Chris
Okie dokie. So let’s jump right into this.
Kevin
Yes.
Chris
Thank you for joining us. This is episode 82 of amateur 3d podcast a podcast by amateur printers for amateur printers where we share
our thoughts and experience. Our panelists panelists this week are me Chris Weber and my
friends Andy Cottam and Kevin Buckner. Frank is not with us today because I don’t know he said
he could not be here this morning. I don’t remember why.
Andy
You got some kind of plans. Yeah.
Chris
Yeah so anyway uh good morning guys.
Kevin
Good morning.
Andy
How we doing?
Chris
Man that’s uh been a week.
Andy
That it has. I completely agree. It was quite an interesting week since our last podcast.
Guys, holding up. Okay.
Chris
Yeah yeah I had to trim my fingernail from uh I broke my finger fingernail while putting the new
lock cylinder that’s the word I’m looking for lock cylinder put a new lock cylinder in your bus.
Andy
I saw that you know what’s kind of funny about that is that earlier this week I hurt my fingernail in nearly the exact same way your picture of yours was.
Chris
Oh yeah broke broke the corner of the fingernail off.
Andy
I tore the corner of the fingernail off and oh boy that that nail bed hurts when it gets wound I’ll tell you that.
Chris
Mmm right at the cuticle.
Andy
But, but yeah, yeah, that was good. That was good. I appreciate you. You fixing that part of my vehicle there Chrissy. I do appreciate that.
Chris
Yeah no biggie well that’s a great thing though it’s like those Chevy’s those uh
early 90s to mid 2000 Chevy’s the lock cylinder is actually not a difficult job so
Chris
so real real easy.
Andy
Yeah, that’s good.
Very nice.
Chris
So yeah did you actually print anything this week with your printer?
Andy
Me?
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
Well, no, my printer has got some problems.
This past weekend here I started, I don’t remember if I, when it happened to the I talked about thermal runaways last week.
Chris
Yes
Andy
Did I okay, well I’ve gotten nowhere with it so far.
I, I wound up putting together a microcontroller so I can monitor a bunch of different things I, I monitored that the thermostat externally the voltage of the power supply.
Externally the, the head, the hot end power to the heater cartridge, as well as the power going to the Piezo buzzer. That way I could know when it trips because the Piezo buzzer starts to beat constantly.
And that way I can tell you know what was happening when, when it went wrong.
And this last time that I tried it didn’t really show anything to me the temperature was pretty stable. The voltage. I’ve got a, I’ve got a bad power supply when my power supply went on the printer a while ago.
I wound up buying a new one it originally came with a six amp power supply. I bought an eight amp power supply, which only turned out to be a two amp power supply, and I was using it anyway.
My printer was actually only running off of when everything was running it was running off of about 17 and a half volts. And when my Peltier cooling system kicked on it pulled it down to about 17 volts.
So, another thing with the water cooling, it doesn’t really take that much extra out of what the power supply can provide so it’s it’s not that I think it only uses like one and a half amps to run. It’s not a whole lot.
Anyway, so my printer is running off of like 17 volts when they should be 24. But as long as it’s over seven volts my printer will still function. And so it’s it’s got a wide range here and so I’m thinking maybe the power supply is starting to fail because at the very end it had gone from 17 down to about 16.5 volts on average for the power supply before it faulted out.
and so I’m thinking maybe you know it is at a lower voltage it will take more time to heat the head and it may be falling out of that heat envelope it should be staying in and that’s throwing the air. In fact, this is a great error to have when you have a thermal runaway.
If your printer says that I mean it is caught a very large problem it’s really nice for it to have that you know catch that protection available to it, even when it’s the other direction when I don’t think it’s actually heating up as much as it would expect but you know the printer doesn’t know that if the
thermostat gets detached from the head, it’s going to keep on applying power to the head with really no no change in temperature at the thermostat. And same with the cartridge pops out in fact the cartridge pops out of your head, and it’s going to keep on warming up the cartridge but the head’s
not really going to change temperature and I think that’s what my printer thought was happening that was taking so long for it to warm up and having to run the heater for such a longer period of time you know it tripped that that thermal envelope there so I went ahead and and ordered a new power supply for it.
I tried to overdo it a little bit, because the prices of getting a proper six amp power supply for it, or even the eight amp that I was originally trying to get was about the same price as getting a 14. It was like 14.5 amp or something like that for a slim power supply 24 volts that will still fit in my case.
So I wound up go ahead and purchasing that and I’m just going to try to replace that I, I’m not 100% sure on what’s causing the problem everything looks okay.
But I went ahead and retuned the PID on the printer so I can continue to use it at this with this failing power supply and started working again great. I mean it was before it was failing within like an hour of printing.
And I got about two hours out of it before I went to bed and there was no failure after retuning so it was kind of looking like it was the power supply was the problem.
And then sometime that night it wound up or that next day because when I woke up I was doing a like a 13 hour print and that next day I got up and it only been printing for like seven hours or something it was still working fine.
So I’m thinking that was definitely it so I went to work and sometime while I was at work the wife tells me that the printer faulted out and threw that error again so I have not been trying to use it in this broken state until I do get it fixed.
So today I should get the new power supply for it and I’ll I’m just going to swap it in and try it and see what happens retuned the PID and then try it see what happens.
I want to monitor it to begin with though to see how much it can pull.
I’m going to take and I’ve got some I don’t have a way to measure high amperage stuff but I do have some nichrome wire that I can just stretch out you know a piece of nichrome wire with some alligator clips and just just you know the further the more
you use the less resistance you get so I could see what the power supply can output before it starts to drop.
And so I will wind up doing that before putting it in the printer just to know if I got a good one or not because I didn’t check the eight amps when I got them.
And after I’d gotten it put together and was realizing hey it takes a long time for this to heat up.
And it’s you know it should be shorter if anything and so I put a voltmeter on it and lo and behold it’s dropping voltage really bad so you know I tried an amperage test on it yeah I can only get about two amps before it gets down below that 23 volts or so.
I’m going to try the new one and see what that gives me if that after putting that in and retuning the PID if I still get a fault code like that.
I think at this point I probably will hook my stuff up to it again and monitor another print job at a much much higher polling rate, because if I’ve got a break in a wire or something like that you know I’m the printer is not going to tell me.
I’m monitoring the temperature and stuff using the USB on the printer, the printer faults before it reports to the USB the temperature that caused it to fault.
So that’s not going to work for me so I’ve been monitoring outside of the board.
This time I was only pulling every half a second, and so I think I should jump it up to like 20 or 30 times a second, and, and see what that gives me so that’s kind of my idea right now, and where I’m going.
Chris
sounds like Inductor Coil got cracked or something on your power supply.
Andy
The what.
Chris
The Inductor Coil
Andy
No, well if an inductor had gone bad, you would lose the power all together. It wouldn’t be, it wouldn’t slowly go bad.
The most likely thing would be the MOSFETs that control the switching are starting to fail. And when MOSFET is getting hot, it doesn’t transfer as many amps as it should.
So if it’s building up a lot more internal temperature, and then it won’t produce as much electricity for the switch and that’s why you would get this, this slope of it, you know the voltage going down and not just like clicking off or something like that so.
The power supply I got it was a cheapy when I put it in I think it was like 15�������ℎ��������ℎ�����������ℎ�������ℎ��,�ℎ�������ℎ���ℎ�����ℎ�������������������,�������������ℎ��������������������������������������������������������������ℎ������ℎ�������,�������,����������������,��������ℎ�����������′��ℎ��������ℎ���������ℎ���…���������,�������������������������ℎ����ℎ����������������������������.��,���ℎ����′���������������15orsomethinglikethatIevenboughttwoofthem,thinkingthatthismightwindupgoingbadonme,becauseitisacheaperpowersupplysodoubleuponitbecausetopowersupplieswerestillcheaperthanagood,youknow,agoodpowersupply,IforgetthebrandnameI′mthinkingofhoneysomething…Honeywell,likeagoodHoneywellorsomethingthatwilllastforeternityyouknow.So,nothoseI′mlookingforlike60 to $100 for a 24 volt power supply that’s only like four amps or so so.
So the cheaper out but that bit me in the butt so even though I’ve got another power supply I’m not going to use it I’m just going to hold on to it as a backup power supply and get a better one.
We’ll see how that goes, but that’s it so since that’s been going down I haven’t printed anything at all I’ve had a lot of failed prints because every time I got a fault.
You know, I wound up started printing out my drawers just the drawers for my drawer set that I’m building back here, because if I do get a fault.
So I mean it’s an eight hour print for like 10 drawers. And so if I do get a fault, at least I’m not wasting, you know I’m only wasting the current drawer it’s on and not the previous ones that it managed to print successfully.
I’ve got it. I got it.
Chris
Right.
Because your not printing them all…
You’re not printing them all off at the same time…
You’re telling it to print one at a time.
Andy
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So I’ve been doing that, because I do need to print those, because I’m still expanding this. So I’ve got like, I don’t know, 30 or so sitting over there.
Because I have been over printing those while I’ve been fighting this but nothing actually like worthwhile I’ve got a couple of things I do need to print. In fact, if tonight I have a problem printing I’ve got my school, my son school for play practice needs
me to print a fish out of TPU. I talked to you about this Chris. If I can’t get this up and go and come tomorrow and successfully working again. I might bug you if you’ll print a fish for me if you don’t mind.
Chris
Yeah! Not a problem.
Andy
Thanks.
Chris
Any time.
My printer’s working… working great.
Andy
I appreciate that. Yeah, but other than that that’s that’s been it for me.
Chris
Cool.
That’s not cool but…
Andy
Yeah, it’s a fun problem I was excited to deal with this like, okay, well I know that the print I don’t know what’s going on with it right now and it could be several different things I could have a broken wire, or bad heater cartridge, same thing with the therm resistor.
The wires going up to it can can be bad. You know the power supply I know is touchy so that could be an issue too. And so, you know, I’ve got I get to sit down and I get a monitor I get to hook this up to like tons of different things and graph out values and write some code to monitor it and all that other kind of stuff.
It was, it was a fun project setting up is like, I took me about 1520 minutes to put together a specially designed multimeter in order to even test the printer because I need to use some amplifier transistors on the
thermistor in order to read it. I need to measure you know voltage on the power supply on the hot end. And then you know how was I going to tell that this was faulty oh wait the printer beeps really loud when it faults.
I’ll just check the the the Piezo buzzer for voltage and that’s a five volt supply on that one so I was doing all these little things. I mean I probably seen pictures when I was showing off my printer it’s all sprawl the part with all these wires hooked up to it and stuff it was a fun thing to do and you know I sent you guys all the graphs and stuff I was taken from it look at all this you know you can see what’s going on here and what’s happening here. And with all of that, it was not conclusive.
So
Chris
The black box wizard doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Andy
no kidding no kidding and I know I also wasn’t measuring stuff very fast and I, there’s other things I can do in Marlin to like I looked into like internal logging and stuff like that Marlin can do I did find out that Marlin can log to an SD card.
But one of the only ways I found out how to do that is it will log all of the stuff going in and out of the gcode interpreter, which initially sounds like it could be pretty effective, but that means as you’re printing every sync like the entire print job will wind up going through the interpreter, excuse me the interpreter, and then that would be pushed off onto the log file. So you’d have to go through essentially an entire print job, you know, Meg’s worth of text, and to find what’s going on
and this looks like that is useful but I would have to like write a script to parse through it and things to even find what I would be looking for and what we’ll just we’ll just do it externally and do it outside of Marlin, but it’s kind of hard to say.
Chris
There it is.
Line 3,163…
Andy
Yeah, I see it happened at the very beginning that’s great.
So yeah, so we’ll try this. And if it doesn’t work I’ll hook my stuff up to it again at a much higher polling rate. I mean, worst case scenario I could put the oscilloscope up to it and get really quick information from it, you know, I can have my, I could use the Piezo to trigger the oscilloscope to record, you know, what exactly is happening within a second or so, as it does at a very fast rate, if I really need to but I think if the current setup I spent all the time doing because it’s it’s the fun parts kind of gone.
So I need a solution, you know, if, if this doesn’t work, I’m going to hook it up because it’s already still all hooked up. I’ll just change the polling to be much of a higher rate and change my software on the computer to log it a little bit differently to where it’s forgetting it’s
maintaining an hour window instead of trying to remember everything because that’s quite a bit of data to come off, you know, through a serial port if I’m logging it every like, let’s say 100 times a second or so, you know, to try to catch that break that’s in the wire or something.
That’ll, you know, that’s that’s probably 20 minutes worth of setup to try again at a higher polling rate. And if that doesn’t tell me what’s going on, I think I’m just going to do what you suggested Chris and just start replacing stuff and go from there.
Chris
Just start throwing money at it and see what sticks.
Andy
Yeah, I mean, the heater cartridge and thermistors are not expensive. It’s mostly time consuming to do. And you guys have seen my printer I’ve got one corrugated wire housing that goes to my print head, and that has everything and that’s got the heater cartridge, the the fan, the part schooling fan the
thermistor and both cool water cooling lines, going up through that one thing so removing like an entire thermistor and the wiring all the way down to the board, going through the housing and all that kind of stuff is quite a bit of work and so it’s not really the cost of replacing the part because like, you can buy those thermistors including the whole entire wire harness from like, what, five for like 10 bucks, pretty cheap. Same with the heater cartridges. And I’ve got a bunch from when I was would buy, instead of buying like one hot end like oh you can buy, you know, the the aluminum block for the hot end, or, you know, 8�����8orfor10 you can get like an entire put together v6 assembly. So I was buying the assemblies because ah more parts I don’t know if I’ll probably will never need this stuff. I got I’ve never used a v6 heat sink but I’ve got like four or five of them in my box just because that’s what I was buying was the entire setup.
So I’ve got the parts. I just it’s a lot of effort. Of course, I’m putting a lot more time into just monitoring stuff and doing that kind of stuff, then it would take me to just, you know, run an entire new thermistor, but but you know running the thermistor is not fun playing with the numbers the graphs and the circuitries the fun part so of course I’m going to choose the harder fun part.
Chris
Realistically, you know, you do want to get some diagnostics and figure out what is going on instead of just waiting for it to magically fix itself.
Andy
Yeah, that is true, but I mean replacing the entire thermistor it could be anything I’ve I’ve only I mean the original cartridge heater cartridge and thermistor wiring are the original going from the printer up to the head.
I’ve just always cut the wires and resoldered in a new cartridge or resoldered in a new thermistor to the old wiring. So and you know and that’s constantly moving all over the place with the head of like that so I mean it is old and it could be broken and that could be the the biggest thing on top of it after I retuned the PID this last time and had it fail.
It failed because of a low temperature warning. It was different than a thermal runaway warning. So that and I don’t I’ve got to sit down and see what exactly the errors what Marlin senses will throw what error to kind of help narrow it down a little bit because I initially was not worrying about what Marlin was saying and just working with my own stuff but my own stuff isn’t necessarily finding the problem.
I should find out what exactly is happening for these errors to be thrown to help narrow it down overall but I suspect the wire on the thermistor is you know separating every once in a while it’s becoming an open circuit and it’s not it’s it’s it’s just a really quick enough to cause the printer to fall out but you know after everything stops moving and stuff it’s back to working again so
Chris
Yeah.
That’s what Frank was dealing with, and that’s what I suspect was happening with mine.
Andy
Yeah, so, we’ll deal with that. It’s been a fun problem but I’m now tired of working on the printer and just want it to work so see what swapping the power supply does and go from there.
Chris
If not you could always just get a bigger hammer.
Andy
That is true. That is true.
Kevin
Kick it!
Andy
I do have an old printer it would be nice to get one of the newer ones and I just need an excuse but it’s I got sentimental value with this machine so I want to keep it going.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
But that’s me.
Chris
So, hey, Kevin.
Kevin
Yo.
Chris
What’d you do this week?
Kevin
So what I did this week was I printed up my character for Household that Ivangor Dezvoyovich turned out really well.
I showed you guys pictures.
Andy
Yeah, that looks great.
Chris
Yeah.
Looks just like the model you were shoing us last week.
So our Visual Listeners can remember.
Kevin
Right!
And then James had designed up his caracter for Zombicide Chronicles, Jack, I’ve printed him off.
I haven’t taken him off the supports yet, but printed him up.
I also printed up his character for Household. Alestair Mecherskine. He’s going to be playing
a type of… I think the main species is sprite, but the subspecies is salamander. I know for sure
the subspecies is salamander. It’s a fire sprite.
Andy
Okay.
Kevin
It’s a humanoid thing. The sprites come in
three varieties. The fire sprites are called salamanders. Then the water sprites are
undines, and then the air sprites are sylphs. There is…
Chris
Okay so…
If a water sprite and a salamander have a kid they just get steamed up a lot.
Kevin
There is no earth sprite per se, but when you read the description of the Bogarts, they are
highly reminiscent of Tolkien’s Hobbits and would probably qualify as earth sprites if you
really wanted to get down to it.
Andy
Okay.
Chris
Whait… so…
There are already…
There are already fairy sized creatures and you have halflings in those?
Kevin
Well, I’m saying that their culture is reminiscent of the
Tolkien-esque halflings. They’re the people of the land.
Andy
Okay.
Kevin
Right now, I am designing up Kyle’s
character for Household in Titancraft. I don’t think it’s going to be done for tonight,
but he’s playing… I think it’s pronounced Sloowaa. It’s spelled S-L-U-A-G-H. They’re kind of
insectoid people from the basement.
Andy
Okay.
Chris
Ah.
I was thingking it might be fun, just as an interrim, grab one of the Candyland characters.
Kevin
So, I will be printing this guy off at some point. Another thing I’ve done is, on my FDM
printer, I have printed up four commander zone trays for Magic the Gathering.
Kevin
Those frequently will have dials or little sections where you can rest your dice,
so I decided I would print the trays on the FDM printer and the dials on the resin printer.
I did that, and the housing for the dials, when printed on the resin printer,
was too big for the tray. And I’ve noticed this before. I’ve noticed this before that
when you go to print something in resin, it’s not always exactly the size you think it’s going to be.
So, I got out my calipers and saw that it’s supposed to be a 25 millimeter base
for the housing for the dials, and it was coming out at like 27.1 millimeters.
Chris
Wow.
That’s Kind of a big difference.
Andy
That’s a big difference.
Kevin
Yeah, and the gap between the walls where the housing is supposed to sit on the tray
was actually a little less than 25 millimeters. So, I went into Chidubox and I determined
that the difference between what the printed housing was and what it should be was 2.5 millimeters.
So, I went into Chidubox and I reduced the size by 2.5 millimeters, and I printed one off and it fit perfectly.
Andy
That’s a little, little frustrating that Chitubox would get that wrong, because the model was accurate right it was Chitubox rendering it wrong.
Kevin
I don’t know what the cause of the error was exactly, but I’ve seen this before with my printer,
so I don’t know if it’s just that more is getting cured than should be, or if Chidubox is off by a
couple of millimeters.
Andy
Okay.
Okay, that makes sense.
Kevin
It’s usually not a problem because I’m not usually doing interference parts
like this, but when I do, it’s frustrating that the size is that far different.
Andy
Yeah, that would be I know with Chitubox since I’ve been doing dimensionally accurate needing to be accurate stuff that it has been okay.
So, I wonder if it maybe it’s just a setting or something, because I know that you can adjust a lot of that inside Chitubox to make sure that whatever your printer, you know, resolution is or whatnot that sizes are all correct.
Kevin
Yeah, so I’ve done that, and so I do intend on printing more of those dials and a few of the
dice holders to fit in those commander zone trays, and the other thing is I got this,
the commander zone tray and all the various parts for it off of Thingiverse, and one common complaint
was that the post for the dials is a little too thick,
Andy
Okay.
Kevin
like it doesn’t fit nicely inside the dial,
and knowing that, I initially scaled the diameter of those posts down 2%,
Andy
Okay.
Kevin
and even then they were still too thick, so I scaled them down another 2%. I still had to
really push to get them in, so the latest test was another 2%, so I’m just getting them
incrementally more narrow until I find the right one where it’ll just slide in and still be snug,
but not tight, because for the one that I put together that actually fits in the tray,
I had to get my rubber mallet and pound one of the posts into the dial.
Chris
That’s pretty good then that your printer will print and you can still whack it with a mallet and it holds up though.
But yeah…
Kevin
Yeah, I was concerned that it might break, but fortunately it stayed together through the whole
thing, and we were good.
Chris
Nice.
Yeah, I know um… when I was printing those micrometer stands I would have interference size issues too, and I ended up changing, between different micrometer models, I would change it upwards of 12% which you would think is like a lot, but apprently not.
Kevin
Right.
Chris
So a few more percentage points may get you a good fit.
Kevin
Yeah, I’m sure I’ll get there at some point. It’s just gonna have to be trial and error till I do.
Chris
Yeah.
And make sure you note that in the model or resave it, or something.
Kevin
Oh, yeah, yeah, so that’s what I’m doing is as I re-slice it, I am saving over the other
sliced file, because whatever it will be, it’ll be better than the one before, if that makes sense.
Chris
Yeah.
Kevin
Speaking of frustrating things, this doesn’t have anything to do with 3D printing, but it does
relate to a conversation we had way at the beginning of when we started this podcast,
and that is that yesterday I was working on my knitting project, and I happened to be using
acrylic needles, which is not my preferred material for a knitting needle to be made of, because
Chris
They flex a lot?
Kevin
they flex a lot, and they’re not as durable as wood or metal. In the hierarchy of materials to make
knitting needles out of my preference is metal at the top, and then wood or bamboo,
and then at the bottom is acrylic, and what happened last night illustrates why, but I was
using what are called interchangeable needles, and those can get pretty pricey, and that’s why I’ve
got acrylic interchangeable needles, is because they’re the set, the whole set that I have was
like 30,���������������������������ℎ����������������������30,comparedtoasetofmetalinterchangeableneedleswouldbe75. So it’s, if you’re on a budget,
acrylic is kind of the way to go, except for as I was almost done with the first row of Clue 4,
like I had coming up on like less than 20 stitches left out of 317 or something like that,
the right side needle broke. Yeah, dropped stitches, had to go back like panic, panic, panic.
Chris
Jeez, and that’s the risk you take buing the cheaper needles too.
Kevin
Yeah, so my plan is if I’ve got time immediately after the podcast is to go to the store and see if
I can find some wood or metal size 5 interchangeable needles, because I have three more acrylic needles,
but my faith in them is not very great at this point.
Chris
Yeah.
If anything, what I would do is use them as molds to make needles myself.
Kevin
My only problem with that is getting the threading right.
Chris
Yeah.
You’d have to buy a tap and just thread it yourself after you’d cast it.
A lot more involved and probably better off just buying the expensive ones.
Kevin
Yeah, and if you buy them a piece at a time, it’s not so bad. It’s when you buy the whole set that it’s painful on the wallet.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
Ah Yeah.
but then again ususally if you buy the whole set you can get it at a cheaper price per…
A lot of times.
I don’t know…
Kevin
A lot of times, but the sets also tend to come with all of your cables and the keys necessary for
changing out the needles and the end caps and just a whole bunch of extra parts that you need
in order to use the needles, but I’ve already got all of that. So getting a pair of needles here
and there is not going to be that big of an issue for me.
Chris
Well, cool.
Kevin
So yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing.
Chris
Wow.
Well you guys saw the picture I posted, uh, I printed a couple of probe holders for work.
Andy
Yeah. I saw that.
Those turned out pretty nice.
Chris
yeah Yeah.
It’s been a thing for a while where…
so. Those Probes are Reishaw TP20 Probes, probe tip…
probe holders is what they are called.
You see all of the rods and then the little rubies at the end of ’em.
But the holders themselves are TP20 holders and they are slightly bigger than a Double A battery, so I just ended up going onto Thingiverse and finding a six piece Double A holder for case for like camping or something
and ended up just cutting the Z down and then expanding the X and Y just a little bit.
About 125%
and that was just about the right size for those.
but they have a magnetic base to the tip, so it basically holds itself to the machine through the magnetic bases.
Andy
That’s kind of cool.
It looked pretty neat.
Pretty effective.
Chris
Yep.
so, very simple but… um.
It was becoming problematic at work because as you saw there’s like five different tips for the machine, so…
They’re kind of stuck all over the machine here or there.
I’m like Oh where’s that tip?
I need that tip for this job.
Now they’re all together for this machine.
Andy
Yeah, that’s good.
Chris
Oh. I sent you guys some pics of the little clip for my car.
Andy
I, yeah, I saw that you got a little, uh, what’d you call it the, the park break release or something hole in the dash to release it if the batteries dead or something to release the, the transmission is that what that was for.
Chris
Yeah. So it’s the shift lock.
Andy
Yeah, the shift lock. Yeah, you were missing the cover over that.
Chris
Yep.
and… yeah… printed it in silver, it matches the rest of my console pretty well so that was nice yep and it is so nice to have my car
in working order finally so I sent you guys the picture of the gremlin I’ve found my electrical
gremlin for our listeners it turns out that by the driver kick panel there’s a bunch of connectors
and this is not the first Subaru I’ve had an issue where this connector kind of melted itself
so yeah the wife had a 2000 forester or it was a 2002 forester she had and just the windows and
the power locks just out of nowhere just kind of stopped working one day and turns out it’s the
same problem that I just barely came across where the connector by the kick panel just
kind of overheated and melted so Frank pointed out in our chat earlier this week that you would
think that the fuses would prevent that but they didn’t
Andy
Okay.
The problem is if it was just like just barely a little bit of a connection, like barely touching enough to where it was caught the continuity was was resistive.
And if the amperage whatever it was connected to was was still pretty low enough that whatever it was was still working or whatever the power was still going through it that little part of that resisted part would heat up a lot.
But overall be pulling any more power than it normally is. And so you’d get a lot of heat right there and melt the plug down.
Chris
yeah so I know that in the the old forester it was because it had got wet from snow and stuff
Andy
Okay.
Chris
in my in my current car and I’m actually suspecting it was the brake switch
Andy
Oh really.
Andy
Chris
Yeah. I did have to replace the brake switch um and um before before I replaced the engine
one of the one of the brake bulbs the filament had broken and then crossed over onto the
second filament and was shorting out on my tail lights
Andy
Okay, okay.
Chris
So I turned on my tail lights and that filament would turn on my other brake lights
Andy
Okay.
Chris
and so I’m thinking it was just kind of a cascade issue that finally came to fruition
once I started fixing things the the next part of the leak leaky pipe burst you know
Andy
Yeah, yeah, that’s funny.
Chris
so but I’ve got it all battened down you know got a got a new brake switch all of that so
yep
Andy
That’s good. That’s good. Glad that worked out.
While we’re talking, I just learned a pretty neat little trick that could be useful in 3D printing here.
I’ve got a humidifier that I’m working on that’s got a leak in it. And it’s got a little heater that fits up into the bottom that it seals to the bottom of the, you know, the water reservoir.
And that’s leaking. And I pulled it apart to see what’s going on and the actual plastic reservoir part has melted a little bit due to the heater and the plastic was to kind of bent out of shape and that stopped sealing.
Chris
it warped
Andy
And so I’m working on fixing that. Yeah. But I was in kind of a neat situation here I wanted to share with people who might have a similar setup.
I’ve got my SMD solder station, which with when you take the nozzle completely off, it’s just like a small hairdryer that you can set to any temperature you want.
So I dialed this down to a fairly low temperature, and then took and used infrared camera to sit and watch the plastic that I was heating up to make sure I was heating it up at the rate that it needed to be heated up at.
And so I wasn’t like overheating one spot or, you know, heating it up less on others. And that made it super easy to get all the surrounding plastic.
I wanted to like remold and kind of bend out of the way a little bit more up to the right temperature without doing any damage to anything and having good control over the heating using the SMD solder station.
But I just wanted to share that it was just kind of a neat moment.
Chris
huh
Andy
Kind of neat when you have the right tools to do a job and just how things work out, you know.
I like that.
Chris
Wow. Yeah. Having the right tools for the right job.
Andy
Yeah, and I guess in this case it’s kind of overkill because I’m working with plastic and I used a solder station heater to do that work.
This has a lot of build up because it you know a lot of water so a lot of hard waters gone through it.
I’m using toilet bowl cleaner to clean it up it’s just like it’s it’s it’s using the tool that works best not necessarily what it was designed for.
Chris
Yeah, that’s true. I do keep a bottle of CLR around for cleaning up those deposits just anywhere.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, but it’s kind of a neat moment there while I was doing this just to have it work so well, because you can’t really can’t really see when you’re getting ready heating up something to melt it but the thermal camera and plastic.
You could read plastic really super easy with the thermal camera. So it just it just all worked. It was nice.
Chris
That’s pretty cool.
Andy
Just just just a moment that’s all.
Chris
I’m like, I so should get a thermal camera, but I got nothing. I would actually use it for
because even when I monitor temperatures on engines or AC outlets or whatever else,
I just use the little point and shoot laser.
Andy
Yeah, and that that works just fine and I agree I don’t need this I originally got this because I was doing the private utility locating and had a lot of people calling in to find their sprinkler lines, which is much more difficult.
Now one of the ways I discovered how to do it is by running a steamer running steam through the sprinkler system, and then using the thermal camera to watch for ground temperature changes.
The sprinkler system is buried less than about a foot down if you’re running a steamer through the entire system for a good hour or something like that.
Since the thermal camera, if you see like you know the sprinkling system makes a pattern you know kind of what it should already be doing.
And so if it’s changed the ground temperature level, even by a degree or so you can see that in the thermal camera.
And it makes it really obvious really easy to locate the lines and so that’s what I originally bought this for but this is an old X tech blur.
So it’s it’s a, it’s a high quality, but very much like old Flir unit I think this is about 15 years old, or so it’s it’s an oldie, but I bought it for like 800 bucks.
When I bought it, but they are so much cheaper now to get you know from Flir I mean they’re still expensive you’re still going to pay 100 200 bucks for one that can attach to your phone or whatever but
Chris
Right, but it’s it’s like car scanners, you know, they used to be hundreds and hundreds of dollars and now you can spend 30 bucks and get something decent for your for your from for home use.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, and you know I find the weirdest things to be able to use it on, and it’s just, it’s so nice when I got it if, if I didn’t already have one I might not have got one but now that I’ve got one, I would, if something happened to it I would buy another, even though I rarely use it
I would only use it effectively four or five times a year where it’s actually useful, or even partly useful like this project it was very useful with this plastic.
But you know other times it’s just more like do I got a water leak or something you know underneath the cabinet I can go and look around in there for a water leak and you know little things like that where, you know, you don’t need it, but it does make it, you know, nicer to have when, when you do got it so.
You know for doing this plastic mill melting and making the whole the right shape it used to be for this little project here kind of reminded me of a lot of times where if you might not have something that fits well.
On a on a 3d print and not necessarily a whole but like a tab or something like that.
A lot of time it’s pretty easy just to run it under some really hot water and then be able to bend things how you need to.
So, having the, the hot air station and, and this.
Chris
Right, because I mean I do something similar but I use my heat gun, but my heat gun only has two settings that has low and high. So I can put it on low and then back it up a bit to get it to do what I want but that having having that adjustable temperature there that’s kind of cool.
Andy
Yeah.
It’s kindof the best of both worlds really.
Kevin
So I just have to say real quick how excited I am that I was able to do this.
The Kyle’s character in household has a weapon called a cocktail spear.
It’s basically it’s a it’s a cocktail fork. Yeah, two pronged thing with the kind of
curved tines on there. Well, in in Titancraft, they don’t have a two pronged spear available.
Chris
So you take a Trident…
Kevin
So, so what I did was I took their they have this they have a few a few different trident
options. And I’ll show you the one that I went with that do do do do do share screen
screen share
uh
screens we’re gonna share that one
live
So you can see here this is the one that I picked because it if if it didn’t have this center
Andy
Okay.
Kevin
time here it would look like a cocktail fork. So then I took it into blender.
Andy
Okay, and you you removed it so it’s not a trident anymore it’s a good.
Kevin
Right, I was able to remove it and it left a hole right here in the middle where the center
tine was and I plugged that up. I’m so excited.
Andy
Nice that looks good.
Kevin
But the next part the next part will be flaring this back end a little bit.
Andy
That way it looks a little bit more like a spoon kind of like.
Kevin
Yeah, like a cocktail fork. Yeah.
Andy
Okay.
Andy
Yeah, awesome.
That looks cool.
Like your skills and blender my friend.
Kevin
Oh, they’re they’re not anywhere close to what I would like to be but I’m getting better and I’m
so excited about that. Actually, Ryan who’s been a guest on the podcast a few times
offered to help me out because what he he teaches 3d modeling at the high school he works at.
Andy
Okay.
Kevin
And so yeah, he’s like, yeah, and he said that he started with blender. He doesn’t use that for
his students, but I’m like, that’s cool. I would love to learn more how to use this better.
Andy
Yeah, that’s cool.
That’s cool.
Chris
That’s the great thing about any software is just, if you spend enough time with it you’ll be a pro.
you just gotta be willing to jump in and mess around with it.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
So quick one off Chris you saw this project I was working on with that hole really kind of squished in and during the podcast this is this is how we fixed it up kind of sanded it down so that it would seal a little bit better with the heater.
So hopefully it’ll stop leaking.
Yeah, worked out really well.
Chris
Yeah, if anything maybe you’d want to sand down the posts because if you remove a little bit of material there that’ll
Andy
Oh, you’ll be able to squish it down harder against it huh.
Chris
Yeah, that’s where I was getting. Yeah.
Andy
Let me see how it fills with the seal and without the seal, because then I can see how much extra squishing my god oh you know what Chris you are right there is, there is no room it is hitting the, the screw mounts before it even really pushes on the seal.
Chris
Yeah, knew it.
Andy
Yeah, that might have been the whole problem right there kind of spend all this time and all fixing this that might not even have been the problem it just wasn’t even squishing up against it.
Oh, thank you. Yes, I’m going to get some more sand paper right away do that.
Chris
All right. Well, I do have to get rolling guys so I’m going to call it if that’s all right.
Kevin
That is just fine.
Chris
Okay, here we go. Mr outro script. Okay. Well, we’d like to thank everyone for listening to the very end.
Kevin
The very, very end.
Chris
Thank you.
Kevin
You’re welcome.
Chris
If you, if you like what you hear, please give us all the stars and subscribe. We are available through a wide variety of podcast vendors and so are easy to share.
If you have feedback, please, you can find us in our Facebook group amateur 3d pod, you can email us individually Franklin, Kevin, Andy, or Chris @amateur3dpod.com, or you can email us collectively at panelists @amateur3dpod.com.
That’s the one to go to if you want to make us fight each other.
Kevin wrote the music for this episode and every episode. Open ai’s whisper completed the heavy lifting for the transcripts, which are linked in the description. Our panelists are me, Chris Weber and my friends Andy Cottam and Kevin Buckner.
Until next time, we’re going offline.
Kevin
Keep your FEP type.
Andy
Always use hairspray.
Chris
I had to take butter out of my diet. It’s margarine a Lee. Okay.
Andy
I’m staring down that barrel myself.
Kevin
Don’t don’t don’t switch to margin though or margin.
Chris
Yeah, yeah.
Kevin
No, no, no, that’s that stuff is so much worse for you than butter.
Andy
Yeah, no kidding. No kidding.
Kevin
Like it literally is failed plastic.
Andy
Yeah, yeah.
Chris
Yeah, yeah, it’s synthetic oils. I mean, yeah.
Kevin
Like, it was, if I remember correctly, born from a guy trying to figure out how to use
plant oils to make plastic to be more eco friendly and he ended up with this soft mess
and said, okay, well, then let’s see if we can find a different use for this junk
and found that it, I mean, because it’s plant oil, you know, so he’s like, it should be safe to eat.
And so he tried it and he was like, hey, this is this is almost butter like in flavor. Let’s let’s try that.
Chris
Well, same reason deep fried fruits are not also great for you either is because, you know, canola oil.
Kevin
I mean, yeah, so there is that whole thing about rapeseed oil and and it’s health questionable
health benefits. But I remember seeing… it was an ad for nature valley, I think, margarine.
And it was the voiceover was saying that you should buy their… that brand because it had like only half a gram of trans fat per serving, which the voiceover said is the lowest amount allowed by nature.
Which I said that is such bull crap, because trans fat is not a naturally occurring chemical.
And that is why it’s so bad for you is because it is it is completely synthetic. It is a man made
chemical that occurs when people hydrogenate vegetable oils.
Chris
It’s partially hydrogenated.
Kevin
Yeah, so when you see partially hydrogenated vegetable oil in an ingredients list, you know,
it’s got trans fat in it.
Andy
Okay.
Chris
And it’s bad bad for your heart.
Kevin
And it’s bad for you. My my organic chemistry professor referred to
trans fat as an evil chemical, because your body will absorb it, but it can’t metabolize it,
it can’t do anything with it. So it just gets deposited in your arteries.
Andy
Okay, that is evil.
Kevin
Yeah. So butter is is much more healthy for you than than margarine. It’s not to say that butter is
like a health food, but it’s
Chris
It is better for you.
Kevin
it’s better for you than than margarine.
Chris
The lesser of two evils.
Just kidding. I love butter.
Okay.
Andy
I’m a butter guy too.