Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Our shiny new Subaru Forester came with a 540 page user manual and, being that type of guy, I’ve been reading through it. I suspect warnings like this come from a lawsuit in the not-too-far-distant past:
Camera Disassembly Warning
They seem to be very, very worried about small animals:
Check for Small Animals
In this situation, I’d hope the engine would fare better than, say, a squirrel:
Trapping Small Animals
Unlike the Toyota Sienna’s enclosed belt, I could actually replace this one, so I suppose a squirrel could take up residence somewhere in there:
Subaru Forester – belt and oil filter
And look at that oil filter: right up top, inside a bowl! The never-sufficiently-to-be-damned Toyota engineers mounted the Sienna’s filter horizontally, halfway up the side of the transverse V6 engine, where it slobbers oil down the block and over the front exhaust manifold.
We bought a replacement for the CorningWare casserole (that a raccoon broke when I put the rice out on the deck to cool) at a tag sale:
Nouveau Ceramic Pan – assembled
According to the information on the bottom, it’s “Nouveau A Princess House Exclusive” that’s no longer in their listing. Evidently, they’ve gone to metal stovetop cookware these days. Anyhow, it has a separate handle that latches onto a cleverly shaped tab molded into the pan:
Nouveau Ceramic Pan – handle released
Latching the handle in place is simple: put the end of the handle over the tab and squeeze the lever until it snaps into the handle. Well, I managed to latch it quite easily, after which nobody could figure out how to release it. That slotted button cries out to be pushed, but it wasn’t push-able.
That’s a condition I call “being outwitted by inanimate objects”…
After bringing it home, I discovered the secret: the slot must be exactly vertical (equivalently, maximally counter-clockwise) before you can press the button to release the latching handle. Turning the button so the slot is horizontal (maximally clockwise) locks the button out, so that you cannot press it and release the handle:
Nouveau Ceramic Pan – handle locked
The button locks out when the slot is almost imperceptibly clockwise from vertical; if you don’t know what to look for, you’d never notice the difference.
Which makes perfect sense to me. You want the handle to latch securely and require a deliberate action to release, lest the pan fall and release hot stuff all over your front. Any errors should leave the handle securely latched in place.
For reasons having to do with our Larval Engineer needing transportation, we just bought a Subaru Forester for us. While chewing through the 540 page Owners Manual, I discovered that, although the tire pressure monitoring system knows all five pressures, it can’t / won’t display them on the dashboard’s fancy LCD panel.
All four road tires had about the same pressure:
Subaru Forester – as-delivered tire pressure
Yes, I cross-checked two other gauges, Just To Make Sure.
That’s 7 or 8 psi over the spec found on the door frame placard: 30 psi front, 29 psi rear. The tire sidewalls implore you to never inflate them over 40 psi while seating the beads, although the absolute max rating of 51 psi at max load says they’re not really overstuffed.
The doughnut spare tire should have 60 psi and carried 64 psi:
Now, I’ve never had a cold tire gain pressure between checks (other than when the weather heats up), so I tend to run ’em on the high side of the recommended range. In this case, I left the spare alone and vented the road tires to 30 psi to see how it rides. If all goes well, then maybe I’ll puff ’em up a bit.
It’s time to check the fluid levels to see what could possibly go wrong under the hood…
The whole reason I got a 3D printer in the first place was to make things that would otherwise be too difficult or tedious by hand or on a CNC mill. Most of the things I make look like brackets and I don’t do sculptures … this stuff solves problems!
Being able to go from “I need a part shaped like that” to holding the thing in my hand a few hours (or, for complex designs, days) later is empowering. Being able to adjust a dimension by changing the source code and “recompiling” to get a new part is wonderful.
These five slides from the presentation show my answers to the question “Why would anyone want a 3D printer?” Clicky for more dots.
Things I Designed – 1Things I Designed – 2Things I Designed – 3Things I Designed – 4Things I Designed – 5
Herewith, the MHVLUG – 3D Printing Status 2104 slides (remember slides?) I’ll be using for my talk this evening at the MHVLUG meeting; you don’t get the audio track in the PDF, but the pictures may be informative.
If you believe everything you read, you might think personal 3D printing will go like this:
3D Printing 2014 – What They Say
But it requires entirely too much of this:
3D Printing 2014 – What They Dont Say
Personal 3D printing requires that you take full control:
3D Printing 2014 – Personal 3D Printing
Not knowing the answers, I’ll still make some guesses about what lies ahead:
3D Printing 2014 – The Future
And I found the best tchotchkes ever:
3D Printing 2014 – Tchotchkes
See you there…
(The PDF has clickable links for those images, plus the 60-some-odd other slides. The plan: talk like an auctioneer for an hour!)
Seeing as how the Tux chocolates were produced in a facility containing a big nut, some folks may prefer an (inedible, at least by humans, but correspondingly more permanent) Tux tchotchke in PLA. I plan to have the M2 running off more of them, so there should be enough to go around.
For what it’s worth, you can actually buy a 3D chocolate printer that seems rather overpriced for what’s basically a desktop CNC gantry mill with a heated syringe. The site seems dead, so maybe other folks came to that conclusion, too.
Some pix that serve as a stick in the ground showing that my current Slic3r configuration constellation doesn’t produce thin infill…
All of the layers in the 20 mm calibration cube look just like this:
Solid cube – Slic3r normal infill
The bottom layer of the Tux mold comes out solid:
Tux thread fill – bottom
As does the top:
Tux thread fill – top
The Gcode Analyzeralgorithm that assigns colors to numeric values tends to produce many aliases, although most of the time you can figure out what’s going on. If somebody wants to dive into the code, I’d like to have unique colors and get the color table sorted in ascending order.
The current Slic3r configuration:
# generated by Slic3r 1.1.1 on Sat May 3 10:31:36 2014
avoid_crossing_perimeters = 0
bed_size = 190,250
bed_temperature = 70
bottom_solid_layers = 3
bridge_acceleration = 0
bridge_fan_speed = 100
bridge_flow_ratio = 1
bridge_speed = 150
brim_width = 0
complete_objects = 0
cooling = 1
default_acceleration = 0
disable_fan_first_layers = 1
duplicate_distance = 6
end_gcode = ;-- Slic3r End G-Code for M2 starts --\n; Ed Nisley KE4NZU - 15 November 2013\nM104 S0 ; drop extruder temperature\nM140 S0 ; drop bed temperature\nM106 S0 ; bed fan off\nG1 Z180 F2000 ; lower bed\nG1 X130 Y125 F30000 ; nozzle to right, bed front\nM84 ; disable motors\n;-- Slic3r End G-Code ends --
external_perimeter_speed = 25
external_perimeters_first = 0
extra_perimeters = 1
extruder_clearance_height = 25
extruder_clearance_radius = 15
extruder_offset = 0x0
extrusion_axis = E
extrusion_multiplier = 1.07
extrusion_width = 0.4
fan_always_on = 0
fan_below_layer_time = 30
filament_diameter = 1.79
fill_angle = 45
fill_density = 100%
fill_pattern = rectilinear
first_layer_acceleration = 0
first_layer_bed_temperature = 70
first_layer_extrusion_width = 0.4
first_layer_height = 100%
first_layer_speed = 25
first_layer_temperature = 175
g0 = 0
gap_fill_speed = 50
gcode_arcs = 0
gcode_comments = 0
gcode_flavor = reprap
infill_acceleration = 0
infill_every_layers = 3
infill_extruder = 1
infill_extrusion_width = 0
infill_first = 1
infill_only_where_needed = 0
infill_speed = 150
interface_shells = 0
layer_gcode =
layer_height = 0.2
max_fan_speed = 100
min_fan_speed = 75
min_print_speed = 4
min_skirt_length = 15
notes =
nozzle_diameter = 0.35
only_retract_when_crossing_perimeters = 1
ooze_prevention = 0
output_filename_format = [input_filename_base].gcode
overhangs = 1
perimeter_acceleration = 0
perimeter_extruder = 1
perimeter_extrusion_width = 0.4
perimeter_speed = 150
perimeters = 2
post_process =
print_center = 0,0
raft_layers = 0
randomize_start = 1
resolution = 0.05
retract_before_travel = 1
retract_layer_change = 0
retract_length = 1
retract_length_toolchange = 5
retract_lift = 0
retract_restart_extra = 0
retract_restart_extra_toolchange = 0
retract_speed = 60
skirt_distance = 3
skirt_height = 1
skirts = 3
slowdown_below_layer_time = 20
small_perimeter_speed = 25
solid_fill_pattern = rectilinear
solid_infill_below_area = 5
solid_infill_every_layers = 0
solid_infill_extrusion_width = 0
solid_infill_speed = 150
spiral_vase = 0
standby_temperature_delta = -5
start_gcode = ;-- Slic3r Start G-Code for M2 starts --\n; Ed Nisley KE4NZU - 15 Nov 2013\n; 28 Feb 2014 - 6 Mar 2014 - tweak Z offset\n; Z-min switch at platform, must move nozzle to X=130 to clear\nM140 S[first_layer_bed_temperature] ; start bed heating\nG90 ; absolute coordinates\nG21 ; millimeters\nM83 ; relative extrusion distance\nG92 Z0 ; set Z to zero, wherever it might be now\nG1 Z10 F1000 ; move platform downward to clear nozzle; may crash at bottom\nG28 Y0 ; home Y to be sure of clearing probe point\nG92 Y-127 ; set origin so 0 = center of plate\nG28 X0 ; home X\nG92 X-95 ; set origin so 0 = center of plate\nG1 X130 Y0 F30000 ; move off platform to right side, center Y\nG28 Z0 ; home Z with switch near center of platform\nG92 Z-4.40 ; set origin to measured z offset\nG0 Z2.0 ; get air under switch\nG0 Y-127 F10000 ; set up for priming, zig around corner\nG0 X0 ; center X\nM109 S[first_layer_temperature] ; set extruder temperature and wait\nM190 S[first_layer_bed_temperature] ; wait for bed to finish heating\nG1 Z0.0 F500 ; put extruder near plate \nG1 E25 F300 ; prime to get pressure, generate blob\nG1 Z5 F2000 ; rise above blob\nG1 X15 Y-125 F20000 ; jerk away from blob, move over surface\nG1 Z0.0 F1000 ; dab nozzle to attach outer snot to platform\nG4 P1 ; pause to attach\nG1 X35 F500 ; slowly smear snot to clear nozzle\nG1 Z1.0 F2000 ; clear bed for travel\n;-- Slic3r Start G-Code ends --
start_perimeters_at_concave_points = 1
start_perimeters_at_non_overhang = 1
support_material = 0
support_material_angle = 0
support_material_enforce_layers = 0
support_material_extruder = 1
support_material_extrusion_width = 0
support_material_interface_extruder = 1
support_material_interface_layers = 0
support_material_interface_spacing = 0
support_material_pattern = honeycomb
support_material_spacing = 2.5
support_material_speed = 150
support_material_threshold = 0
temperature = 175
thin_walls = 1
threads = 2
toolchange_gcode =
top_infill_extrusion_width = 0.4
top_solid_infill_speed = 25
top_solid_layers = 3
travel_speed = 250
use_firmware_retraction = 0
use_relative_e_distances = 0
vibration_limit = 0
wipe = 0
z_offset = 0
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 