build a small cabin and stuff on, and I’m hoping to be able to have those kind of situations where I could watch a storm roll into the mountain range there and just maybe someday, probably when I got more money, because that stuff’s expensive to build a house.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
Well, as far as 3D printing goes.
Chris
We went far afield and Kevin didn’t stop us this week either.
Kevin
Well, and I’m not very good at that, but part of the reason I want a workshop with a decent amount of space is because last year, I got a kit to build a seven string guitar, and I found that I enjoy making guitars, and so I want to be able to do that, but make them from scratch, and there would be 3D printed components in there.
Chris
Oh, yeah.
I actually personally wanted to do some of those.
I shared with you guys a link to this guy that made modular effect pedals, so you could basically daisy chain as many of these modular effect pedals, so you can make whatever you want in this one pedal, and then you can easily daisy chain it one after another.
They’ve got tongue and groove, so they just kind of slip into each other and connect, and then you pop the top down and your effect pedal is all set.
Andy
That is cool.
Kevin
Yeah.
Chris
Definitely looking forward to making a 3D printing some fun stuff like that, but you’re talking about stuff like guitar, the thing at the very, very top of the neck.
Kevin
I don’t know that I go with 3D printed tuning machines.
Maybe the nut, if that’s what you’re talking about.
Chris
Well, yeah, stuff like skull nuts and things of that nature.
Kevin
And the knobs that go onto the pots, and then also the plastic, usually they’re plastic, on the pickups, those 3D print those instead of having to buy them kind of thing, because obviously, if I’m making my own guitar from scratch, I’m going to be making my own pickups, and then I would buy the pots.
Making a pot is a little bit over.
Andy
That’s a little tough.
Especially when the cost of them is so little.
Kevin
Right.
And for those who are not familiar with electric guitar terminology, a pot is a potentiometer.
Andy
Which is one of the things that Andy and I have been talking about on Andy’s other projects.
Very, very, very versatile.
Kevin
Yeah like.
I got into looking at the various pots you can have on an electric guitar, and I was already aware of the volume control and the tone control pots, but they’ve got like so many different things that you can do.
You can do so much with these little potentiometers and your imaginations the limit, basically, if you’re making your own guitar.
Andy
That’s cool.
Kevin
Yeah.
Chris
Yep.
And you can order pots with steps on them if you want to switch.
Chris
So you can use them to switch to specific effect pedals.
So you can have the effect pedals on that you already want, and then use that switch to switch to which one you want without having to go tap the pedal every single time.
Andy
Oh, really?
Chris
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
That’s kind of cool.
I’d be curious on how those interface with each other.
Because, I mean, the chord on the guitar itself is just a mono jack, isn’t it?
Chris
Right.
So remember those modular controllers I was telling you about?
So you’d have a main controller that all of those are daisy chained and connected to at the beginning, and that’s the one that would control based on which pot you, or which step you hit on that pot would switch to.
So…
Andy
that’s cool.
Yeah.
I would be neat to see you making guitars, doing a little bit of woodworking and whatnot, especially if it’s something you really enjoyed.
Kevin
Yeah.
I mean, especially also since I’ve kind of wanted to do a single guitar arrangement of the Moonlight Sonata and to really do it justice, you’d need an eight string guitar.
And…
Andy
oh, wow.
Kevin
And those are insanely expensive.
Chris
I can’t imagine why.
Kevin
The least expensive I’ve seen an eight string guitar is $1,200.
That’s the least expensive.
Now, I did the math and I figure I could probably build one for two or 300.
Andy
Not bad.
Chris
Wow.
Not bad.
I was going to ask you maybe you could probably get one decent quality for around 600 building it yourself.
But wow.
Kevin
I mean, that’s building it from scratch.
If I were to buy the neck, that would increase the price, obviously.
I’d have to make the neck to make it so that it’s that inexpensive.
I don’t know that I’d be able to get away without buying the bridge, because I don’t know how to make a bridge for a guitar.
But…
Chris
3D print one, you’ll be fine.
Kevin
Yeah…
Andy
I agree with Kevin’s expression.
Chris
Strap it on with a little duct tape, you’ll be fine.
Kevin
So you know what happens if you put steel strings on a nylon string guitar, a classical guitar there, Chris.
Chris
I know what it sounds like.
Kevin
That’s about what I expect to happen if I were to 3D print my own bridge.
Actually, I guess I could 3D print it, but then I want to do lost medium casting.
So it’s actually made of metal.
Andy
There you go.
Chris
It actually might be easier just to uh…
Kevin
to buy one.
Chris
Draw up a design and have it machined.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
That’s another thing I want to look into.
This machining, having stuff machined for you, especially big stuff.
Chris
There’s some custom shops around here that will do those sorts of things.
JC’s precision tool.
I worked, yeah.
Andy
JC’s.
I might bug you about that a little bit later here.
I want a smaller bucket for my backhoe.
And I thought I could, if I could have someone just cut the steel out for me, even if it’s just like a plasma cut out the components, then I could take and weld them together and then have a smaller bucket.
I would prefer a skinnier bucket than the one mine came with, but I don’t want to buy a bucket because they’re stupid expensive.
Kevin
Actually, now that I think about it, it shouldn’t be too much to have one machined because really, it would just, I’d have to buy the screws and the saddles because the electric guitars have movable saddles.
Andy
Okay.
Kevin
That’s how you get the fine tuning in.
So yeah, it shouldn’t be too bad.
Just get a couple pieces of metal, get them machined right, and then that’s the bridge.
And then you put the saddles on there.
Andy
I see a project developing here.
Kevin
Oh, I’ve been talking about building my own eight string for a year now.
I really want to do it at some point.
Andy
That would be a neat project.
That would be a neat skill to develop.
Kevin
Yeah.
Yeah.
Andy
Well, we made it to an hour and a half.
That’s one hour longer than I thought we were going to be able to do.
I was all prepared to be yelled at by Frank for making one that was too short.
So that’s good.
Kevin
Right.
So we’d like to thank everyone for listening to the very end.
Chris
The very, very end.
Kevin
If you like what you hear, please give us all the stars and subscribe.
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You can find us in our Facebook group, Amateur 3D Pod, or you can email us at panelists@amateur3dpod.com.
For individual feedback, you can email us at Franklin, Kevin, Andy, or Chris @amateur3dpod.com.
I wrote the music for this and every episode.
OpenAI’s whisper completed the heavy lifting for the transcripts, which you can find linked in the description.
Our panelists are me, Kevin Buckner, and my friends, Chris Webber, Andy Cottam, and Franklin Christensen.
Until next time, keep your FEP type.
Andy
Always use hairspray.
Chris
Print first.
Ask questions later.
Andy
That’s a good one.
Chris
The questions are usually, why did it pile up here?
Andy
Oh, heavens.
Chris
We have an issue with Craig again.
Andy
Craig, stop, please, for the love of all that is holy.