Frank
Thank you for joining us.
This is episode 57 of Amateur 3D Podcast, and Andy is tearing apart his basement while I say this.
It is a podcast by amateur printers for amateur printers, where we share our thoughts and experience.
Our panelists this week are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Andy Cottam and Kevin Buckner, and Chris apparently slept in.
Andy
No big deal.
He’s missing out on my home improvements here though.
Frank
I mean, given how things have been going, I could pretend to be surprised.
Andy
He’s a tired boy.
It’s alright.
I’m sure he’s got a good reason for missing.
We’ll give him that.
He’s probably printing something very important at the moment.
Frank
The unfortunate thing is this is the most convenient time for me, and I really don’t want to change our recording time.
Andy
I completely agree with you.
This works out really well for me too.
Frank
And Chris, unfortunately, the reason it’s unfortunate is Chris is up all night because he works all night, and this happens.
So we may have to actually discuss it.
Somewhere not on the air, I guess.
Andy
That works.
It’s all good though.
We’ll miss him.
Frank
Yeah, about as much as we missed you last week.
Oh, I feel so loved.
Oh, it’s so great to be missed.
I’m glad to hear that.
Frank
You definitely took that different from how I meant it, but that’s okay too.
Andy
That’s the only way to get by being your friend, my friend.
Frank
Oh, I see how it is.
I’m the asshole, and Andy’s the…
No, Chris is the peacemaker.
Andy is the…
The know-it-all.
He definitely knows everything.
At least he’s vocal about knowing everything.
Kevin’s the one that actually knows it all, and he doesn’t say anything hardly.
Andy
Yes, he knows better to listen than to speak.
Frank
I wish I could learn that.
Andy
Yeah, me too, man, me too.
But is what it is.
That’s character flaws for you.
Frank
So Andy, since you’ve got two weeks worth of updates…
You want to go first?
Andy
Absolutely.
I have done quite a bit over the past couple weeks here.
Most of it revolving around my big fan project I keep on talking about all the time.
There’s a lot that I have failed on over and over and over to learn how to make my own circuit boards, programming my own microcontrollers to a good quality level and all that.
Right now with my project, I came across…
Let’s see here.
I got my housing print for it, and I think I showed that to you guys.
That came out pretty nice.
My housing and the faceplate for it.
I did that last night.
So it’s ready to go.
I think I’m ready to go with this particular board.
This is the second board that I’ve created.
It’s got 70 solder pins and that’s 70 holes to drill.
So it kind of sucks when you have to iterate from that place because it’s a lot of work.
It takes me a good 20 minutes to drill a board and that’s like constantly flexing your hands with the little minute motions and stuff and it’s uncomfortable to do.
But the last one I did, I wound up having a trace bridge and shorted out my board.
I pushed 12 volts into an analog pin and they don’t like that.
So I let out a lot of the magic smoke and even burnt a hole inside of the IC itself.
It was kind of a neat little one, a neat failure and still seems to function except for that pin and a couple of other surrounding, I think surrounding it physically inside the chip.
I think it toasted quite a bit around it but didn’t toast anything too important.
Either way, it’s probably not a chip.
I didn’t even bother unsoddering it from the board, but I did unsodder the rest of the components so I can reuse them.
But today or last night, I thought I was doing pretty good.
I was starting to make my own ribbon cables.
I just got a tool to be able to crimp JTC connectors, I think is what they’re called, the little white connectors.
And that made it a lot easier.
Gosh, for the last couple of days, I was trying to put those together with just a pair of needle nose and that was not working well.
But now that I got the proper tool, they’re really easy to make, which is kind of nice.
But after I got all that done last night, I threw a couple pictures of you guys out of excitement because I finally got it working off the board with the display screen and with the controller hooked up to it.
Being able to navigate the menus and stuff without it connected to the computer in any way.
And things were working out pretty darn good.
But other than that, sorry, my brain just leaked out of my head.
Other than that, sorry, a lot of stuff going on down here.
Other than that, we went and took the, where was I going with this thought?
I apologize, guys.
I don’t know.
Frank
You were just talking about how much you love your new ribbon cable maker.
Andy
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I got those produced and working well.
And then last night, I left it running to see to make sure it would work long time without resetting or whatnot.
And I woke up this morning, it was like all the buttons were being held down all at once and things just were not working on it anymore.
I discovered one of the problems I was doing is I was using enamel paint for the solder mask, which is, well, I was using enamel paint for the, to etch the board.
So I would, I would paint the entire board.
I would use a laser cutter to, you know, etch off the design in the board and then I’d throw it in the acid.
And then I would take and instead of washing off the board with acetone, like I see everybody do, I decided to use that as the solder mask.
And so I sprayed it again with another coating of enamel paint and, and then used the laser cutter to strip off the paint off the contacts and… or off the pads.
And that seemed to work really good.
And this, I mean, the enamel paint wasn’t the greatest for solder for soldering nearby, but it didn’t really bubble up unless it had a lot of heat on it.
So it was working pretty good as a solder mask.
And last night, I started having a problem with the reset pin on it was being pulled down.
And I thought the internal resistor on my microcontroller, my, the pull-up resistor might have been failing or something like that.
So I added another pull-up resistor to it and it seemed to function fine after that.
But when I woke up this morning, it was like all the buttons were being pushed down.
And so I, I tested some resistance between unused pins on the board and on the microcontroller and found out that on an open microcontroller that’s not soldered to anything on these dev boards, I get X amount of resistance in the mille ohms range.
But when I tested on my board with unconnected pins, I mean, they’re still soldered onto the board, but that pin doesn’t go anywhere.
There’s no trace connected to it.
I get a kilo ohm level resistance, like around 10 to 20 kilo ohms of resistance between pins where mille ohms of resistance through the chip was, you know, originally found.
So my enamel apparently is electrically conductive as it sets or as it cures, or maybe as it stays powered up, it starts to gain in conductivity.
I don’t know.
Either way, today before the podcast, I sat down with some acetone and stripped all the paint off the board.
And my resistance went way up again, pretty close to where it is on an open chip.
So I’m sure there’s still some little bits of paint there, little films, but it’s all within a working range of my board.
So a lesson learned there, there’s a reason why people don’t leave enamel paint on the board after etching it.
And I got to get a proper mask for it.
So and that I haven’t played with, but it shouldn’t be hard.
I’ll have to double check to make sure that the mask can be etched off with the laser cutter, because I don’t want to use the normal methods of doing it where you print your design on a transparency and then use UV light to cure the board.
And that transparency masks out your pads.
That’s all kind of a pain in the butt looking.
I would rather just put it on the whole board and then throw it back in the laser cutter and just let it etch out the pads for me.
That’s been working really, really well.
Frank
I think that you and I found the same video actually, maybe.
That was a fun video for me who doesn’t know anything about making these boards.
It was fun to watch and see how it works.
Andy
Yeah, yeah.
When I was looking up on how to do this and making my plan on how I was going to try it, a lot of them used the toner transfer method and that worked for me in the past.
That’s how I did it.
But I think the toner in my new laser printer here must be different or something, or maybe it doesn’t print as thick or something like that.
That was failing me.
And that’s why we moved to the laser cutter method, which seems to work great.
And that laser cutter has already given itself up to do extra stuff for us on my wife’s cosplay stuff and things like that.
So that was a good buy anyway, despite this project.
Frank
Now, wait a minute.
Didn’t you get it for the cosplay stuff?
So it was giving of extra time to work on your stuff?
Andy
So yeah, so when we originally were thinking of getting it a couple months ago, it was for cosplay related stuff.
And when I saw the people using a laser cutter for making these stuff as well, that kind of led to me wanting to get one, not just the wife, thinking it would be nice to have one for, or to be able to use for cosplay stuff.
So then we when we found a re-manufactured 10 watt laser cutter for 200 bucks on eBay, we went and grabbed it.
So it was a good deal.
Frank
It’s kind of hard to say no at that point, right?
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think we got a good unit.
It’s hard to tell.
I’ve never had one before.
So I don’t know its flaws.
It’s got a lot of wiggle in the cut, the lines that it cuts.
And I kind of been looking into that to see how I can make it operate a little bit, you know, more true.
But in the meantime, I just been cutting really super slow with it.
And that kind of gets rid of the wiggle.
But that might be the problem why it was was put up on eBay in the first place.
I don’t know.
It is built very similar to our printers.
So I should be able to fix whatever’s wrong with it.
The only problem is with the laser cutter is away from the gantry, which would be the pivot point for the head.
There’s, you know, a good 10 inches before you get to the work where it could pivot.
So any tiny vibrations in there is going to be greatly magnified at the very bottom.
When our printers, everything’s a little bit closer to the gantry.
So…
Frank
yeah
Andy
I might, if I can’t figure it out, I think I could always make some modifications to move the whole laser up closer to the gantry.
So the the exit point of the laser, the pivot point as close as I can get that to the gantry itself, the less it will wiggle at the bottom.
If that is a problem with just the nature of the way it’s built or whatever, I don’t know.
It’s something I got to look into more that I haven’t yet.
Frank
Tie rods.
Andy
Yeah, there’s the gantry for it is really, really shallow.
There’s no z control on this printer that I bought.
It’s got a manual z control.
So it’s only x and y driven by stepper motors.
So everything is like the whole thing is only like six inches, no, maybe eight inches tall.
So yeah, the bars won’t really help with that a whole lot.
I think it’s just that it’s mounted clear up.
So any movement, you know, is greatly magnified at the bottom, where the laser is actually making contact with the material, but…
Frank
Duct tape
Andy
Duct tape.
But other than that, I’m hoping by next podcast here, I’ll have my project finally done and in operation.
I mean, I’ve already got the housing printed for it and everything lines up on it.
I just got to finish my problems with the conductivity of my board.
I mean, right before the podcast here, I tested it after getting the paint off of it and it seems to be functioning great.
And I just put some conformal spray on the bottom of the board.
Since I don’t have a proper mask, I figured I should just spray it with the conformal coating and that will keep the copper traces from oxidizing.
And it’s already soldered and everything.
So I’m just going to do that to try to make this iteration of the board work because I don’t want to go through and produce another board because 70 more holes and 70 more pins to solder.
It’s a lot.
Other than that, I did some printing.
I showed you guys a picture of my wife is doing a costume from Demon Slayer, the little girl that’s got the bamboo stick in her mouth.
So I went and designed a stick of bamboo and that’s probably the most organic thing I’ve ever made in SOLIDWORKS.
It turned out pretty good, I think.
It’s got a… it’s printed in PLA, so I get good quality appearance on the print.
The wife went and painted it because I didn’t have any green PLA, so I just printed it out of the white and she painted it green.
And the paint gives it a little bit more of a differing color instead of the solid color, so it makes it look a little bit more real, which is kind of cool.
Frank
It’s got grains in it.
Andy
Yeah, she brushed it, so that kind of gave it that texture, yeah.
Frank
Well, and the lines would give it grains too, though, is kind of what I’m saying.
Andy
The way I printed it would be in the wrong direction there because I printed it so that it was coming up vertical and the grains in bamboo go vertically and I printed it horizontally, the lines horizontally.
Anyway, yeah, that one turned out pretty good.
It’s got a TPU bite block in it so that you can grab it with your teeth and hold on to it.
Kind of looks a little bit more like the anime does, and that one worked out pretty good.
My son had a couple of track pieces that he wanted.
He’s gotten into those little finger skateboard things and he wanted some ramps for it.
I told him, you know, I’ll print whatever you want if you want to design it in your 3D paint program.
And so he tried and he came back to me and said it just doesn’t do what he wants it to do.
And so I told him, okay, well, if you take and draw me a diagram, you know, he’s 10 years old or 11 years old, if you draw me a diagram with dimensional measurements, and I gave him my caliper so he can use it for an idea on how big he wants things, I will make whatever he draws.
And so he put something together on paper and I took it into solid works and designed it specifically to his instructions.
And he didn’t miss anything.
So I was kind of proud of him for that, printed them off out of a three color changing PLA stuff that we got because Chris’s PLA looks so beautiful on the stuff he prints.
We got some of that.
So I printed it off in that and who’s been loving that?
It came out really nice too.
I love having a 3D printed kind of stuff with the kids.
It’s great.
Frank
Yeah, looking at his diagram, he covered everything.
Yeah, even the the arc is like an ovoid complex arc and it he got really technical with all those little bits of it.
That’s it’s impressive.
Andy
And that was only having to tell him once, which I’m quite proud of him for.
And I think it’s sitting down when he sees me do this kind of stuff.
I’ve got dimensional measurements all over the parts when I’m designing it.
And he just tried to copy that, I think, but he he nailed it with exactly what he needs to do.
He wants, I mean, 10 year old wants to design roller coasters when he gets older.
That could be a 10 year old dream or whatever, but he’s well on his way to engineer kind of status, which I would love for him to become an engineer.
That’s something I would have loved to do growing up, you know, but we’ll see how that turns out.
Again, he’s only 10.
So there’s a lot of variability now.
Frank
Yeah, there’s plenty of need for options.
But I feel like also he’s got many more options than any of us really had at his age for stuff like this.
Andy
That’s what we’re supposed to do, right?
We just try to do better than our parents did for us and not saying anything bad about how our parents did.
Frank
No, they did their best.
And, you know, I say that, but my dad brought home mastercam when I was the same age as your son.
And that’s how I learned the Cartesian plane.
It’s just that, you know, I didn’t have a concept of what it could do better at the time.
And the 3D print is great for that because he can visualize it and then see the actual thing.
Andy
Yeah
Kevin
yeah.
Andy
Yeah, that’s true.
But we’ll see where that leads.
I think all you can do is just throw options at them and see what sticks, right?
Kevin
Yeah
Andy
pretty much.
But yeah, that’s been my last couple of weeks here.
I apologize for missing last week’s podcast.
I really had a lot of pent up talking that I needed to do.
And now that I’m here, I’m kind of brain dead.
So never fails, I suppose.
As soon as the podcast is over, I’ll remember everything I wanted to say.
Of course, you know, that’s how it works.
Frank
That’s the way they say it goes.
Kevin
You should write it down, like make notes, and then you’ve got like, you know, like we started trying to do at the beginning.
Andy
Yeah, with the bullet points.
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah, organize your thoughts and make sure you don’t forget to talk about anything that you wanted to.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah, that works.
That works.
So I just got word that Chris is actually ill.
Frank
Oh, so it’s not so much that he slept in.
Andy
And that’s why he’s not going to join us.
Yeah, he’s got a good excuse.
He’s not feeling the greatest.
And there has been a bug going around up here too.
So I know it passed through our family.
It’s probably something similar to his.
We both got kids at school.
And those suckers are a little germ factory stuff.
Frank
Kind of like a kind of like a cold, except for maybe a little less severe.
Andy
Yeah, at least that’s what kind of went through my time.
A lot of coughing, coughing has been really bad.
But it’s the nice productive cough.
And when we tested for COVID, it’s not COVID.
So it’s something else.
Frank
Okay.
Yeah.
We had that going through the condo here too.
I don’t go anywhere.
So I blame my wife.
Andy
She’s the conveyance of disease.
Frank
That’s how I got COVID three times.
Andy
Was it really three times that you got that crap?
Frank
All of them after I got the the vaccine too.
No, one of them was before two of them after.
Andy
Really?
Yeah, that’s not fun stuff.
I remember when it passed through our family is right before the Omnicron variant was like a week before the Omnicron variant was announced.
And all of our symptoms were very similar to the Omnicron.
So I think we that’s the one we had when it passed through our family.
But thankfully, we haven’t had it since.
And there were no symptoms that stuck around.
It was just it was kind of a fever that went through the family.
It was definitely a lot scarier than the actual disease was in the end.
So that was good.
Frank
The one I find interesting is everybody who resisted the vaccine are the ones that are spreading it now.
Andy
Yeah, no.
Frank
Like big time.
Yeah, it was really hard not to say I told you so when I hear about it.
Andy
Yeah, we got to figure out a different way to deal with with them.
And they got to figure out a different way to deal with us.
Because right now, they’re so polarized, polarized, it’s causing way too many problems.
Frank
Indeed.
I mean, we say that.
But 100 years ago, when the Spanish flu was going around, the same thing happened.
Except there wasn’t the technology to push through an antivirus or
Kevin
a vaccine
Frank
vaccine.
And so they dealt with it for was it five years that everyone was kind of terrified of that?
So yeah, we got it much better than we did 100 years ago, but the same political stuff happened.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, very true.
So that’s been my world.
I think I don’t really have it.
I’m sure if anything comes up, I’ll blur it in during your guys’s opportunity talk.
So
Frank
that’s the way it happens, usually.
Kevin
Yeah, it’s all right.
Frank
Kevin, you’re working on anything this week?
Kevin
I did.
So I had mentioned in the podcast last week that I was going to be printing another rack.
So I got that squared away and done and rather… this…
So the last time I printed these two racks, I, I designed the tabs of the rack pieces.
And then I said, okay, well, since I said that these tabs are supposed to be two millimeters by one millimeter, that’s what I’m going to make the holes for the support pieces on the ends and the sides.
And then they ended up not fitting.
And I had to trim them and stuff.
And so this time I printed up the rack pieces.
And then I got my caliper out and measured the size of the, the slots, the dimensions there, and went into free CAD and made the proper adjustments.
And well, it, it goes together a lot easier when the holes are big enough.
Frank
Right.
Kevin
You don’t have to trim the things.
So I made another two rack and, and then I also had attempted printing the headless horseman that I made on Titancraft.
I did that twice.
The first attempt, there was no body on, on the thing.
So like you’ve got the horseman on the horse.
And there was, there was just no, no human form on the horse.
And the horse was missing everything from the neck up.
Frank
That becomes a problem.
So was it a torsoless horseman at that point?
Like were the legs still there?
Kevin
I think the legs were there.
Yeah.
Frank
So it’s a torsoless horseman.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
On a headless horse.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
That’s terrifying.
Kevin
Yeah.
So, so I went into Chitubox and I made some adjustments and I, I tried printing again.
And this time it was largely successful.
The, the horse was mostly there, but on, on one side there was a big chunk missing from the body of the horse.
And one of the legs was missing from the horse.
And there was more of the horseman’s body on the horse, but still not complete.
So just before we got going, I adjusted more.
So I usually have, when I set these things up in the slicer, I usually have them.
So their back is angled toward the build plate so that the supports are along the backside, not the front side, so that any bumps left over from where the supports separate from the model are hidden.
Frank
Right.
That seems right.
Kevin
I would, but I was looking at things and you know, with this horse, it’s actually, I made it a nightmare.
So it’s got flames coming up around the backs of its hooves and the, the main is not hair, it’s fire.
The tail is fire and the horseman is carrying a flaming sword and everything.
And I thought, you know, with all this fire and the spikes from the fire that are actually the flames, it would make a lot more sense, I think, to have this angled forward instead of backward.
And so that’s what I did.
I set it up so it’s angled forward and I’m going to, I’m, I’m, I’ve got it printing right now.
Frank
Just so it’s less complex where it’s trying to hold on.
That makes sense to me.
Andy
Yeah.
Kevin
And I also noticed that part of the problem, I think, is that Chitubox is really good at making the supports curve around the, the model so that they’re not touching it as much as possible.
And so it’s got kind of a large base on this.
And so Chitubox had these long, long supports coming around the base at an angle.
And I think what was part of, part of the problem here is that the, the angle of it, there’s, there’s some springiness to the support.
So it’s not going to be as effective at holding onto the cured resin as it pulls from the FEP because it’s going, there’s too much give.
And so I think that was also having a huge effect on things until it just ultimately failed.
And so I went in and I changed as many of those supports as the program would let me to being straight up and down so that they’re coming off of the base and just going straight up so that they’re going, they’re, they’re not going to have as much springiness to them.
Frank
Right.
Kevin
So I think that will help.
Frank
Is there a way with Chitubox to do the maximum angle of your supports like there is with Cura?
Kevin
Oh, there probably is.
Frank
I wonder how much looking into that might be worth your time.
Kevin
I think probably quite a bit actually.
Andy
that would give you more options to have it automatic instead of having to go in and affect each one manually.
Kevin
Right.
And the other thing is, like I said, I changed as many of the supports as the program would allow to do that.
There were some that it’s like, no, you do not get to move this one onto the base.
Frank
This one is central.
You don’t get to touch this one.
Andy
I can’t wait till I can get into that with you as far as using that particular slicer.
I still got a lot of projects in the way before I get out the SLA printer though.
Kevin
Yeah.
And then I keep meaning to tell my son.
My younger son, Kyle, likes to, he’s dead set on making games, which is great.
I say more power to you.
But for example, a couple of Christmases ago, all he wanted for Christmas was some thicker board like you might use for framing a photograph or mounting a photograph so that he could make his own game.
And I keep meaning to tell him that he can feel free to use either of my pre printers for making game pieces.
And I’ve got a whole bunch of STLs and I backed a project on Kickstarter weeks ago called Meeplify where it’s just got a whole bunch of different printable meeples.
I need to tell him, yeah, go ahead, make your game.
And he’s made a dice game even that he wanted to make cards and he couldn’t figure out a way to do it for free.
Because he’s like, all the card making things that I found are, they want you to pay for it.
And I don’t want to have to pay for something because it was expensive and stuff.
I was like, dude, Excel or Google Sheets
Frank
card stock, or photo paper.
Kevin
Yeah, get some card stock or photo paper and then go into Excel and you can make your card template and then do front and back.
And there you go.
Frank
Well, and that’s how we did our card game way back in the day is just fronted it on, was it card stock Andy or was it the photo paper?
I don’t even remember now.
Andy
Yeah, we used card stock for it originally.
And then we wound up going all out when because it was really turning into a fun game that we are using a lot.
And I got some and a laminator and ran them through that.
Frank
For anybody listening, what we did is we basically built our own expansion pack for Uno.
Then we called it two.
And basically, would you say we doubled the size of a standard Uno deck?
Andy
Yeah, it was nothing but inside jokes for us.
And it was a great game for us.
And looking back on it now, whenever we would sit down and try to show someone else how to play it, I really understand their confusion.
Yeah, because it wouldn’t be fun because you’re missing all of the inside stuff that made it what it was.
But yeah, it was a great game and nothing more than an excuse to sit around and talk and hang out.
But yeah, we still got it somewhere.
And Chris’s family got really into all the different kinds of Uno’s that there are out there.
Frank
And you sent me the files for it at some point.
I was going to play with it and see if I could print off my own copy.
But yeah
Andy
I’d have to look back over each one to even know how to play it too.
It was so complicated.
Frank
And I don’t feel like we ever really documented the different rules, at least not well.
Like I know the eights had rules, like some of them would, everybody would pass their hand to the left or everyone would pass their hand to the right.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Special reasons for someone to draw cards or discard all but one.
Andy
Yeah, it was good.
Frank
And we did have a balanced balance.
Andy
Yeah, it was well balanced.
Frank
You could win randomly two hands after you had the most cards at the table.
Andy
No kidding, right?
Frank
And we would play usually about six of us, right?
We would play easily for an hour and only get like two rounds in.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah, sometimes the conversation would just take over and we’d have to figure out, okay, whose turn was it again?
Frank
Who went last?
Yeah, there was that aspect of it too.
But that was the point in the end.
Yeah, it was the company, not the game.
Andy
But still fun making your own games.
It’s great that he’s getting into that.
It’d be, like you say, it’d be nice if he’d take advantage a little bit more of what you’re giving him option-wise to do it with.
Kevin
Well, I think, like I said, a lot of that is lack of information because I keep meaning to tell him, by the way, you have this at your disposal, feel free.
Frank
I imagine at some point, he already kind of intuits it too.
He’s just not sure where he wants to use it because…
Kevin
Well, I haven’t told him that I have access to all these Meeple STLs.
Frank
Well, there’s that.
I was just thinking, you know, your other son spends so much time utilizing the resources.
I don’t think that your younger son would feel left out necessarily.
I know I expect he would ask rather than just fume about it.
He doesn’t have access to, you know?
Kevin
Oh yeah, he would definitely ask if it occurred to him that he had that option available.
Frank
It has to occur to him first.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
Fair.
Kevin
And he’s got ADHD, and so he’ll sometimes be hyper-focused on it.
But not only is he hyper-focused on getting the game made, he’ll be hyper-focused on the way he thinks it needs to be done, and so he doesn’t really think of alternatives.
Frank
Little details become super important.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
That’s fair.
Andy
True, true.
Well, what about you, Frank?
What have you been up to?
Frank
Well, last week, Andy, you asked before we started, and maybe there was one thing.
I struggled with the under extrusion with the PETG.
Andy
Yes.
Frank
And then I slowed it down to 20 millimeters per second and got a really good, solid print from that dragon from my mother-in-law, which she absolutely loved.
Andy
That’s a great to hear.
Frank
And then I switched to my PLA and was fighting it until yesterday.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
And I finished up the spool.
It was still under extruding.
It was irritating as hell.
And I opened my last box of the PLA, and it’s like, this is darker than what I’ve been working with.
Have I been trying to take my crappy spool of gray and make it work without realizing that it’s the crappy spool?
I dug into my buckets, and it’s like, no, I have a whole other spool of what’s supposed to be the good PLA.
And I need to start back from zero because I’ve changed all kinds of stuff, trying to get this other one to work.
And with all of my updates to Marlin and all that, I really kind of feel the need to recalibrate from zero.
Andy
Yeah, that sounds right.
Frank
And so I’m back to that.
I’m recalibrating everything from zero.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
Trying to get this out.
Andy
That’s great to hear, because this is a problem that needs to be fixed, and it’s affecting your ability to print and just finding what is wrong so that you can fix it is like the major part of the whole thing.
Frank
And all of the calibration specs on it, like, I can’t go any higher.
I tried a temperature tower starting at 260, and it gets like two layers, and then it heats stops.
So I can’t go any higher.
The 250 is, you know, the max temperature I can get there, and I wasn’t getting good prints at lower than 250.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
So like, and then my flow…
Andy
250 is so hot.
But then too, you were saying that your temperature was about 10 degrees off anyway.
Frank
Yeah, I still haven’t been able to find a way to fix that.
Andy
You might have to swap out your thermal resistor.
Frank
Yeah, I’m to the point of looking at new thermistors.
And if I’m going to do that, I almost just want to buy the whole new hotend and heat exchanger.
Andy
Yeah
Frank
I mean, I’ve seen some that are like 20 bucks, and some of them that come with the dual gear Swiss dual gear extruder, and they’re like $90 that I don’t have.
Andy
Yeah, I hear you.
Frank
So I was tending kind of that way.
And then I realized that I was using the crappy spool.
And so I’m going to see if I can get this dialed in and just acknowledge that my my hotend is going to be off until I can either get it calibrated correctly or get it replaced.
Andy
Well, that’s one thing on Marlin that I think they they like are just going off of the specs of the thermal resistor itself.
I don’t think there really is much of a calibration for the thermal resistor
Frank
which I mean, there was a I wish there was a way to fix that.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
And like in my projects and stuff, there’s a lot of variables that goes into the resistance from it.
I mean, even the length of wire is going to change the resistance on the resistor.
So you should have to have a way to calibrate it, even if it’s just something as simple as an offset.
Frank
Right.
If I could set the offset, if I could offset my nozzle temperature by that 10 degrees, then I would have at least a more precise temperature zone.
And, you know, I’ve got the code.
I mean, I guess I could dig into it and see what my options are there.
Because the profiles for the thermistor have got to be based off of something.
Maybe there’s something I can tweak in there.
Andy
Oh, yeah, I’m sure.
I mean, you got that, like you say, you got the code for it.
So you could just I mean, even as far down as the actual analog read on the pin, you can adjust it from there if you really needed to.
But no one Marlin, it’s got to be there.
It’s got to be buried in there somewhere.
It’s too complete of a package to not have that, I think.
Frank
Right.
Well, and maybe it’s just something that they haven’t encountered often enough to justify building in the feature, you know, going from 1.2 to 2.2 gave me all kinds of options that I don’t think were even available with one.
So…
Andy
I agree.
I still haven’t changed mine.
I know I said I was going to that last couple of podcasts ago, and I want to, but I haven’t done mine either.
Moved up to the 2.2.
I’m still rocking 2.1.
Well, and 2.0, excuse me, about 2.1, right?
Frank
Yes, it’s point one.
You’re right.
And honestly, since I got a good build on there, I’ve only been changing quality of life stuff.
Like there’s the, uh, they’ve added the option for custom scripts.
And the only one that I use is the park script.
And I had to choose a good position for the nozzle to end.
It’s like, why don’t I just put it where I like to stop it when I’m changing the nozzle or the filament or something like that, which is right in the middle of the Y.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
No, the middle of the X and about halfway up on the build volume.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
And that way I’ve got good, you know, access to the bottom and it’s in a good place for me to feed in the new filament.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
And then just recently, I decided to have it put the build plate all the way forward so I could access it without messing with the gantry or, you know, turning off the steppers and then manually moving it.
Andy
Oh, I got you into that, too.
Frank
I mean, it’s a good point, you know, if I’m not manually moving it, then I’m not wearing out the gears or the motors, because it’s not much, right?
But when it happens often enough, it has a cumulative effect.
Andy
I think it’d be more damaging to the belts than the motors.
Those motors are just inductors with a bearing in the middle of it.
They’re so simple.
Those stepper motors can deal with a huge amount of heat, a huge amount of cold.
They’re so resistant.
I don’t think you’d hurt the motor.
Frank
Okay.
So from the motor to the nozzle, there’s something that’s going to wear out, though.
And when it’s working the way it’s designed to, it’s going to wear out a little bit slower.
Kevin
Yeah.
You got a point, because when you pull it on the belt, you are pulling on the shaft itself.
You’re pulling the shaft towards it.
So you are putting more of a pressure on the bearing in the motor.
So I agree, you actually probably could do more damage to the bearing.
It might be minuscule amount, but I bet there is more wear by doing it by hand than running it on its own.
Frank
And just the cumulative effect, that’s what we’re trying to, what I’m talking about, trying to cancel out.
So, I mean, it’s going to break.
The belt is going to break before the motor.
It’s going to wear out.
But if I can make it last as long as possible, then everybody’s happy.
Andy
Yeah.
And if you do have to replace the motor, and they’re not exactly expensive, NEMA 17s are one of the cheapest steppers you can buy.
Frank
So I’m a cheap bastard, though.
I don’t want to spend money if I don’t have to.
Andy
Yeah.
In some ways.
I say that, and think back, I did some frugal things that you thought were weird, and you always did frugal things, and then spent money that I thought was weird, and it’s the human condition, right?
Andy
I agree.
And it’s all based on our skill levels, too.
Like, example, this last weekend, I decided we were going to get the windows redone on the house, and I’m going to pay somebody to come do it, because I don’t trust myself doing windows.
I’m sure Chris would turn his nose up at that idea really quick, because he’s got that skill and knows how much money I’d be wasting doing that.
So it’s all about your skill level, I think, when it comes to how much money you’re willing to spend on stuff.
Frank
I say skill level, and lately I’ve been appreciating interest in doing.
Andy
Really?
Frank
Yeah.
I mean, there’s a lot that I feel like I can do, like I can figure it out, and a lot that I go, that’s just another thing on the list.
Do I really want to put this on the list, or should I just buy it?
Andy
Yeah, I agree.
I agree with you.
My whole circuit board thing has been kind of along that whole thing.
I could just purchase the boards and have them made for me, but it’s kind of like, I want that skill.
That’s when I’m willing to spend the effort to learn, but then a lot of other things, you know, I ain’t going to sit here with a pair of needle nose pliers to do those plugs.
I’m just going to blow the money on a tool that will do it for me.
Frank
Well, and so you get into the specialization bit, but if you did the design and sent it in, and had to wait for two weeks for the turnaround, just to learn that your design was bad?
Andy
Yeah, no kidding.
Like with the bridge that you were talking about, then you’ve got to redesign, and then wait another two weeks for six boards, just to find out that it’s still the wrong design, maybe, you know.
Andy
You got a point.
You got a very good point.
Frank
And doing it this way, you can iterate, you can learn, maybe not use that pin anymore.
And once you get the good design, like we’ve talked before, then if you decided to go into production with it, if you were to make that decision, then you could pay somebody else to build the boards for relatively inexpensive and know that they would work.
Yeah
Andy
you got a good point.
Yeah, it’s definitely which battles you want to choose to be cheap on, and which ones you don’t.
One thing that’s good about us is we actively make that decision to be cheap where we can, so that we can splurge where we feel the need to.
And I think that’s great.
In itself, I think is a money skill as an adult, you know.
You don’t see a lot of other people have.
Frank
I mean, I remember being told very young, the best way to save money is to spend less than you make.
It’s like, well, yeah, that makes sense.
How do you do that?
Andy
Yeah, no kidding.
Kevin
Right.
That’s the challenge.
Frank
And nobody can tell you which way will work better for you because nobody knows, including you.
So you got to gain the experience.
Andy
Yeah, exactly.
Frank
Actually, my wife and I were talking this morning about biohacking.
I’m reading a book from a guy.
The book is Bulletproof Diet.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
He’s got some kind of far out ideas that I may or may not actually, like using butter in coffee.
Andy
That’d be weird.
Frank
It was weird for him.
I haven’t gotten to that point in the story yet, but you know, he prequeled it.
And he was on a, it’s not a safari, he was on in South America and they brewed the coffee and then they put yaks butter in it.
Chris
Okay.
Frank
Yaks.
Some animal.
They put butter in it and he was resistant the same way I am and the same way you are.
And they drank it and he’s like, this is amazing.
Andy
Got to admit it’s not something I’ve ever tried.
Frank
What was that, Kev?
Kevin
Butter makes everything better.
Frank
That’s true.
Actually, a big thing about this diet is because so many of the proteins and hormones in our body are actually built off of fat molecules.
It’s better to consume the good fats than it is to remove them all from your diet.
And he actually tried to do the “bad” diet with, you know, lots of animal fats and proteins and all that.
And he did it for, I think he said the initial experiment was supposed to be two months and he ended up doing it for two years because he kept losing weight.
It was expensive.
I mean, when you’re buying the high fatty meat, beef and steak and all that is not cheap.
Anyway, how did I get here?
Biohacking.
There’s neural hacking, I’m sure, would be a subcategory of that where you’re experimenting and figuring out how to do the thing.
And the only way you’re going to do that is by experimentation and experience because I can’t give you my brain.
You know, you’re not going to learn from every little iterative decision that I’ve encountered in the way that I have.
Andy
That is true.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
But yeah, back to what I did this week real quick.
I designed a little while ago.
I’ve got this little Nerf six shooter.
And it’s from their zombie apocalypse.
I can’t even remember.
Anyway, I got it at work a while ago.
Tech companies like to play with Nerf guns.
Yeah, just to keep the edge off the office.
So I got it eight years ago or so.
And about a year ago, I started thinking, hey, I would like to have a holster for this because I also have a Nerf rifle and I don’t want to carry them when he can’t, right?
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
So I designed the shape for me to just drop the pistol into and didn’t, you know, I got distracted by other projects.
Well, this year for Halloween, I basically committed to the idea of doing a steampunk costume.
Andy
Oh, fun.
Frank
I’ve got an old top hat that I got from the Halloween store.
It’s got goggles on it and some gears, but it works real good with the steampunk theme.
And then if I have this pistol, that’ll be, you know, right, add to that little western aspect to it.
And my wife’s grandfather served in World War II and I inherited his trench coat, his green woolen trench coat.
So I’m gonna wear it and, you know, with the beard and the, I’ll do the handlebar mustache and all that.
I think it’ll be a fun costume.
Kevin
Definitely.
Frank
If I can get the pistol holster to work in the next 10 days.
Andy
The image that you showed of it so far looked like it was lining up well on the gun itself.
Frank
Oh, yeah.
The first print, I actually, it was from the crappy plastic.
Okay.
And I accidentally pushed the gun through it.
But I do have the outside of the frame here.
It does kind of look like you were printing with a flow rate of like 20% on it.
And it’s just the outside.
So it’s actually gonna, this was just an interference print, and it’s actually supposed to come up to about the pistol loop or the trigger loop.
But just to get all the shapes where they were supposed to be, it fit great until I started messing with it and broke off the bottom part.
Andy
That’s a great use of that material to kind of use it up and to use it as interference fit material.
Frank
Yeah, if only I’d done that on purpose.
Looking at this though now, maybe I could take off that bottom part and just have the tip of the thing sticking through.
Andy
Tip of the gun sticking through.
That would make it look kind of cool.
Frank
But it could work.
That’s how a lot of stuff ends up, huh?
Andy
Oh, yes.
That’s my life.
Frank
Yeah, I wish I could do more on purpose.
Andy
Don’t we all.
Hey, at least being able to recognize when a whoopsy is a good thing is skill on its own.
Kevin
Indeed it is.
Actually, that’s where my joke.
You guys have all heard me use it at least once, where something will happen and it’s amazing and I look at you and go now do it again on purpose.
Kevin
Yeah
Andy
yes.
No kidding.
Frank
Because the fluke is awesome, but when you can do it on purpose, that is kind of amazing.
Andy
Yes, agreed.
Frank
That’s why I admire gymnasts and all that because they live in a world of chaos that is on purpose and it just blows my mind.
Yeah, anyway, that’s that’s what I did this last week.
Andy
Any plans for the upcoming week?
Frank
Mostly just trying to finish this holster and get my my printer calibrated on the correct PLA.
Andy
That’ll be good.
It would be nice to be able to see if you print reliably for a while.
Probably make you feel like you’ve got your printer back once you’ve figured that out too.
Frank
Yeah.
There was a couple of things that I did find on Thingiverse.
Halloween kind of Halloween anyway.
Models.
There’s one that’s a skull, but it’s got like an octopus tentacles coming up from underneath it and wrapping around it.
I thought that was cool.
That’d be fun for Halloween.
I found a few more.
That’s the one that stands out though.
I haven’t gone back to look at them since I realized where I erred.
Andy
Okay
Frank
my focus shifted.
Andy
I actually went through Thingiverse the other day here.
One of the housings I was going to build, I didn’t want to just a clamshell housing for a project.
I didn’t want to screw together.
I was looking for other ways people have, you know, locked clamshell pieces together.
I went to Thingiverse and looking up project boxes and things like that.
How did other people do some of this kind of stuff?
I did find one that was really neat that I wound up using on my fish tank fan project today that I think I’m going to use more often.
That was the screen.
My screen mounting up to the face of the lid of the box.
The way you did it is a track right below the screen that can slide out a plate of plastic that can hold the screen into place.
It’s kind of hard to describe.
You guys can see that I got this plate that slides in place behind the screen that holds the screen in place.
That made it so I don’t have to glue anything in to be able to hold the screen in place.
I thought that was a really kind of a neat way to handle mounting that.
Frank
That’s the same way I did the toolbox for my micro screwdrivers.
Andy
Yeah, I kind of like that.
I think I’m going to put that method in the old toolbox of ways to be able to put those together.
But as far as mounting the boxes together, I still wound up just going with a screw mount design.
You can kind of see here.
I got the lid and the screw holes that you could just screw it together with.
But I was hoping to come across a little bit of a different way to do it.
that was easy to design.
Clips and things can be a little bit hard to design because their interference fits.
So you really got to print out examples, testing the clips and things like that.
It would be nice just to have a, it just works way of doing it.
Frank
Like the slide lid.
Now, I raw designed everything and I didn’t test it until I actually had it all out.
And I probably spent, I don’t know, an hour and a half, maybe two, cleaning and shaping that lid so that it would have just the right resistance.
Kevin
Okay.
Frank
And that was preventatively expensive to me.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
That was a lot of time for that stupid little lid.
But it’s also thick.
That lid is three millimeters thick.
And it looks like the lid that you created is maybe one.
Andy
I made it two layers thick.
Frank
Okay.
So…
Andy
0.4 millimeters.
Yeah.
Frank
Almost a half millimeter.
That’s tiny.
There’s so much or so little surface area for it to drag on.
Plus, it’ll flex a lot easier than my lid would.
Andy
Yes, exactly.
Yeah.
The one I designed was meant to flex because it was meant to hold pressure against the circuit board.
So I did build it to be able to do that.
The track is extra deep so that if it gets pushed out, it can still have track to be in and things like that.
But yeah, the one you did is, I mean, even though they’re the same kind of concept, yours is very different from the little one I did here.
And it does need to have a better fit.
Frank
It’s very rigid.
Yeah.
And just sliding.
It didn’t slide very well at first.
So I, like I said, I spent a lot of time on that.
And I also didn’t know as much.
If I was to redesign it now, I’d probably design it differently, not that I think about it.
Andy
I could see that.
I also like when you make tracks like that, you can get away with the, if you’re printing it so it’s up, the upper track, you can chamfer at a pretty good angle.
So you still don’t need supports on the track.
And it will still give you that fit if you chamfer the lid as well.
And it looks good when the lid’s out to see that chamfer, even though it’s more of a, not a cosmetic thing, it’s a way to get around not using supports for the track.
I’d hate to have to dig supports out of a track like that.
Oh, that would be a nightmare.
Frank
Yeah.
And while I’m not afraid of supports, and maybe that should have changed my mind, but it didn’t.
Andy
I know for most of the stuff I do, I typically just use screws.
It’s easy enough in the CAD software to put the pieces together in CAD and make the screw holes and mounts at the same time with the pieces already together.
So everything already is lining up and working out that way.
And that way you don’t need an interference fit print, especially if you use like the same kind of screws.
I’ve got three different kinds of screws I use for everything.
And I’ve gotten and I’ve went and I took those screws and I figured the best size and interference fit for them.
So I know how to design other things.
So I know exactly how big to make the part that the threads get cut into or how big to make it.
So it’s the shank of the screw fits through without friction.
And if I’m burying the screw into something, how big to make the hole for the head and all that kind of stuff.
And so now whenever I use the only thing, I just put those numbers in and it’s good to go.
You don’t have to worry about figuring that stuff out.
Frank
But I do remeasure every time myself.
But do you remember the the mounting block for my proximity sensor on the filament?
Andy
Yes.
Yes.
That looked great.
Frank
That was all very much the same idea.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
And now that I think about it, I designed it so I had to be assembled a certain way so that the screws would not interfere with it.
But
Andy
yeah, yeah.
Frank
Yeah, it was a good one.
Andy
That is true.
That is true.
And being able to do stuff in CAD too is saves you a lot of time.
Let me point out one thing that I did.
So my box here has just a very flat lid.
And the screw holes are near the top of the box.
And they don’t go all the way down.
They’re sitting up near the surface.
And then at the bottom of the box, I got more screw holes to hold the circuit board.
Sorry, I got garbage in this box here.
But when I was building this box, I built a piece that looked like my circuit board so that in the extremes of the height of the components and the size of the board, so I can make sure that I could fit the board in between the top ones and the bottom ones and still be able to get it in place.
And so I sat for a minute in CAD with an option turned on.
So pieces, so when you move pieces against each other, they collide and try to wiggle this piece in place to see if I could in fact actually fit it in there with all the stuff it needs to go through, because it needs to go in at a funky angle to actually get in there.
And achieving all of that in CAD software before you ever print anything, I’m sure saved me many iterations time.
I mean, I preach making assemblies a lot when you’re designing your own stuff and test fitting things in assembly mode, as well as making the components that you’re interfering with in the design as well so that you can make sure that those are lining up.
Because if they don’t, either the part you designed that you aren’t printing is wrong or the part you are printing is wrong.
But either way, it’s a red flag to saving yourself from an iteration and wasting plastic and filling up the landfills and whatnot.
Frank
And that’s really the wonderful thing about all this awesome technology that we have.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Think back to Blacksmiths, I’m sure iterated a lot to get good fits on anything.
Kevin
Probably.
Frank
Yeah
Andy
it definitely makes sense why it took us so long to start doing line work.
Like, well, what’s that called?
Production lines?
There’s a word for that.
What am I missing?
We started doing it when we started making cars down here and it kind of changed everything.
The production lines.
Frank
Yeah.
Assembly.
Andy
Assembly lines.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it makes sense why it took us so long to develop that method of building stuff because you can’t make the same thing identical every single time like that.
You do have to, like you say, the Blacksmith would have to come out and occasionally reshape a small part of it or something because it’s not fitting right or something, you know?
Frank
Well, and the concept for that was interchangeable parts back before the American Revolution.
We just couldn’t deploy it the way we do now because we’ve got such wide reaching standards on all of these things like screw sizes.
Andy
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
That is true.
Frank
Well…
Andy
I had a weird thought that I wanted to research yesterday that I never did and that was how do they create screws that have like torques screws and Allen wrench screws?
How do they create the head hole?
I don’t know how they do that.
With Phillips and flatheads, I thought they just cut the screw.
I highly doubt they have a die that they’re forging it in.
I’m pretty certain it’s just squished into the shape and then they cut the slots for it.
Frank
With the Phillips head?
With the Phillips head, most of those are recessed and they don’t go to the edge.
I would expect that to be cast in or dyed.
With a flathead, you’re right.
You know, you just cut into it.
I imagine with the hex, it’s the same idea with the torques even because it would be really hard to machine all those little things on the inside of that hole.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
I expect it’s either cast or dyed.
Andy
Yeah.
I’m just one of those little things where you just sit in there doing some project or whatever and you just kind of realize, I have no idea how they do this.
Frank
Just for my own curiosity.
Andy
Yeah
Frank
I hear you.
Andy
I don’t know how they make screws.
I’m going to have to do that.
I’m sure they cut the threads or the threads are casted and they’re sharpened with cutting or whatever, but the heads, they got me a little confused.
I like that kind of curiosity.
I hope that kind of curiosity never leaves.
Frank
My wife got me a shirt that says, I’m not procrastinating.
I’m on side quests.
Andy
I like that one a lot.
Kevin
Yes.
Andy
That’s my life, period.
nothing but a side quest.
Frank
Well, it’s like the side quest, I went on changing the clutch out of my car.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
Got it to the point where all but the driver’s side axle was out of the transmission.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
And couldn’t figure it out.
Chris couldn’t figure it out.
We tried slide hammers, prying, and it was loose in the what’s it called?
Yeah, but the differential has a socket on it.
And then there’s a three thing that goes into that part of the differential.
That’s what we needed to get out.
But because it was designed to be flexible so that your tire could bounce, we couldn’t get it out and didn’t want to, I mean, I tried to take off the boot and it wouldn’t get through the boot.
Andy
Okay.
Yeah.
Frank
So we tried prying and all kinds of stuff.
It wasn’t coming out.
So we decided, oh, let’s try to push it out the other side.
Well, the differential has a rod that goes right through the middle of it.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
So that the spider gear is the same on both sides, right?
And so what we ended up doing was we bought some steel pipe from the hardware store and created a push bar that went around that pipe or that bar inside to push out the other the other drive shaft.
Yeah.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
That’s what it was.
It’s a CV joint.
And it was such a pain in the butt.
Yeah.
Talk about side quests.
I’m no stranger to side quests.
I like them sometimes.
My wife doesn’t like them because it means that I take three days to do a job that should take an hour.
But
Andy
what was it that Malcolm in the middle had it where he was asked to change a light bulb and by the end of all the side quests, he’s like, what, doing some work on the car?
I think it was or something like that.
Frank
Chris is the one who remembers it better than anyone.
And I think he was working on the car.
Andy
Yeah.
Andy
And she says, I thought I told you to change the light bulb.
And he says, what does it look like I’m doing?
He’s working on the car.
And it makes perfectly set perfect sense.
But
Frank
how he got there, because you saw how he got there, it makes sense.
On the other hand, it sounds like you’re living in the, what is that song?
And there’s a hole in the bucket.
Because it’s just a circular issue.
I did this to fix this.
And then I did this to fix that.
And then I did this other thing to fix this other thing.
And I’m all the way back around to I need this thing to work so that I can fix the thing, to fix the thing, to fix the other thing, to fix the hole in the bucket.
Andy
And that’s the way some of these projects go, that’s for sure.
Frank
And that’s when you, you just spend the money to buy a new bucket.
Andy
Yeah, yeah.
Frank
It’s less expensive than the axe.
It’s less expensive than the axe.
Andy
Yes.
Kevin
Another one of my favorite quotes, though, speaking of all this is ladies, look, when a man says he’s going to do something, he’s going to do it.
There’s no reason to remind him about it every six months.
Andy
I like that.
Frank
Isn’t that one in Chris’s shirts?
I swear, I saw him wear that shirt.
I think that’s one of Chris’s shirts.
One of my favorites from Chris, I believe.
Andy
Yeah, that’s definitely something I could see him wanting to own for sure.
Frank
His honey-do list is longer than mine will ever be.
Andy
Yeah, he’s got an infinite one.
Everybody gives that poor guy so much stuff to do.
Frank
And that’s with him learning how to say no in the last decade.
Andy
Yeah, yeah.
He’s definitely made a lot of progress in that, that’s for sure.
Because people just used to just straight up take advantage of the poor guy.
Frank
Yeah.
Well, that’s why I liked being around.
If he ever called me to help him, I was happy to help him because I knew if I didn’t, he was going to do it alone.
Andy
Yes, yes.
No kidding.
No kidding.
And whenever anybody was talking about asking Chris for help or something like that, we always had to remind them, hey, well, make sure, you know, ask him what he’s got going on first before you put more on his plate.
Because, you know, he’s so capable and skilled.
He’s got a skill that none of us have.
Yeah.
Frank
We made the point that he’s the peacemaker.
He’s in the middle of like seven kids.
Is it seven?
Anyway.
Andy
He’s got a huge family.
Yeah.
Frank
So he’s accustomed to being the peacemaker.
And those of us who love him and care about him are trying to block.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
And we’ve all seen him lose his mind.
And it’s scary.
It’s terrifying.
Andy
Don’t want to make that guy mad, that’s for sure.
Frank
No.
But he’s really hard to get to that point too.
Frank
It is.
I admire how hard it is to get into that point, honestly.
Andy
Yeah.
There’s a lot of personal skill.
Even you guys, like it’d be nice if you could take some of those natural social things people do and acquire them.
Like my wife is just easy flowing with things.
The house could be on fire and she’ll say, okay, this is our new normal.
This is what we’re going to do with it now.
It’s that whole, this is our new normal.
I cannot do.
I will sit and fester on what used to be, you know, or what.
Frank
Why is my house burning down?
I need to cook dinner tonight.
Andy
Yes.
Yes.
Exactly.
And she’s like, okay, well, our house is on fire now.
So let’s, this is our options now and be happy.
Instead of like reminiscing on what the loss is.
And I admire that.
I wish I could just grab that and put it in my own brain because, you know, I suffer from struggling through that kind of stuff.
And she just gets it so easy and just wish you could just pull some of that stuff out.
I wish I had Chris’s patience with people and things like that and the automotive skill that guy has.
Oh, I wish I could cram that in there.
Kevin
Man.
Frank
He’s got the experience though.
We’ve talked about experience as well.
And he’s the one that put the cycles into experience in cars while the rest of us were figuring out our lives.
Andy
Yep.
There’s one other thing that’s for sure.
Frank
But some of them even valuable.
Andy
A little bit here and there, I think might have been worth it.
But yeah.
Frank
We have talked about it.
And I know he admires us for our own things that we do that he wishes he does.
So there’s that.
Andy
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Everybody’s got their own set of skills.
I would love if I had the organic property mind that Kevin’s got for doing models and things.
That would be great.
And colors.
Let’s talk about mixing colors now.
That’s just something I just cannot grasp.
Frank
Speaking of colors, it was weird.
I looked at “the dress” recently.
The colors were different.
Andy
Oh, you see in the blue and black or the golden white now?
Frank
I was seeing golden white before.
Now I see blue and black or at least at the time I did, I went back and looked at it again recently since then.
And I’m back to golden white.
So whatever it was.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
I wish I could make myself see the difference.
Andy
Yeah.
That is weird.
That is weird.
And you know, even when that whole thing was going on, I was like sitting there pulling the colors out in paint, you know, just looking at the colors themselves, saying even in not relation to any other colors on the picture, it still looked blue and black to me.
But then too, it’s like when you’re thinking of like a negative film, it’s neat when you can see that and you might be seeing a totally different color.
But your brain knows what those colors are actually being in the real world.
And so that’s what you’re perceiving than the actual colors on the paper.
I don’t know.
That whole thing was weird.
Still weird.
Frank
I did like how we did the analysis.
You took the eyedropper tool from.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
And for one, and I think a lot of people forgot this, the only photo I can find of this, is flared out, like the levels are all goofed up.
Andy
Yes.
Frank
The background is barely discernible.
It’s super bright.
You’re not going to find a good photo of this dress.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Looking at it, I was seeing the golden white.
And when you did the eyedropper, we determined that the computer said it was closer to gold.
And so because the computer doesn’t have an opinion, we decided that there was a more correct conclusion about it.
But we put it down almost the same time as the whole rest of the world did and moved on.
it stopped being an issue.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Just curiosities of color and realizing that a lot of it is just how your brain interprets the color.
Andy
Yes.
Frank
I like the description of we’re all living in the most realistic, haptic feedback, virtual reality.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
And we’re just a brain inside of a meat machine that gets all that haptic feedback, right?
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
And all that information is processed by, well, they found neurons in stomachs.
So not just your brain, but your neural cortex is processing all of this information.
Oh, no, that’s not your neural cortex.
That’s a different part of the brain.
Neural cortex is decision stuff.
Anyway.
Andy
knos more than I about this.
Frank
But all of our nerve endings are just limit switches that send information to our brain.
Our optical sensors can be damaged, but for the most part, people see some iteration of three colors mixed together.
And some of us are lucky to see better detail, generally women, when it comes to color.
And some of us require special glasses to see any more than one or two.
Andy
I always found those glasses really neat to separate the, what is it, red and green more so that they can differentiate between the two.
And that’s just
Frank
I think it needs to be dialed in depending on where your color blind.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
Yeah.
But just the more, the higher separation between the two colors could suddenly like give you color vision again.
That’s just crazy.
Frank
Another one of the interesting things is kind of neural and kind of not, but they have an apparatus that blind people can put in their mouth.
Andy
I’ve seen that.
Yeah.
Frank
It’ll activate different parts of the tongue depending on what color or shape they’re looking at.
And they will begin to see because their brain is interpreting that feedback visually.
Andy
Yes.
Yes.
Frank
And that is interesting.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Brains are cool.
Andy
It’s a very unique kind of computer, that’s for sure.
Yeah.
I always like it when people try to add a sense to themselves.
But tricking or using that kind of adaptability in their brain to be able to give themselves a new sense by like with the tongue, applying those kind of signals to a sensor in the body that is dense enough to be able to kind of use it as visual data, but then to have the brain actually process it as such is crazy.
Frank
I saw this thing where someone had magnets inserted under the skin.
Andy
Okay.
Yeah.
That way they could feel magnetic fields.
Frank
And it was just under their fingertips.
And it wasn’t very strong.
Like a little spring would stick to their finger, but much more than that.
And it’s not really going to hold on very well, but it gave them that extra sense of things around them.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Just your normal touch is going to feel a lot anyway, but then they could feel the magnetic field.
And that was interesting.
Andy
Yeah.
That is neat.
I’d love to be able to do more stuff like that.
I would love to have infrared vision.
That one’s a little harder to do.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
But that would be useful.
Frank
Well, if we ever figure out how to decode or mimic the messages that go to the brain from the eye.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
If someone loses an eye, they’ve got a perfect socket there to put in an apparatus.
And if that apparatus can interpret the broader spectrum, there’s no reason it can’t be sent in a message to the brain.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Just like Geordi from Star Trek.
Frank
well…
Except for Geordi had X-ray vision and I think most people would have a problem with that.
Andy
Yeah.
But I mean, that’s the thing is that it was the device was the one that was seeing all this…
Frank
and sending the message to his brain.
Yeah.
Andy
That his brain could use.
Yeah.
Frank
That’s true.
Andy
It’s not like he had more visual perception.
He probably actually had a little bit less than what would naturally be able to get.
But the amount of information, the different kinds of information he could receive from the visor was so much greater than what our eyes can produce.
Frank
Yeah.
He had to tweak it in one episode.
But then he was able to see an infrared and use that to resolve one of the issues that they ran into.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
There was a lot of things that they did with his visor that I always thought was kind of weird.
It’s like that’s normal technology.
They should just be able to have something like a flare kind of camera or something where you’re just like looking through it or glasses or something that would just change it to whatever you need to see that you can perceive that would be no different than his visor.
It’s like his visor was something, some kind of special technology that they didn’t have access to and infrared was just this big ordeal.
Frank
Well, and by the end of the next generation arc, he had, I guess it was a surgery to fix the irises in his eyeballs.
So they used the existing eye and added technology there so he didn’t need the visor anymore.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
And let’s face it, this is because the actor got tired of having this thing clamped to the side of his face.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
But yeah.
Well, our technology advanced to the point where we could do CGI for anything that needed to be fine detail and then just had him wear contacts otherwise.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s true.
That is true.
Frank
Well, we have been going for a while and we’re on Star Trek right now.
To bring it back to 3D printing, I have referred to my printer as a replicator on occasion.
Andy
Have you?
Frank
Yeah.
That’s what it is.
It’s a proto version of a replicator.
Andy
I must not be a good enough Trekkie because when you said replicator, the first thing that came to mind is the little tiny robots in Stargate.
Frank
Yeah.
It’s two different kinds of replicators.
The Stargate replicators are terrifying.
And the Star Trek replicators are still terrifying, but slightly less so.
Andy
Yeah.
Well, they’re pretty much the entire reason why Earth became a utopia in that series, wasn’t it?
Frank
Because we could, well, the process was we developed free energy and then we figured out how to spend energy on creating food that was edible.
Andy
Yes.
Frank
Nutrient that is edible.
So it was definitely a step in the process.
Andy
Yes.
But you referred to it as a replicator, huh?
Frank
Yeah.
Andy
It’s not wrong.
It’s not anything like Star Trek, but it’s pretty damn close.
Frank
Well, and I do say proto replicator more than anything, so it’s like that.
It’s on the road to becoming the Star Trek.
I can still create whatever I want in it.
It just, you know, isn’t the quality of manipulating the atoms exactly what I’m doing.
Andy
No kidding, right?
Frank
Although we say that, and there are some commercial 3D printers that basically weld atoms of metal into whatever alloy you decide you want into the shape that you’re designing.
Andy
That’s crazy.
Frank
Yeah.
So commercially, I mean, those ones are super expensive, but it’s doable.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
We bet the technology is there to accomplish that.
Probably not.
You know, we just got to speed it up quite a bit.
Frank
Yeah.
Well, and it still needs to be sintered after it comes out of the printer.
But just being that close to a workable thing is mind blowing to me.
Andy
And to have like, if you have a device where you need two different kind of alloys of material in two different spaces or two different places where a different alloy of material would work better, and to be able to have a material that you can create that goes from one type of alloy into another type of alloy, that just says strength written all over it and a complete inability to recycle.
Frank
Well, and they do have the option with these too.
Oh, this is, I thought this was the alloy I wanted.
I need to tweak these two things.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
A lower percentage of, you know, gold or whatever and a higher percentage of iron and add a little bit of titanium to it, you know, let’s see if this alloy works better.
And so they can test stuff like that iteratively.
Andy
Okay.
Yeah.
Frank
Kind of terrifying and kind of awesome.
Andy
Yes.
Yes.
At the same time.
That’s for sure.
Frank
Yeah.
All right.
I think we should probably call the end of the podcast.
Andy
Yeah.
I think we’re approaching our hour and a half mark.
That works.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
Yeah.
We’re pushing it.
Um, we’d like to thank everybody for listening to the very end.
Kevin
The very, very end.
Frank
If you like what you hear, please give us all the stars and subscribe.
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If you have feedback or if you have content requests, please let us know.
You can find us in our Facebook group, amateur3dpod.
You can also email us at panelists@amateur3dpod.com or you can email us individually at Franklin, Kevin, Andy or Chris @amateur3dpod.com.
Kevin Buckner wrote the music for this episode.
Open AI’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 Cotum.
And until next time, we’re going offline.
Kevin
Keep your FEP tight.
Andy
Always use hairspray.
Frank
And I’m still not going to come up with something funny for this one.
Andy
I couldn’t come up with anything either.
We miss you, Chris.
Send Chris an email saying get better.
That’s what y’all need to do.
Frank
That’s what he needs to do.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
We need to have some kind of a comedic relief.
Andy
Yes.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
He fits the bill.
Kevin
Definitely.