Frank
Thank you for joining us.
This is episode 53 of Amateur 3D Podcast, a podcast by amateur printers for amateur printers, where we share our thoughts and experience.
Our panelists this week are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Chris Weber, Andy Cottam, and Kevin Buckner.
And this episode is brought to you by Four Aging Millennials.
Andy
I have a hard time considering myself a millennial.
I think I’m either a zennial or a Gen X.
I’m definitely Gen X upstairs, like my mindset is Gen X, and I had a Gen X upbringing, but…
Frank
The funny thing to me is, we’re all kind of in that boat where we’re more transitional than specifically Gen X or millennial.
But I mean, I was 30 when I learned I was a millennial, so…
Kevin
Yeah, I was in my 30s before I learned that also.
Chris
I never really cared.
Frank
well, there’s that too.
At some point, it doesn’t matter.
Andy
Right.
Kevin
Yeah.
I think it’s a mindset more than this in actual age.
I mean, I know it kind of relates to the age too, at least puts you in the right era, but I think it’s a mindset in how you grew up and what not.
Frank
Well, and I haven’t really talked about it with you guys a whole lot, but I think that probably the worst and best thing that humans do is taxonomy.
It’s great because we categorize all these things, and we learn more, the more we categorize, we can go deeper and all that, but the problem is, is we feel like everything needs a distinct category, and people are more complex than that.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
I was born during a certain period of time, but I’m also second generation away from World War II, whereas, let’s say, a third of millennials are probably closer to four or five generations away from it.
So what are you going to accuse me of as playing a harder?
Right?
Andy
Well, I think each one’s got their own challenges and heartaches and stuff like that.
So it’s not like who had it worse, who had it better.
I think it’s like a mentality thing, you know?
Frank
Yeah.
Andy
I think that’s the best way to address the world.
Frank
I will say that I think that one reason it’s such a loud debate is thanks to the Internet.
Andy
Yeah.
Kevin
Oh, yeah, definitely.
Frank
Older generations have always complained about younger generations, and for 400,000 years, there was no way to broadcast that to everybody.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Chris
Well, you know, it did get quite a bit louder with the printing press.
That’s where it all started.
Frank
Yeah.
Well, there were people that were resistant to the printing press.
Chris
Yeah.
Kids these days in their newspapers, God!
Frank
People are going to stop thinking if they have books to read.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Frank
And at the same time, I look at it like, well, I do remember the phone number I had when I was a child, and I have to think real hard about what my current phone number is, even though I’ve had it for 13 years.
Andy
Yeah.
My dad wound up keeping the phone number as a child.
And when his time comes or whatever, me and my brother discussing little things like that, I get the phone number.
That was one of the things we divvied up, is we get the phone number.
Chris
Wow.
Frank
Wow.
That is impressive.
And, you know, back to the generational conversation, just a little bit, we’re reaching the age as millennials where we’re having these conversations that boomers had, I don’t know, 50 years ago when they weren’t concerned about assets in the same way that we are now, to the degree we are anyway, because so many of our assets that we’re concerned about keeping from our parents are untangible, they’re digital in a big way.
That does make them easy to copy and distribute to everybody, though.
So you’re not saying one person gets this, except in the case of a phone number, right?
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, that’s really true.
I’ve got, I mean, even with like my kids here, one of the things that growing up was important was the photo albums.
And so like I even tried to replicate the whole photo album thing back when, you know, I first started, but I didn’t really get anywhere with it.
And now our photo album is on the TV upstairs with Plex that’s pointed to all the backups of our old phones and laptops and stuff where photos are stored, and we back up everything, so it’s all there, but it’s just kind of weird how stuff like that changes.
Chris
And the amount of photos taken and getting backed up now is so insanely huge, at least with my family.
Andy
One of the things I noticed that’s really kind of weird, and a lot of people can probably relate is we go to look through the pictures and stuff like that, because Plex takes everything and organizes it by date and stuff like that.
It’s all automated.
So every night, all of our phones and devices back up to the server automatically.
And so if I take a picture today, it will be on the TV tomorrow, but also like all the weird pictures that you take, like I need to remember this wiring layout or I like this pair of shoes and I want to remember what they look like or something is all in that too.
So when you’re looking through, it’s like family like photo, picture of the kids, a video here, photo there, and then there’s all these other things like, why is there a picture of the edge of this table here, you know, it was important when I needed it, but I’m not going to go back and delete it.
So now it’s full of all these weird photos as well.
Frank
My wife and I keep a whiteboard in the kitchen for our grocery list.
And when we go, we don’t, we just take a picture of the whiteboard and you know, every couple of weeks I’ll be looking through my photos, because I do it so often, and I’ll be like, oh, we got the all of these items and I’ll delete them from my photo album on my phone.
Frank
Yeah.
Frank
And they just hang out
Andy
and I run into the problem since everything backs up off the phone.
If I delete it on the phone, it’s not actually gone now on the server and it gets filtered in through our backup system that we have in the house.
So any picture you take, if you don’t delete it before that night, it’s almost permanent.
< bad cut, but it is what it is>
Frank
I don’t know how we got on to sociology in a 3D printing podcast.
Andy.
Andy
We got off topic.
Chris
We didn’t even start on topic.
Frank
That was quick, even for me, I think.
Andy, you want to go first have you worked on anything this week?
Andy
Sure.
So as far as 3D printing, I don’t really have a whole lot to say.
I’ve got everything now for my SLA printer, but I’m going to be waiting, I think two projects from now before putting together the hood before I actually use the thing.
So I got some time there before I’m actually going to break that out, but I got everything that is ready to go.
That’ll go to do that.
The only other thing I really have is my side projects that are side related to 3D printing, like my fish tank fan that I’ve been working on for these past couple of months.
I’ve finally finished programming my interface and stuff, and it’s completely working.
But that’s about it.
I’ve got, um, let me think here, my brain started leaking out of my ears.
Frank
Already?
Andy
I don’t know where I was going with that thought.
Frank
We’re only 10 minutes into the podcast.
Andy
I know.
Today, I get to go and start putting together the Gerber file and creating the PCB for my little project, and then shortly after that, if that works out quick, then this weekend I might be designing the housing for my little fan project here as well.
So that’ll work out nice and actually get some 3D printing in.
Before the podcast, Frank was talking about re-uploading, recompiling, the Marlin software on his printer because he wanted to make some adjustments and showed me that one of the neat functions that my old Marlin, so before when I first bought my printer from TiVo, I was using their version of Marlin.
I wound up burning out that board and I bought a new board, and that new board didn’t have any software on it, and so I downloaded Marlin 2.
The processor the printers use is one of the ICs that I normally program, so my programmer and everything was already ready to go, and I knew how to do that, so I was able to upload Marlin 2 2.0 to it, and it was nice having all the options and the way it works and stuff was really kind of neat.
In fact, one of the things that they changed with Marlin 2 is I remember Marlin 1 when I changed over to my H2 direct drive extruder, that one of the things that is very different is the steps per millimeter on the extruder.
My old one was set to like 1500 and the new one was like 500 or something, or vice versa for that.
It was like 1000 steps I had to rotate that stupid dial to get it to the right number, and the old Marlin just did one click per millimeter, or per step to raise the steps on it.
So I sat there for literally like five minutes twisting that knob, and Marlin 2 did something kind of neat where the faster you twist the knob, the faster it increments to go up to the number.
And that’s actually one of the things I used on my fan controller here, because I’m using a rotary encoder with that too, but a part of my menu structure is allowed to adjust variables of some sort.
And those variables come with the menu sends the variable to be changed, and it’s minimum and maximum values.
And so I use the minimum and maximum values to kind of gauge how fast I should increment it when you start turning it quickly.
And you know how to ramp up to that.
So if I’m working with a number where let’s say I’m changing a 16-bit number, that will go up to 65,000, when you turn that sucker fast, you can get to the point where it’s counting by thousands per click if you’re turning it fast enough.
And so that works really good.
But if I’m changing like just a byte where it’s like zero to 255, at its max speed it might be doing 10, an increment of 10 per click or something like that.
And all of that concept came from the Marlin 2, the way they did their dial.
And so that was a nice benefit.
But I lost one thing that my old TiVo1 did, and that was being able to, when you’re leveling your bed, it had a separate menu that could go to, yeah, tramming the bed.
It has separate menu where you can go to each corner automatically.
And I had lost that in Marlin too.
And Frank pointed out to me like, no, that’s just an option that you can enable and disable pretty easily.
And so I’m excited after the podcast here, I’m going to recompile Marlin with that option enabled because I didn’t see that the first time around.
I mean, Marlin’s code is huge to go through.
Frank
It’s actually surprisingly robust for how mundane it is.
Andy
Yeah.
So I’m sure nobody will hold my feet to the fire on missing that, but it’s kind of exciting to see that I might get that option back because that was the only thing going to the new Marlin that wasn’t a positive thing that was actually a negative thing.
So…
Chris
well, it seems like despite not having that fun little feature, you’ve been using your Printer just fine.
Andy
Oh, yeah.
Well, you know me.
I’ll just grab the head and shift it around all day long to…
Frank
to get it in the right spot.
So it extrudes there and then manually move it to the next spot, extrude here.
Andy
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It’s how they work, right?
I don’t know how you guys have any time during the day to do anything.
I’m just sitting there just moving the Printer head all around all day long.
But, uh, but no, no, that works.
It works fine.
And so, but it’ll be nice having that because like when I would go in and do it by hand, you know, you do, you do kind of mess it up a little bit.
So it takes a time or two.
And then at the very end, when you’re using the controls to move it and double check, make sure you got it right.
You know, I’ve probably made leveling, tramming, the bed take probably an extra two or three minutes, not having those options.
Now, however, I only tram the bed whenever I change anything really, it stays pretty steady.
So it never needs to be reset unless I change something.
So it hasn’t been that big of a deal, but after the podcast here, I’m definitely going to go in and recompile that, which I’ve been recompiling it.
And I noticed it’s got another error.
So I’ll have to see what’s going on with that.
In fact, it was, the error is for the LCD bed leveling.
Frank
What did you do, Andy?
Andy
Oh, apparently the bed leveling requires the mesh bed leveling function and the auto bed leveling function to be done.
So I’m going to have to include those two.
I don’t know.
I’ll have to play with it, but that’s the error it threw.
I guess the bed leveling menu option, the LCD bed leveling makes calls to mesh bed leveling and auto bed leveling.
So even if I don’t use them, I might have to still enable them so those functions are there.
I mean, if there’s like an if statement in there that it disregards because I don’t use, then that’s fine, but it will still need that include to not throw that error.
but either way, I’m going to play with that after this.
And gosh, I think that’s it.
I got some cheap 12 volt transformers for projects.
I noticed the other day I was kind of out and that’s why I bought some off of eBay for like two, three dollars a piece, something like that.
They’re supposed to be two amp, you know, wall warts.
This seems a little light for two amps.
And it might be a switch mode power supply, which would be light, but I don’t know.
And this brings the whole thing that I do not have is a load tester, a proper load tester because they’re expensive to buy.
So I might have to make one.
I might cheat.
I’ve got some, I’ve got a lot of DC to DC converters like boost and buck converters.
The boost was probably one because I bought a bunch of those for projects down the road and stuff.
I might take one of those, put a put some Nikon wire on it and then be able to raise and lower the voltage to the Nikon wire.
And that would cause more and more resistance that the board would pull.
And then I could just use my multimeter to check the amperage for it.
And that would give me a rudimentary system.
I think I’ll do that because this might pull, you know, two amps, but I need to know how many amps I can pull from it before the voltage dips down too low.
You know, if it’s like a 13 volt transformer in actuality, and if I can pull an amp from it by 12 volts, then it might be worth something.
But if I can’t get two amps for, or if I’m getting two amps for this when I’m down to like six volts or something, then it’s not a two amp charger.
So I’ll have to see.
If it is switch mode, it should be consistent.
And as soon as I start pulling the voltage down, then that means the switch mode is at 100% and can’t actually produce more.
So yeah, I got a lot of playing around to do with these.
That way I know what they actually do.
But this will be one of the transformers that I’m going to be using for my fan project.
But those fans only pull like 400 milliamps when they’re running at 12 volts.
So it’s not a whole lot, but two running at full power will pull this down.
And as long as this stays above seven volts, I think I’ll be okay because my voltage regulator that I’m using on my IC here on the controller has a minimum seven volts to give me five volts for the controller.
Anyway, thinking aloud, sorry
Chris
he said butt
Frank
speaking of butts, Chris, have you done anything this week?
Chris
No, not really.
I’ve been
Kevin
slacking
Chris
been in a lot of pain.
So I’ve been taking it easy and just managing to get through work and sleep.
Frank
Oh, that’s fair
Chris
I haven’t done anything else.
Frank
Have you been daydreaming about your printer at all, thinking I really want to do this thing or that thing or any more than last week?
Because last week you talked about the eyeball lava lamp thing.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
Yeah.
I mean, I found a couple other designs on Thingiverse.
I found a really nice little paint mixer to print that I may be printing up because the paint mixer I was using recently for remodeling the child’s bedroom is, I mean, it works, but it’s not ideal.
This thing looks pretty nice.
So thinking about printing it up and…
Andy
Do you think that would stand to the pressures to the, well, I guess it’s paint.
I’m thinking mud mixer.
That requires a little bit more torque.
But paint, yeah.
That would be okay.
Frank
I was kind of worried too, but if it’s like a manual mixer instead of something you put on a drill, it might not need to have the torsion strength either.
Andy
True.
Frank
Sorry.
Andy
True.
Frank
I overran you there, Chris.
You were going to say something or we’re saying something.
Chris
It’s just a thing with six fins and looks like you glue it to a rod or something.
Frank
Okay.
Chris
I wanted to try it out.
Andy
Yeah.
That sounds fun.
It’d be a fun print to do.
Chris
It’s something I will be printing here in the next couple of weeks.
Frank
Okay.
Andy
Okay.
That’s good.
Kevin
Cool cool.
Frank
Kevin, have you worked on anything this week?
Kevin
Yeah.
I’ve done a little bit.
I’ve printed up a bunch of flat works for electric guitar pickups.
Andy
Oh, fun.
Frank
So you’ve got the holes figured out then?
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
Good deal.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
Well that’s cool.
Chris
Got translucid green.
Kevin
For a translucid green guitar.
Yeah.
Andy
Cool.
Frank
Just for my own imagination, what color is the guitar going to be?
or is it already?
Kevin
I haven’t gotten that far yet.
Frank
Okay.
So you’re working from the more complex parts to the simpler parts, like the guitar body?
Kevin
Yeah.
I think the most…
Frank
Quote-unquote simpler.
Kevin
Well, yeah, the guitar body will definitely be simpler, at least in the design aspect because just get the basic shape of it and you’re good, but with the pickups are going to be kind of the complicated part to construct.
Andy
What makes up the pickup itself?
Isn’t that a small inductor that makes up each one of those pickups, a little coil, a wire?
Kevin
Yeah.
So the way you construct a pickup is you each one has two of the flat works on it and then you put either screws or magnets or some kind of metal, ferrous metal, through the holes to hold the both together and that’s what is called a bobbin and then you get your copper wire and wind that a whole bunch around the bobbin.
The number of times you wind it varies depending on which instructional you’re looking at, it’s generally between 4,000 and 6,000 times that you wind the copper wire around and then…
Andy
Is that for each one of those pickups?
What each one of those little…
Kevin
Each bobbin, yeah.
So if you’ve got just the one bobbin that’s called a single coil, but then if you can do two bobbins, wind them each individually and then put them together and that’s called a humbucker and I’m planning on making humbuckers because I think they sound better than single coils.
Andy
Okay.
That’s kind of cool.
You’re wrapping your own.
Kevin
Yeah.
Is that something that you do on a drill or something or is that something you do by hand?
Kevin
I’m probably going to end up doing it by hand for the first bit because I don’t…
You can get winders for them that are kind of pricey and in order for me to be able to convince the wife that it’s something that I need to sink money into, I need to show that I can do it and then I would like to be able to sell guitars after I’ve made them, but with the eight string, I’m going to keep that.
Frank
last week, weren’t you talking about modifying a sewing machine so you could feed the bobbin that way?
Kevin
Yeah.
I was thinking about that also, but then I also saw that somebody had made a simple modification to one of those hand crank drills and I’ve got one of those that’s essentially the upper part of an old fashioned egg beater.
So I’m thinking I might be able to use that.
That might be easier to figure out an attachment for that than it would be to try to figure out an attachment for the sewing machine.
Chris
I can always make you an attachment.
Frank
Well, you’ve got a printer too.
You can create the gear offsets and all that to gear it.
Kevin
It’s not anything that I would really even have to worry about gearing.
It’s a thing that would hold the bobbin in place and have a little post that would go into the chuck on the hand drill.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
Nothing my welder couldn’t take care of.
Frank
Maybe it’s my turn to make it more complex than it needs to be.
Andy
Still, that’s something that you would be able to sit down with some CAD software and come up with something pretty easily.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
Maybe I’m too old fashioned when it comes to my old fashioned tools too.
You said old fashioned and I was thinking more of the cam offset drill than a crank hand drill.
So.
Andy
I’ve got one of those crank drills.
Kevin
It’s not one of those drills that’s got the little bend out section that you can turn like that.
It’s one of those you hold the handle up top and then it’s got the large crank on the wheel.
Yeah.
Frank
So mine’s a little bit older than yours is my acknowledgement.
Kevin
Right.
Right.
Andy
Yeah.
Your mindset.
Yeah.
Frank
Yeah.
That sounds like it’d be fun.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
And I look forward to more updates in that respect.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
Yeah.
Nice translucent green.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
So what about?
Chris
… green Resin
Andy
So what about you Frank?
Frank
Sorry I didn’t hear that.
What resin?
I have stories.
What resin did you say Chris?
Kevin
Soylent green.
Chris
Soylent green.
Frank
Oh.
Yes.
Because it’s made out of people.
So this week, anybody who remembers last week, Andy suggested that I check a couple of things on my printer, switch out some switches, get a thermometer to check my temperatures.
And I need to apologize.
I already did kind of apologize to the panelists here and I need to apologize to our listeners.
My higher temperatures are actually about 10 degrees Celsius cooler than what my controller is telling me they have been.
I went from that understanding to figuring out, because I’ve played with it, but as long as the system works, I haven’t wanted to do anything.
Now that I know the system is not working, I need to recalibrate my sensors.
And to do that, I need to have a good build for Marlin to go on my controller, because Creality doesn’t have any of that available to me, just with the regular distribution.
So the last week, I have been playing with code repositories and getting a version of Marlin, trying to get a version of Marlin put together so that I can deploy that to my controller.
And then I can calibrate my sensors.
And I guess I’m going to have to recalibrate my steppers to make sure that they’re all good.
Andy
Yeah.
That’s not hard, though.
Frank
Okay.
Andy
So what you can do in the Marlin itself, not something you have to worry too much about software.
Frank
Okay.
Andy
before compiling.
You can do it after post-compiling.
Frank
Okay.
Andy
Except the X and Y?
I’m not sure.
I know you can do it for the extruder.
Let me just double-check real quick if it’s even an option, because I know your version is probably quite a bit different than Marlin 2.1, but I bet 2.0 that I use and 2.1 aren’t that much different.
Frank
I don’t even know which one I’ve got on there right now.
I know that I’ve been working with 2.1, though, trying to get a version put together.
Andy
So 2.0 at least has the onboard step controls for X, Y, Z, and extruder.
So you’re good.
That’s not something you have to worry about while you’re recompiling.
Frank
Okay.
That’s good to know.
Andy
It would be a good idea to go and see where yours are set at right now.
Before you recompile, I would get all the settings and write them down just to save you a little bit of time resetting it back up, because you don’t have to sit there and play with it to figure out what it actually should be.
Frank
Honestly, my focus right now has been to get a good build.
And before I deployed, I was going to go back and confirm the current configurations and all that.
So good call.
Andy
It would be nice if you could give yourself a backup of what you currently have.
It would be nice if that was an option to have that.
That way, in case this messes up, excuse me, you’re not missing up your board.
Frank
Granted, I didn’t look super hard, only for an hour or so, a week for the last six months.
Just kind of passively looking, but I haven’t found the closest I’ve gotten is people who have used the existing menu structure to rebuild it, reverse engineer it.
And it’s just not an option going the other way.
And it is, it sucks.
Andy
I thought Creality was open source.
So Creality’s not open source, I guess.
Frank
Well, they use Marlin.
The Marlin part is open source.
Andy
Yeah.
Marlin itself. Is their version of Marlin open source.
Frank
Yeah.
I can’t find their repository.
Andy
That sucks.
Frank
I don’t remember how hard I’ve looked.
I’ll probably give it one more swing before I go and deploy.
But yeah, and to be fair, Marlin is kind of rudimentary as far as software is concerned.
It doesn’t need to be robust, right?
It controls three-dimensional space for potentially up to 10 items, but it’s all Cartesian Plain stuff for every single one of those items.
And it doesn’t need to be as complex as, say, a piece of software that is operating a nuclear reactor.
Andy
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, that’s true.
Chris
It’s just a 2D printer times 1,000.
Frank
Yeah.
Andy
I do like how Marlin is kind of built around its interpreter, though.
I do appreciate that, because just about anything you can do in the in-screen menu of Marlin, you can do through just raw G-code input from the serial port, which is kind of nice.
Frank
And actually, like Cura has the option to operate your printer using just the USB connection, which is doing exactly what you just said.
Andy
Yeah.
Straight to the interpreter, just telling it what to do and bypassing everything.
Marlin’s a neat piece of software.
Chris
That’s what I do.
Frank
Curious thing.
Before we started, I was like, I don’t like the two-hour episode length, and we’ve burned through all four of us in 40 minutes.
Andy
Yeah.
Well, I try to keep my mouth shut a little bit.
Frank
Yeah.
You only said that was all you had and went on to something else once there, Andy.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
I got my menu structure I wanted to show you guys that I thought was kind of cool.
Frank
Yeah.
Hey.
I opened the door, because I do kind of like the one-hour length.
Yeah.
Andy
No, I agree.
So this is all for our visual listeners, though.
So I’ve got my menu structure here.
So the temperature of the tanks on my fan are displayed here, and then in the little tiny text that I don’t think you guys could read, I’ve got the maximum and minimum temperatures for over the last 24 hours, and as well as how many minutes the fans have been on over the past 24 hours.
Frank
Okay.
So this is kind of some just come broad history, you know, what do you call it?
I don’t know what the right word for that is.
It’s just extra data on the front of the screen there that’s showing you that.
But if I go into my menu, or this is the graph actually, I’ll start there.
But my graph has these, when you’re in the graph, you can toggle between these different options here that can like turn off the temperature, turn on the temperature.
And turn on the fan.
Oops, it’s hard to do this with the phone over it.
It can turn on and off.
Frank
You can’t do it by feel.
You wrote this thing.
Andy
Yeah, I know I can’t.
And I was hoping to look at the screen on what I’m showing with the camera, but it’s backwards on my end, so that wouldn’t make any sense.
So I got four options here of the fan graph for each tank and the temperature graph for each tank that I can click to turn on a turn off.
And you can see that the graph adjusts the minimum and maximum values for that.
Another thing I can do, it’s showing all 24 hours.
You can see on the bottom, it shows from zero to 24.
And then the actual, what’s it called, temperature range for that.
So let me turn on the temperature, turn off the fan.
You can see how it adjusted for that.
That way it’s just on one graph.
I also have the ability to zoom in to that data so I can zoom in.
And then I can also pan through the data when you’re zoomed in.
And you can see that the graph changes so that you’re always showing the absolute max and minimum values.
And this is far different compared to the first time I ever did a graph where, sorry, I’m showing a bunch of wires.
The first time I did a graph using my thermostat upstairs, it’s just fixed.
But this one here, you can move around and look at the data.
And it remembers your current position that you’re at in between menus and when you shut it down too.
So if you like to look at just the last hour or something like that, it can show you that.
So I’ve got that and that’s the graph part of this.
And then when I’m inside the menu structure for settings, you can see I’ve got all these different menus to be able to control the polling variables, whether or not the screen turns off and on automatically, whether it times out when you’re not using it.
Or it’s got a photo sensor on here too that I can go into to change how light it is in the room for it to consider whether the lights are on or off to decide whether or not the screen’s on.
And my menu’s got checkboxes.
You can see me turn this on and off.
Got a checkbox for that.
This is the menu where I can change variables.
And like I was saying, the faster I turn the knob, the faster the numbers actually change.
And I got this idea from Marlin, which is kind of cool.
Frank
You didn’t get it from Windows XP?
Andy
No, there are not too many Windows XP machines uses encoders.
Frank
Yeah, but you move the mouse faster and it moves faster across the screen.
Andy
Yeah, that is true.
This has got the ability to ramp the temperatures.
So it doesn’t just turn fans off and on.
It can ramp the voltage to the fans, which is kind of cool.
So I can set the minimum temperature or the low temperature of the tank and the high temperature of the tank and have the fans start at the low and then be full blast at the high.
And then not all of these fans work.
Like if I put 1% of a PWM signal into a fan, it may not be enough to even turn.
So I’ve got my fan control settings where I can dial in what is the minimum and the maximum output of the fans.
So if 100% of the fans is just too much, I can tell this that the maximum is actually a different number.
So it will ramp in between the two.
And so there’s that.
See, there was also temperature corrections.
So I can set a temperature where I input the current read temperature of the unit and the temperature that it’s actually at.
And this will linearly correct for that.
So it’s not an offset.
It’s actually, you know, because it’s on a curve.
So it’s linearly correct for a temperature differential.
So if you got like more than one thermometer in the tank, it’s almost more important that they read the same thing than it is for one of them to read correctly.
So my unit is able to say I can read incorrectly to a certain degree to compensate for, you know, a thermostat that you’re used to using or something like that.
Yeah.
So all of this is pretty overkill.
But the important part of this whole project is like this menu structure and how it’s working and how it scrolls and stuff.
Like one of the things I use the menu for is just to give a to report on what variables are in there.
So I just use the menu to do the variables since that’s a really good one to see how well it scrolls.
Frank
There’s a lot of stuff in there.
Andy
Yeah.
None of these do anything, but this is all the active variables that this this thing uses.
And it’s updating them as they change too.
So that’s kind of cool.
Frank
Yeah.
Chris
Nice.
So this is why it took me so long to do, but I should be able to pull like this menu structure out pretty easily and put it into a different project as well as the graphing part.
So that is why it took me almost a month to do this for our visual listeners.
And on top of it, programming these these controllers, there’s no debug.
And so that’s one of the things that made it the hardest is, you know, trying to figure out what a problem is.
You can’t just break somewhere within your program and hover over variables to see what’s inside or set up breaks and things like that.
Frank
So you mean like you can with computer programs?
Andy
Just about any other IDE out there.
Yeah.
Frank
Yeah.
I can see how that would be a problem.
Andy
I did find a neat one that I think it’s Arduino uses that somebody wrote a web program that kind of emulates an Arduino board.
Frank
Okay.
Andy
And the processor I’m using for this is one that’s used on Arduino’s.
So for a little while there, I had put my code into that and was emulating the board.
When it comes to the pinout and stuff like that, like setting up this display and stuff, you can’t tell what the display is showing and things.
But for some of the code that the processors using, I could have debug inside of that fake web based IDE.
And so that was kind of useful, but switching from like one and uploading it to there and then getting it to work because there’s a lot of functions and stuff I use that it doesn’t know what to do with.
So it just errors out.
And if you remark that one out, of course, you got to remark it out everywhere in your program and stuff.
So it’s a little bit of a pain in the butt, but it’s got debugging, which is amazing.
I know there’s a couple of integrated controllers out there that does have debugging built into the bootloader that you can interface with your IDE.
But all the chips I use don’t have that.
So I think I’m just stuck with blinking a light or reading something out on the display or out to the serial port on the computer and reading it from there to debug.
What we were talking about earlier of printing to a console for debugging.
And that’s basically what I’ve been doing is using the serial out as the console and printing all the information to there.
In fact, even though I said I’m done with coding, I have not gotten it ready for deployment by removing all those.
So my serial is still going, you know, crazy sending all the data that it does out to itself.
But that’s just searching for those serial print, you know, functions and just removing those.
So that won’t take two or three minutes to do other than that.
I think I’m good to go with this.
And I think tonight or my next step is going to be properly wiring it up on this breadboard.
It’s like right now I don’t even have a thermostat attached to it.
In fact, my thermostat is a potentiometer that I can adjust for debugging so I can like change the temperature to what I want it to be so I can make sure it’s working properly on the board.
So I should set it up correctly there.
And then I’m going to sit down and find some software that I could use to create my Gerber files, my PCB layout.
Because even though I’ve made PCBs in the past, I used JASC PaintShop Pro from the 90s to draw out my circuit boards.
So now that they’ve got a lot of software out there that does automates it for you and stuff like that, I’m going to go out and experiment and see if I can find some good stuff that I could use for these.
Frank
Don’t you have any options with your CAD software?
Andy
I probably do.
I think I do.
I do have a subscription to SolidWorks and I know they do a lot of PCB stuff.
My one worry is that that is very professional software and I probably need something that’s a little bit more dumbed down and newbie-ish to start with.
Because I’ve never used software to create PCBs before.
So I’ll probably go there and look at that first and see if I can adapt to it.
But if it starts to get complicated or something, I think I might try something smaller first to get it down.
Frank
I have a sneaking suspicion that you can be as complex or as primitive as you want with the software even.
Because you already have the design worked out, you would just be creating a circuit board for it.
I would wager that you’re actually going to find it fairly easy to design.
Since you’ve already got all the design work done, you would just be translating it from your breadboard to the software.
Andy
Another thing though that it has to be able to do is be able to print it on the printer.
The actual Gerber files itself doesn’t really do me a whole lot of good.
I’m going to laser print these.
Frank
Well, and I feel like you were kind of edging towards maybe not right away, but eventually doing like a contract method of getting the board.
If you do that, then being able to just send them the spec from your CAD program would be probably more than they expect most of the time.
Andy
I agree.
I would love to be able to print them here at home because I can iterate because I’m not going to get it right the first time.
This first board, I’m going to have a trace that goes to a pin that I don’t even use.
I guarantee it, you know?
Or something’s going to be the wrong size or something like that.
I’m going to have to redo the whole thing.
But it would be nice if I’m doing a project like this for somebody else.
It would make me feel good to build the board here at home, get a working version that I know works that I can solder components to and have function, and then take and spend a couple of dollars to have the board properly printed out.
That way, when I’m giving the device to a buddy or something that I made it for, it looks like extremely professional and well done.
Frank
It looks intentional.
Andy
Yeah, yeah.
Because the boards that I do, I mean, when I did them last time, I wound up not coating the back of the board with the epoxy stuff.
You know, usually why they’re green that covers the traces.
Instead, I just left the toner on the traces itself and then just used a little bit of the acetone on the contacts and cleaned the contacts off where I needed it and then left it everywhere else.
Because I know most people scrub the whole board clean and then you have to do something with the contacts.
Now, the boards I wound up making never went bad on me for not scrubbing the contacts or not coating with that stuff.
I also got the silicone stuff I plan on putting on them that makes them waterproof.
As long as I can cover the copper so that air doesn’t get to it, then it won’t oxidize.
So the water coating stuff should work perfectly and that way I don’t have to screw with the epoxy and stuff.
So all of that said, like the boards, they look good, but they don’t look professionally done.
That would be a nice option to have.
So I’m hoping I can get some software that will allow me to print it at the 3D printer here and then if it makes circuit boards, it should export Gerber files.
And then I should be able to, once I got a working version, just send that off and have them print it without having to iterate problems out of it and whatever.
And then it will be on to 3D printing the housing for this.
And I already showed you guys the fans I made in there for that.
In fact, now that we were talking about it, I can do this.
See is it upside down or right side up?
I can take my camera over.
So I’ve got these fans on top of the tank.
You can see here my dirty tank.
Frank
The housings that you created before.
Andy
Yeah.
So I’m hoping I can take my button out and have my wires just come up through there, the buttonhole from the fan and then have something that attaches to the edge of that fan housing.
One of my other tanks here where it’s got more of the lid removed, I made a second plate that bolts down to cover up the lid that I might actually rebuild this plate so that it can be the housing for the controller.
Because only one of these tanks needs the controller because one will run both.
So I might do that as well.
It will be kind of hard to tell.
I’m sure our audio listeners are tired of all the stuff I’m visually showing people.
Frank
Maybe.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
I haven’t seen the numbers fluctuate so somebody likes it.
Andy
Well, if we start getting more listeners and stuff, I’m sure we’ll put up a YouTube version of our podcast like everybody else does.
Podcasts, popular podcasts.
Frank
I’m not opposed to the idea.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
I think that we should get more than 30 subscribers if we’re going to do that though.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
40 subscribers.
We’ll put forth the effort to do that.
Kevin
So tell your friends.
Frank
Make sure that you let Chris know that he’s actually your favorite panelist.
Andy
Yes.
Frank
Only partly because he falls asleep in the middle of the episode.
Andy
Well, if he would pick more entertaining friends, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Frank
Yeah.
It is absolutely all his fault.
Andy
Oh, dear.
Frank
Well, I’m the one that opened the door for you to go off on that project.
Maybe I should close the door and we should just call it at about an hour today.
Andy
Yeah.
That sounds good.
That’s kind of our target anyway.
So yeah, since we reviewed the being long podcast, not necessarily being a good thing, I think that the hour mark is a pretty good spot.
Frank
Yeah.
I’m a fan of it.
Kevin
Yeah
Frank
And Kevin gets to go do stuff quicker instead of having to be committed to listening to us talk about code and all of the stuff.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Well, I will close it up then and we can go do the thing.
Andy
Sounds great.
Frank
We’d like to thank everyone for listening to the very end.
The very, very end, less very end this time.
Frank
He woke up specifically to say that.
So he’s paying a little bit of attention.
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 feedback… or 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.
You can also email us individually at Franklin, Kevin, Andy or Chris @amateur3dpod.com.
Kevin Buckner wrote the music for this episode.
And OpenAI’s whisper completed the heavy lifting for the transcripts, which you can find linked in the description.
Our panelists are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Kevin Buckner, Chris Weber and Andy Cottam.
Until next time, we’re going offline.
Kevin
Keep FEP tight.
Andy
Always use hairspray.
Chris
Slice once, print twice.
Oh, wait, no, three times.
Wait, what happened first?
Okay.
Frank
Recompile, adjust, print again, iterate, iterate, iterate.
Gotcha.
Chris
That’s definitely the truth.
Frank
If only it wasn’t.
Kevin
Right?