Frank

Thank you for joining us. This is episode 79 of amateur 3d podcast and podcast by amateur printers for amateur printers
Where we share our thoughts and experience our panelists this wicker me Franklin Christensen and my friends
Andy Cottam Kevin Buckner and Chris Weber and
For some reason in my head there was more to the intro of tham

Andy

That’s it! Nice and simple. I think that was everything.

Frank

Maybe it just went smoother like I didn’t have to do any mental gymnastics or anything. We got everybody here this week

Chris

It’s definitely smoother, you know, like a good, like a good bourbon, you know.

Frank

At least 12 years old we’re not quite there

Andy

How’s everybody doing?

Frank

It’s good oh I don’t think I’m gonna do it this week, but guys be prepared for me to arbitrarily
designate a, uh… An emcee for an episode and then you guys can run it periodically with me here

Chris

Oh, dear God, I can’t handle that kind of responsibility.

Frank

No, you just need to improvise after I say hey so-and-so you’re emcee

Chris

Okay.

Frank

Also do intros and outros and all that other fun stuff and produce…
and produce

Andy

And produce. I’ll hold on a second.

Frank

And
Unless one of you guys wants to put whisper on your machine and create the transcript and all the other fun stuff

Andy

Quite a bit of work. I don’t envy the process you have to go through with this to get this all to work. I appreciate you do it.

Frank

Now that I’ve got that software 90% of the way there
It’s made things much smoother

Andy

Yeah. That’s really great to hear. I’m glad it is a lot simpler than it was.

Frank

Yeah, I me too. Well, uh, Kevin.

Kevin

Yes

Frank

Did you do anything this week?

Kevin

No

Frank

No?

Kevin

No

Chris

Oh, man, it’s the week where nothing happened.

Kevin

It’s the week of nothing

Frank

Well not to arbitrarily pad for time is there anything else you want to talk about?

Kevin

I did order some tough resin because I took I took the
That one miniature of that “the tallest”

Chris

The Tallest!

Kevin

to to the game and I handed it to the player and she really enjoyed it and
promptly drum dropped it on the floor and broke the staff and
Then she was also the minifigures casting a spell with her other hand and that broke off and
She felt really bad. I told her not to worry about it
But I I said that’s what I get for using standard resin
So I got some tough resin that I’m gonna reprint that in.

Chris

Right.
Right. Like, if you’ve, if, if, if you have, if you have fully printed the thing, you’ve already done 90% of the work. Now you just got to load it in the software and run it again. Right. So.

Kevin

I don’t even have to load it in the software again. I just need to switch out the resin on the printer and print it again

Chris

Right.

Frank

Is the new resin is gonna have all the same parameters and all that

Kevin

Yeah.

Frank

Cool
Yeah, that is the nice thing
At least from the design perspective
You get all the the stuff done and it’s just a matter of reprinting from there instead of tweaking

Kevin

Yeah.

Andy

Yeah. Do you save all of your print jobs themselves by keeping those categorized?

Kevin

Sort of I mean I I keep all of the sliced files and I know where to find them

Chris

New folder three!

Andy

I’ve been trying to get into the habit of saving my Cura files in with my projects on top of the gcode that it generates because I’ve noticed that there are a lot of times where I’ve been going back or something weird on the printer has happened and it’s hard to identify what settings I had that may have caused the problem or whatever.

Chris

Okay.

Andy

So I’ve been trying to start saving those 3MF files that way, you know, got those available or if I need to re-slice with a different temperature or something like that to try to save time, but that’s not something I used to do saving those extra files.
My project folders are just getting kind of stupid with how many files there are because I got like for each part, I’ve got, you know, the part files from SOLIDWORKS, the interference parts that I also create so I can make an assembly of that part, which most of the stuff I do has something as an assembly, you know, however it connects to whatever,
that I usually do a mock-up model of real quick, that way at least I got measurements there to make sure things are lining up in the computer before finding out later I’m wrong.
And then I got the STL files I generate from those for printing, and then I got the gcode that I store on that for printing, and now I’ve got the 3MF file as well for the original print job, so it just seems like they just get confusing in there.
I’ve been using a lot of, when I’m in those, those directories of just looking at one particular file type instead of just looking at everything because it’s, I went through and made sure I had thumbnail generators for all my files, which has turned into a really neat thing.
So when I look into a directory, my STLs show, you know, the thumbnail is a picture of the STL, my part files in SOLIDWORKS do the same thing, my assemblies do the same thing, my 3MF files do the same thing now, and the STLs also do the same thing, so it’s just a bunch of parts and it’s kind of hard to tell which part is what type of file.

Frank

Hmm I
Maybe that’s a one of the benefits to doing everything on the cloud like Fusion 360 does because I don’t
keep the build for the… the the 3d files that are built by my CAD program on my computer
The only so the only thing that I really need is my STL and I have a

Frank

Directory tree for my projects that I’ve done and other stuff that I’ve downloaded but all I really keep is the STL

Chris

You know.

Andy

I think that would drive me nuts a little bit. It’s almost like go through and do all this work and then I’m just going to keep all of my stuff at Chris’s house or something. It just doesn’t feel like you’ve got it there with you, you know.

Frank

I’m not as I’m not as attached to my stuff as you are there Andy, which is weird

Andy

There’s a point in pride in looking through all of the projects that I’ve done and all of the parts that I’ve made that, you know, they’re just there, it’s more like it’s turned into kind of like a library for myself a little bit here.
So having easy regular access to everything without having to rely on a service, been kind of nice.

Frank

Well, and don’t get me wrong I still keep all of the stuff that I’ve worked on
It’s available like sharing my screen here. You can see I’ve got 15 projects that I’m currently working on here
and then my archive has got many many more. I don’t know and
Some of them are duplicates like I just completely redesigned something and then when I’m done with it
I dropped it in the archive…

Chris

Well, I’m on Andy’s boat here with as far as like,
I’m having everything available locally rather than on the cloud because what happens when you don’t have access to that somebody else’s computer, you know.

Andy

That is true, but I also think a lot of it comes from our generation. We grew up where services like this were short lived, you know, you know, huge companies would come around and then they would disappear in a few years, you know, and you would lose a lot of the stuff that you worked so hard or spent so much time on.
But I got to a bit nowadays, companies like that are lasting a lot longer for the most part. So I still don’t like it, you know, using a service to hold my files and stuff, but that might be just a me thing.
That might be might might be one of the new things about getting older all I got my own, my own storage and stuff like that. The young ins just use all the services cloud storage.

Chris

Well, well, at least, at least for me, I still have enough internet issues with my, with my ISP that I don’t want to trust that I have to have access to the internet to get to my stuff.
At least for at least for now, because my, my ISP has been that irritably unreliable.

Andy

I’m so sorry, man.

Frank

And
you know to be clear the internet has made a lot of things ubiquitous that we never would have thought of a decade ago, you know
Why would I store information on somebody else’s computer when I have my own
What do you what do you mean this computer has more than a gigabyte of memory. What are you gonna do with all that memory?
I I remember thinking these things when gigabyte drives became, you know started reaching consumer-level sales and
Now if you don’t have at least a terabyte on your computer, you are limping along you don’t have enough space
and my old habits my old habits still have me at…
Pardon
I have 300 gigabytes free on my main drive and a one and a half terabyte
extra on my computer that I don’t use

Chris

And that’s the thing is like, I kind of have the cloud thinking where I have network storage for just about everything on a single server at home.
Right.
And so whenever I’m home, the devices access, don’t access anything, you just don’t usually access stuff saved to their own memory for the most part.

Andy

Okay.

Chris

So my wife doesn’t need a one terabyte drive in her laptop because all of her, all of the stuff that she saves back, you know, back and forth or whatever else is on the server our tablets don’t need to have a bunch of music or music or movies or whatever
saved on the SD card, because it’s all there on the on the network and then if we are going to be going somewhere, then you can copy it, you know,

Andy

Yeah, we do the exact same thing. I hear you. It’s easier to maintain a backup when it’s local on a single server like that. That way you can be backing up the family’s digital stuff and not individual computers.

Chris

that’s why I’m looking forward to these new cloud cloud servers. So basically, you plug it in at home, and it becomes its own cloud server for you. So if you have access to the internet out and about, you still have access to your own home network stuff.
Much easier, much easier than media or the Plex.

Andy

But Plex is good for like local network stuff, but I hear you I’ve been doing the same thing with my server for years now, but I’ve got to pay for a domain every year, as well as a dynamic IP thing to control my web address so it points always to my home machine even though I am using, you know,

Chris

Oh, yeah, you got to pay for the DNS. Yeah.

Andy

Yeah, the dynamic stuff, but it is, it’s absolutely nice to be able to just log into the computer from wherever and have access to everything. I got to admit. Especially like at work and things.
But I understand why not everybody does that not everybody wants to spend the time to do it the way you and I do it in services. You know, they do it all for you. So I get it.

Chris

Yep.

Frank

There’s the other thing too especially working in tech maybe it’s more obvious to me but
Or more apparent to me, but there’s a lot of people
Who don’t feel the need to learn as much about computers as we have made a point of learning as we’re interested in
and for me, you know, it’s always been more a curiosity with some ability to code and do the network thing but
It’s like with the electronic things with you Andy I admire that you can figure out all this stuff with those chips and
Work it all out and then build the circuit board so much that is so far over my head
That I would probably have to spend about a year focused on learning that one thing to understand half of it

Andy

We’re talking about skills that we’re all interested in and we all got different views. There’s no way I could sit and do what Chris is doing with it or there’s no way any of us could sit and do what Chris is doing with his cars right now you know everybody’s got their own skills so that parts.

Frank

Yeah, and in the end that’s really what I’m getting down to though is we have built these skills in the way we have
But there’s not as many people as interested in building these skills themselves

Andy

I see what you’re talking about. Yeah.

Frank

So like the conversation about being able to access your
Personal drive in your basement is not something that most people care enough about to learn

Andy

True. Very true.
And they don’t need to. That’s why I say like, I understand why people would like services and things like that. I think I’m just going to die with a hard drive in my hand.

Frank

You’ll die with it somewhere Andy

Andy

A physical one in my, you know, nearby location. Yeah.

Chris

I think it’s, well, I think it’s, it’s fun. You know, we’ve got away from floppies. Everybody’s gone, gone hard disk now.

Frank

Actually

Andy

I remember struggling for space using PK zip to zip everything up to try to get a little bit extra out of a drive.

Chris

You’re like, what do you mean 1.45 megabytes guy?

Andy

No kidding, no kidding.
I could I could save all of this data if I crush it all up into one zip file and then span it across 12 floppies. I can get that extra two kilobytes out of the data for mashing everything together right.

Frank

Here’s here’s an odd idea the the places where you bury people

Kevin

Cemetery

Chris

cemetery.

Frank

Cemetery yes that word
Cemetery’s should start running electricity to the new plots
So that when someone dies all of their data can be stored on a powered server
that they rest on and all of that space that is taken up by the casket can be used with storage that is then available to all of their
Everybody that comes after them these you know, it’s nearly infinite storage that is probably not gonna get built on like over in a very long time
And you’re limited by how much you can pack into a casket for media storage.

Chris

I’d, I’d hate to be, I, I’d hate to be it for that though.

Andy

I got something.

Frank

Grandma is not sharing these files anymore. Can you go check on her?
Yeah, that would be awkward at best

Andy

Oh dear.
Back in the 2000s, my little brother who’s pretty big in the LDS religion wanted wound up going on a mission. Okay. And the family, my family was was, you know, we’re really close as a family.
And this was, this was going to be hard for everybody to deal with not being able to really communicate with him regularly. And so we found kind of a loophole in the system.
We could, we wound up buying, I mean, this is the days before smartphones, we wound up buying a point and shoot camera that took the SD card, there were the brand new SD cards that we use nowadays.
It would play audio back when you would play the video. And that was a weird thing for cameras to do a lot of the playback would just be video and no audio with it.
But we found these cameras that would do the audio and we wound up buying one for him and one for us as a family because he could have a camera on his mission.
So we can send letters back and forth on the regular right. And so what we wound up doing was we would send an SD card back and forth.
So my brother would sit and he would do his normal pictures from his mission and stuff like that but he would also sit down and record a monologue to the family.
This is how we sent letters back and forth kind of like I mean there were handwritten letters and things as well but these SD cards were the biggest thing that we were sending back and forth.

Frank

You mean like the ink and paper?
How old are you

Andy

And then the family, yeah, this was back in the 2000s man, 40, 41, 2, something like I think 41.
But yeah, so it was, it was, it was a while ago.
But it worked out really well and the family, we would, we wound up buying a camera for each of us after things had got going and then we would sit down.
We would get together every weekend when, when my brother would send an SD card and we would watch it as a family on the TV, watch all of his videos.
And then we would make sure we would get everybody’s stuff all together on one card and then send it to him.
And that worked out really well. And so one of the things we wound up doing was burning these DVDs with these videos and stuff on it.
We had my brother’s DVDs and then we had the family’s response to his cards. And I thought this would be a great way to do it now I, I got some memory problems I don’t remember how I organized these DVDs or what I did with all that data.
This was back before I was regularly backing up and keeping good track of my storage. So I don’t have any.

Frank

We’re still building your own personal naming conventions, I’m sure and all that other stuff too

Andy

Yeah, back when I didn’t have the money to store everything I wanted to store as well but this you know everybody was burning CDs and DVDs back then.
And I thought well that that’s dang near permanent so we made these nice playable DVDs and now these were were actual DVDs like what you would video DVDs not just data DVDs.
And my, my dad has been going through these DVDs that we made over this past month, just as something to do.
You know my mom passed away a few years ago so it’s nice to go back and he’s been kind of looking for stuff with her in it and some of these monologues and stuff like this we sent to my brother has a lot of my mom in it because we were, we were trying to show my brother, our family life and how it’s progressing so he was really gone.

Frank

Right

Andy

And the very end of every single one of those DVDs, the DVD player is unable to read it. It’s almost like the disk is either strength or expand it a little bit.
Because it’s just the out is everything plays fine until it gets to the last couple of videos at the very end of every disk that just go bad.
And I’m going to wind up trying a few of the players that I have around the house here to see if anything else will be able to get the data off of it. That way I can have a more hard drive digital copy of the ISO that way we can maintain that.
And you’re talking about storing data with the you know family members to the past away. And I thought DVDs were going to be kind of a more of a forever thing, and we barely got a decade and a half out of them before the data started to go bad on them and that’s just disappointing.

Chris

Yeah, you got lucky.

Andy

I even got, I even got backup copies of these DVDs and every single one of them are damaged at the very end of the DVD. It’s, it sucks.

Frank

I do know that optical media likes to degrade over time
and you know that the technology got to the point where they could
Spin off a disc for less than a penny each and sell them to you for that penny each and make a serious profit off it
so at some point they wanted to became more valuable than the quality of what they were pointing out

Andy

I think a lot of press DVDs are still okay.

Kevin

I feel like that happens a lot

Frank

Yeah, kind of overall
One thing it’s interesting speaking of the LDS church. They’ve got the family history library and
they have hard documentation archived for pretty much everything you can think of and
They’ve been digitizing it now for two decades and part of that process, I’m sure has been upgrading the technology that they store it on
So that it continues on to the next generation of data storage

Andy

I’m hoping so. I’m sure they are. I’m sure everybody is.

Frank

I’d be surprised if they weren’t
But like the modern-day SSDs the data is less likely I feel to degrade than on a
CD just because once the switch is set if unless it’s changed, it’ll probably stay set
There might still be some degradation, but not as much as with the degradation of
This material is oxidizing or whatever the plastic is not as clear on the edges as it was 10 years ago, whatever is contributing to it

Andy

Yeah, much might have more of a problem finding the correct adapters and ability to read the data than the data itself being damaged.

Chris

I’m reading a forum up, up on, up on that. And the guy, this, this guy says, what you really need is just the thing called DVD,
rescue, and a lot of, a lot of computer time to just let your computer or not run at it.
Hmm.

Frank

Probably reads the disc bit wise and stores it in a stream kind of
The same way is when you recover there’s a method of recovering
hard drives where it just reads everything bit wise, but you can’t choose what you’re
Rescuing you have to rescue it all and then sift through it afterwords

Chris

Which is better than losing it, so.

Andy

Oh, really.
I’ve got
Yeah, I’ve got some of that software I still use.
No, I remember that being something that a lot of people always asked me to do was to recover, like, especially like deleted stuff, which was always the easiest to recover.

Chris

Speaking.
Speaking of this actually happened just last night, the wife.
I look at the wife and I ask her, okay, well, I just came in from the garage, you know.
I’m getting cleaned up. Do you want to help with dinner? And she’s like, no.
And I’m looking at her. She’s got the look in her eyes.
And she’s looking at me and looking at her laptop. And she goes, I just got an error. And my laptop BSOD’d.
My, my hard drives going out. And I’m like, okay, well, don’t freak out because we replaced, we replaced your hard drive two years ago because we were upgrading the size and upgrading it to a flash media.
Right. And so I’m like, so, you know, and we’ve, we’ve got your backup.
So basically, I, I can put your old hard drive back in for now and we can get you a new SSD.
Not a problem. Don’t freak out your, your laptop will work just fine.
And she was like, I was in the middle of a project. I’m like, computers always break when you’re in the middle of the project. I mean, I don’t.

Andy

Save, save, save.

Kevin

That’s that’s the time they’re gonna break

Frank

That’s like
They’re not gonna break when you’re not using them it’s like continuing to look for something after you found it

Kevin

Right

Andy

Only done that a few times.

Chris

Couple, couple times. Where’s my phone?

Frank

Well, if you don’t realize that you found it, I guess you keep looking
Maybe that’s my problem

Andy

I remember the wife coming to me in a panic, saying that she couldn’t find, I think it was our daughter at the time she couldn’t find our daughter and was kind of running from room to room.
But what the funniest thing is, is she was on her hip the entire time she was holding her, and was stressing out that she couldn’t find her hilarious moment.

Kevin

It’s like the comic I’ve seen before where you’ve got the the one person on the phone and you can tell they’re frantically looking for something they’ve got the couch all tossed and the chairs overturn and everything and they’re like okay I’m gonna have to call you back I cannot find my cell phone

Andy

Yeah, no kidding.

Chris

It happens.

Frank

The the one that’s been common now for many many years is the one with the glasses when you wear glasses, but you put them up on your forehead for some reason and
Then you spend hours looking for your glasses
Until someone sees you looking and goes, what are you looking for all my glasses? They’re on your forehead. I

Chris

Look up.

Frank

Don’t see them.
Andy did you do anything this week?

Andy

Yep.
You know, I didn’t really do a whole lot I’ve been printing a couple of my drawer boxes, and so I’ve expanded there a little bit but not a whole lot more than that I’ve.
I got something here to show you guys that I’m kind of excited about. I finally got the ability to see we go.
We go camping every once in a while. And you guys know my stats on when it comes to being able to 3D print wherever you are.
So I wound up buying my printer its own tent, so it can go camping.
I’ve got that right here, the box is falling apart, but I got a tent for my printer.
And so I’m going to go and put that together this week and hopefully I’ll be able to tell you guys how that goes having one of these tent like competitors.

Chris

Oh, hi.

Frank

Now weren’t she talking you shared some pictures where
One of the poles that broken or something was that for this tent or was that for something else?

Andy

Oh, that was a kite. Yeah, that’s something to bring up that I tried to do. Yeah, so I went to go take the kids out to fly a kite this last week and my my.

Frank

Oh let’s go fly a kite

Andy

Yeah, the one of my kites is it’s built with those tent stakes those carbon fiber poles, and it, it was splintered down the center.
And I, excuse me, I couldn’t really get it to work. And so we wound up not taking that particular kite out but looking around for replacement parts to be able to fix it because it’s one of those things that’s got a little bit more sentimental value than the actual worth of the kite itself.
So I would like to fix it. And just discovered that the tent poles like that are kind of expensive to buy, like, really expensive like often more expensive to buy replacement poles than it is to buy a tent and steal its poles, and throw the rest away, kind of expensive it’s weird.

Chris

Yeah, I came across that one. The, the, the child’s play tent broke about it was like two or three years ago. Yeah.

Andy

Yeah, really.

Chris

One of the rods broke and I’m looking at, and I’m like, Jesus, cheaper to just buy another tent.

Andy

Yeah, it really is. It’s stupid. And so, you know, I, I thought, well, I’m going to try to 3D print this because my two ideas was to just get a wooden dowel and use that because even though it would be weighted a little different.
This kite’s got a lot of good pull to it so I’m not really too worried about the little extra weight and the dowel would probably work fine.
But, you know, I kind of realized that there’s no bendiness in a dowel, and this really does require to install it to be able to bend the good 25, 30 degrees or so, in order to, you know, put the pole into the kite.

Chris

TPU.

Andy

Well, that wouldn’t necessarily work either.

Frank

Sounds like time to run to the thrift store and find a cheap tent

Andy

So I thought, well, well, TPU, it’d be like a, yeah, TPU would be like a wet noodle hitting it with a, like a hose or something.

Frank

Unless you printed it solid

Andy

Even if you printed it solid, man, there’s not that good. I wound up doing it with PETG.

Frank

Okay

Andy

I figured PETG’s got a little bit of flex to it, which would be kind of nice, and hopefully it would mimic that ability to flex.
And if I printed it solid, that would work. And then I realized too, like just playing around with the carbon fiber and what the slicer was telling me, the weight was going to be like, it was like seven grams for the carbon fiber.
And the printed part was like seven and a half grams when printed solid. And so I was thinking…

Frank

That’s almost the same weight I don’t think that would affect very much at all

Andy

Yeah, definitely not. So I’m thinking, I’m onto something here.
So I ran off and my printers, if I print it from corner to corner, it was like two or three millimeters shorter than my corner to corner capabilities on my printer.
So I didn’t even have to go outside of those. So I ran it off, printed it, and it was, it was, it’s just, it’s way too flexy, which was kind of a surprise.
And then I got thinking back, like I remember a long time ago that I’m talking about solid to solid poles being not as rigid as tubes.
And so I figured, okay, I’ll try to print it as a tube. So I ran it off again, being hollow on the inside. And that was way worse, even it was really, really flimsy on that one.
So okay, that didn’t work either. So the next harder material I got is that I can print relatively well is PLA. So I tried to do that. And PLA flexed about this much before it just broke.
That’s not going to work. It was much harder and was a lot more like the carbon fiber was, but it shattered really, really easily. So okay, that’s not going to work.
I thought, well, I got some nylon. Nylon is sometimes it’s more rubbery than PETG other times, not so much. And I am printing a small thing. So I can probably, you know, something that is not very tall.
So I might be able to heat saturate it just using the bed. So I ran it off in nylon.
And I just got the nastiest of warping on it. And it was just, it just really didn’t work printing it off in nylon.
But when I was all done, it kind of felt like it might have been able to work. It was kind of hard to tell it was still too flimsy, but it might have been okay enough for the kite.
And that’s what made me want to get the enclosure for my printer, finally, because I was looking around thinking, you know, I wanted it enclosed, you know, we’re always talking about enclosing our printers and I just haven’t.
And that’s when I.

Frank

I put all that time into upgrading my printer you were feeling left out

Andy

Feeling left out.

Frank

Yeah, you wanted to upgrade your printer

Andy

I, I did after this, well, if I wanted to upgrade the printer, I would have built the day enclosure worked on that but I don’t want to work on an enclosure. Instead, I noticed these, these tent one.

Andy

Oh, okay. Sure.
Frank
I’m just I’m just saying that it was sparked by me upgrading my stuff is all

Chris

He’s calling you a jealous type.

Andy

Okay, yeah, sparked by you. Got it. So anyway, since I can’t print this tent pole that I want to print out of nylon, because I don’t have an enclosure.
I decided to go out and buy one. So they’re a lot cheaper now for these tent based ones. I think I paid $50 for it, which is a little bit on the higher price from the bottom.
Because I wanted a larger enclosure than what my printer actually required that way I got a little bit more space, but we’ll see how it goes and I might retry to print this nylon stick just to just to see how well that enclosure works.
However, I did wind up buying a bunch of those kind of poles that is meant to be able to make a greenhouse, just a little tiny greenhouse out in your yard, and I was able to get like twice as many poles than a repair kit, and they looked very similar to a tent pole so
I’ll see how that goes I’m hoping I can modify it to be able to use it with my kite but yeah.
We’ll see how the how the tank goes and if I can get away with the printing this this pole come next time around that.

Frank

Yeah, cool you do anything this week Chris

Chris

I got the parts for my new heat block.
I haven’t done anything with them.

Frank

Well, you have been busy with cars like you were saying earlier, so

Chris

Still, I, yeah, it’s, it’s not easy when both mine and the wife’s car breaks and the car I’m allowed to borrow also needs to be fixed.

Andy

Oh Geez

Frank

That just takes all the fun out of it

Chris

Yeah. Well, he’s like, he’s like, you can borrow it, but it needs to be fixed because I need it fixed now because it won’t pass emissions and it’s due.

Frank

I thought you were trying to get cars out of your driveway chris. How did you end up putting more in your drive?

Andy

At least there is own vehicles at this point.

Chris

I’m trying.
Yes. That’s a good point is it’s not really more in the driveway because they’re my own. They’re the same. They’re the same ones that have been there. They’re just broken now.

Frank

That’s fair

Andy

Well hopefully you’ll be able to put back together and get it working again sometime.

Chris

Yeah. So, but yeah, I don’t, I got real, I got to realize that because I use my printer on a COM port off of my computer desk PC, that I don’t really save anything, unless I make modifications to my file.
So, like, if I have an STP STL, and I load it, and then I have to do something special to it, like, add special add special supports change the way it’s printing in, in various fashions normally.
I’ll save the Cura project, and then that’s it, and save it and save it to STL.

Frank

Yeah, I don’t even save those projects the only thing that I save from Cura is my
My configurations I will occasionally export those and archive them, but I don’t never go back to them
So I don’t even know why I do that

Chris

Yeah. So, like, and I keep it all on my, my network storage so that like, it’s not like there’s any, I’m going to run out, run out of limited local, my limited local storage for that computer so it’s
So, yeah, I don’t even save that that much, but it’s just only the only Cura stuff when I’ve modified something so that it’ll print better.

Frank

Hmm

Andy

Well that’s so as I mean, it sounds like you’re still saving the most important part though, because you could always just reopen it very slides.

Chris

Well, that’s kind of what I do is I slice it every time I load it. So, and I only save the STL. So…

Andy

And do you do you print directly from Cura then.

Chris

yeah.

Andy

Okay so you let Cura run your print that’s cool.
Well Cura could do that either.

Chris

Well, yeah, I mean, yes, yes, it just treats the printer off as a comport.

Frank

There’s a whole tab in Cura dedicated to that Andy

Andy

Oh the monitor. I thought the monitor was just for monitoring not actually sending the file that that’s cool.

Chris

Well, no, after you slice the file it gives you an option to, to save or save to disk or send directly to the printer as you’ve got your printer plugged in.

Andy

Okay.

Chris

And that’s where it’s at. So you just hit send the printer, and then you can monitor it monitor it on the monitor tab from the after you’ve done that.

Frank

You can also remote control for finer movement if you’re testing
See like you’re uh, tramming or something

Chris

Oh, yeah.

Frank

Um, you can send it the codes
put it in the position
measure the
Distance and then send it to the next position from there rather than touching it

Andy

Okay.

Chris

Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, it’s great. You’ve got all the movement, movement options on screen, and you get much finer movement options than you do with Marlin. So,

Andy

Do Yeah?

Chris

yeah

Andy

Now this is funny I just recompiled Marlin last weekend after the podcast so that I could fix my tramming my bottom right hand corner. I went to go tram it and since I upgraded the trammings different than the Marlin one that I was used to using.
Now it’s just got the just the one click to go to all the specified corners that you want to check in. And I realized that it’s it’s tramming a little bit further from the or not quite as far from the edge.
Unfortunately when it sits down on the one of the corners, my fan assembly gets hung up on one of my, my screws that Frank absolutely hates that my bed has. And so I had to go in there and modify the source code in Marlin so that it would.

Frank

The screws are recessed how does it get caught up on the screws?

Chris

Modification.

Andy

They’re not recessed on mine.
But my bed is also designed to be larger where the screws are so the screws.

Frank

Right

Andy

Yeah so yeah. So like they’re outside the print area, but my fan housing gets hung up on it because they’re about two millimeters off the bed surface.

Frank

Right

Andy

Yeah, mine aren’t recessed, which actually kind of like it makes me feel like the bed so got more, more glass that it’s anchoring down, since it’s not recessed, but this is the first time. It’s actually the first time those screws have been a problem to me.

Frank

Well and the nice thing about um
Compiling your marlin yourself is you can choose how far away from the corner you want it to do the tramming so

Andy

And that’s what I changed. Yeah, I also changed the speed that it trans that so now it’s nice and fast and the homing speed. I changed that to so it’s nice and fast.

Frank

Interestingly, I don’t care about my homing speed. I’ll let it be as slow as it wants
The actual print the actual print I pushed to uh 150 millimeters

Frank

But um, yeah, if it’s tramming if it’s gonna go slow, it’s fine by me

Andy

That’s nice. I used to print PLA at anywhere between 100 and 120 on a normal basis but when I realized like when you slice it between playing with when we started to do a lot of towers to really try to get the good quality.
I noticed that my speed did affect my quality and it was about 60.
It was about 80 or so meters, millimeters a second when it didn’t really get better to go slower. So I’ve been printing at about 60 for everything.
And like on a two hour print to go from 120 to, to, you know, 60 is only taking about 20 minutes longer to do on a two hour print so I’ve been, I’ve been naturally printing a little bit slower lately a TPU.
I always printed about 30 millimeters a second and and PETG I don’t remember what I got.

Frank

Well, and that’s not to say that my printer actually runs at 150 millimeters per second

Andy

Yeah, oh, it’s fine. Yeah.

Frank

But it can if it has the distance
The trick there is the acceleration. I haven’t messed with
So it takes it has the same ramp up speed
that the change in velocity the change in velocity is the same as it’s always been

Andy

the jerk.

Frank

And if it’s a long enough
Straight line it can get up to 150 but it doesn’t normally

Andy

That’s good.

Chris

It’s printing the distance.
It’s printing at speed.

Frank

On that note, I think that uh, oh I didn’t go

Frank

I was gonna wrap this up

Andy

What did you do this week?

Frank

I learned that Cura when you scale
You don’t want to scale a group
You want to scale the individual parts

Chris

Yes.

Frank

Scale them, you know, select and scale and then group them

Andy

Okay.

Frank

because

Chris

Or duplicate them after you’ve scaled. Yeah.

Frank

Because um, I printed off a larger of those uh, uh
Lathe chucks and the jaws were not
Printing the teeth at the right distance to work in the chuck

Andy

Okay. Okay.

Frank

and I tried
reprinting just the jaws, but I grouped them and then I scaled them up
And that didn’t work either what worked was scaling them up first and then grouping them in Cura
and they went through the
You know with everything else smoothing out the track and all that other stuff that I had already done trying to get them to work
They just went in and worked with the chuck

Andy

Oh.

Frank

So that it was just one of those strange however Cura scales things up is not
always great when it’s doing multiple
separate bodies as a collected group

Andy

I’ll hae to keep that in mind. That’s some good advice. I could see how that could get weird.

Chris

Especially if you want, if you if you want things to fit together.

Frank

Right, um, I did also design
I don’t know how much you guys have had to do with lathe’s but they’ve got the little holes on the side to help you
So you can tighten and loosen them
I designed a tool to operate my lathe chuck while I was trying to
Push it harder than my grip would allow me and um, I actually ended up designing a wrench for my spindle
My filament spindle because that the bolt for that didn’t want to go on either
That I just I just do so much with such tight tolerances that uh
If you don’t do it right, it’s all gonna be goofy. Um

Andy

So did you get a late then?

Frank

No, um, I was using the chuck to
Actually, it’s it’s just as much a fidget is anything but um
I use it to hold something while I’m working on it
so like a

Chris

It’s like a vice, but it’s lathe shaped.
Lathe Chuck.

Frank

And it it’s
Mobile and it just put something bigger in my hand. So I’m not we were talking about the the uh joycon
controllers to make them a little bigger
It’s the same idea when I’m working on something small my fingers can get sore

Andy

Oh, that’s cool. It’s a neat idea.

Frank

so

Andy

Yeah, okay.

Frank

Using something to make my what I’m working on a little bit bigger just makes my hand not cramp up so bad
and um lastly I’m working through a uh, what are we calling it the uh, the thing

Andy

Okay, yeah.
Okay.

Frank

Uh textile measuring tapes
um chris printed off a few for
His wife and family, you know that other stuff
A while ago and it’s been on my project list to make my own
And right now I’ve only got the spool that it goes on. I did show you guys this a little before
Test sizing I think I massively overestimate how big the spool needs to be

Chris

Yeah, yeah.

Frank

I print I printed this at 40 millimeters in diameter from
It’s not full 40. It’s actually closer to 50 with the
The spindle center

Chris

Wow.

Frank

So I’m printing it. I printed it that distance away from there

Andy

Okay.

Frank

and I’ve got
25 millimeters of extra space bigger than my tape measure wrapped around the center so

Chris

That’s about to say the ones I made were like half that big.

Frank

Yeah, well I
I only had the tape measure wound up the way everybody’s been doing it for 200 years around the tab
so I wasn’t sure how much bigger the spool would be
with it going around a core so rather than
Having to go bigger and then bigger and then bigger. I just figured out. I’ll make it big. I’ll have a good size
So there it is

Andy

That works. Yeah, that works good.

Frank

And that is everything I’ve been working on

Andy

Sounds like it’s been a fairly calm week for everybody,

Chris

We got nothing.

Andy

at least when it comes to the printers.

Frank

Um, oh, I don’t know if this bothers you guys as much as it does me, but you know these little uh
Like wire brushes and this one’s a nylon brush, but it’s the same form factor as the the wire brushes

Frank

Um
It frustrates me when I use it twice and the teeth are suddenly
Bent everywhere
So I’ve decided that what I’m going to do is I’m going to design a little clip that goes on the brush
That pushes the bristles down so that
It holds them where they will give uh the appropriate amount of pressure longer

Andy

That’s actually not a bad idea. I wonder how well that would work like it definitely if anything would protect the brush from getting smashed or something like that and funny angles, but I wonder.

Frank

Yes storage can get awkward too, but it’s mostly use anytime it’s been a problem for me
It’s because I use it and I expect this brush to be able to take a certain amount of abuse
Because that’s what it takes to clean whatever thing up
To clean it up, right?

Andy

That’ll be interesting to see if it’ll straighten it out.

Chris

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know exactly what you’re talking about. I get a, I get a wire brush and the steel brushes tend to last a little bit longer than the copper brass ones.

Frank

Or the brass

Chris

So, you know, so I use a brass brass brush and I use it like maybe half a dozen times and it’s all bent out of the bristles are all bent out of shape. And so

Frank

And it doesn’t brush so much anymore, right?

Chris

And that’s, that’s when I turn around and put it in the drawer to clean up, you know, nasty dirty greasy engine engine parts, you know,

Frank

Now the funny thing well, maybe not so funny the thing is
What I’m thinking of I’m probably going to spend five cents on this clip just uh
Printing and testing and all that that’s probably the most I’m going to spend on it
You can get a pack of like a dozen of these brushes for two bucks

Chris

Yeah, you also just reminded.

Frank

And what point is it worth the trouble?

Chris

Okay, so you got you guys know those triangular binder clips like.
Yeah, I just realized why aren’t we using those.

Andy

Interesting idea.

Chris

Why am I not using one of those on my dang on my on my bristles.

Frank

To store it

Chris

yeah

Frank

Um, that would be a good use for it
I still kind of I haven’t worked on it for a while, but there’s a project I’ve been trying to do where
You repurpose the binder clips as chip bag clips

Andy

Okay.
Oh, you use the binder clips as a spring.
That’s a good idea.

Kevin

I’ve been doing that for years.

Frank

Well just the regular binder clip though, right I I mean

Kevin

So I’ll take the chip bag and I’ll fold it over a few times, increase it, make sure there’s like no air
left in the bag, and then I’ll take just a regular binder clip and put it in the middle
of what I’ve folded over, and it holds it shut just fine.

Frank

Well and what I’m talking about is taking the binder clip and putting it inside a housing so that it’s wider

Kevin

Yeah, I haven’t been doing that for years.

Chris

I haven’t been doing that, but I’ve been using the regular binder clip and all you do is you just make sure that you fold the corners over kind of like when you’re wrapping a present.
You kind of fold those over and then down and then you’ve got a small amount of space actually holding the.

Frank

Because the clip is strong enough to to hold that together
Um, I think the reason I don’t do that more
Is because I also use the same chip bag clips for um
Like we get the the bulk tater tots or fries or stuff like that
When you cut the corner after you pour out one or two servings, it’s still pretty full
So you don’t want or you don’t have the the…
The distance in the bag to fold down the corners very far and roll it and all that, you know
Something that’ll hold with a minimum of modification for the bag

Chris

Yeah, because you don’t want to, you don’t want that frozen peas to go all over your the inside of your freezer.
Somebody pea’d in here that’s gross.

Kevin

maybe you don’t

Chris

Well, you can have a pea freezer then.

Kevin

just just don’t tell anybody what the ice cubes are

Andy

I hate peas.

Frank

Wow
Maybe now is the time to actually shut this thing down
We’d like to thank everyone for listening to the very end

Chris

This very end.

Frank

No the

Chris

Now this it is currently here.

Kevin

anyway

Frank

If you like what you hear 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 for chris to tell him it’s the very end

Kevin

technically it would be oh yeah the very I was going to say the end anyway sorry continue

Frank

You can email us at franklin kevin andy or chris @amateur3dpod.com or directly at panelists@amateur3dpod.com
It’s not directly. It’s collectively. collectively at panelists@amateur 3d pod.com

Chris

So that you can poke fun at me and make sure that the other guys see it.

Frank

Or you can find us in our facebook group and do that just as easily there that is amateur3dpod
kevin buckner wrote the music for this episode and open ai’s whisper completed the heavy lifting for the transcripts
Which are 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 your FEP tight

Andy

Always use hairspray.

Chris

I’m a mosquito found my butt. Now I’m a now I got a little bit behind.

Frank

What’s that got to do with tramming didn’t you say oh tram it

Chris

Yeah, I said, oh, tram it.

Frank

I don’t understand

Chris

There’s nothing to do with trimming.

Andy

He’s got a little, he’s got a little bit got a little bit behind.

Frank

I guess he would tram
A rotary tool too mosquitoes knows is basically a rotary tool that doesn’t spin right?

Chris

I think you’re overthinking this Frank.

Frank

I don’t believe it I wouldn’t do that
This stretching the uh, what’s the word the thing let’s stretch the thing the analog stretch the analog

Kevin

the analogy

Frank

That one! close enough the epilogue.

Chris

I’m going to call it. Yeah, the epilogue.

Andy

I’ve seen too many videos.

Frank

We are stretching the epilogue to see if somebody says something funny because chris failed us

Andy

He’s got a little bit behind.
Give him some credit.

Andy

Oh dear.

Kevin

he tried to tell two jokes
as one

Chris

I did kind of space them out.

Andy

Oh, Trammit, he’s got a little bit behind now.

Kevin

right