shinyhappyrainbows

" To create, you have to break the rules, you have to break your own rules, " ~ high wire artist Phillipe Petit. That is all

Forgive my phone's camera, it's only an iPhone SE and its camera only does digital zoom. However, take a look at this 3D print, currently coming "out of the glass." That is NOT the "fuzzy skin" setting in my slicer! That's the natural look of the carbon fibre impregnated PETG I'm printing with. The tiny carbon strands are fizzing up in the hot paste and making such a matte finish that you can't see the layer lines! This printer has never printed so well before! This is my first, serious structural part print since I upgraded this machine from the stock v-wheels to linear rails. This was an AU$200 upgrade kit, so I expected good quality prints but I also expected more linear layers, too, more prounounced in other words. And they sort of are with plain, glassy PLA. A little bit. To me, this print, side-on at least, looks like it's been printed in a laser 3D printer - laser melted nylon granules. This finish is one of the attractions in the 3

Wow! What a productive couple of weeks in the workshop. (Not "the \'shop", In Australia, a shop is where you buy bread and milk. Light industrial work happens in a workshop. Ignorant #seppos.*) I have repaired a picnic table as light work table, mounted my drill press on a mobile trolley on casters, started redesigning and building my robot drums, begun turning my 240x180x50 CNC router "toy" into a 1000x500x50 CNC tool, got my trusty Ender 3 upgraded to linear rails and 32 bit control, running Marlin 2.1.2.4 (the latest at time of writing) and printed some of said drum robart parts. In all of that, I have modified my new trigger clamps to work interchangeably with clapming force or spreading force. Used the old 18x240 T-slot bed from the "toy" CNC as my drill press table AND mounted the cross slide on that with T-nuts, so that I can clamp jobs or do fine jobs or high accuracy jobs. It's like my ADHD staged a coup on my autism and decided to be pro

First there was the Tronxy, a Prusa i3 clone, which was rebuilt more than grandad's axe. Then there was some cheap-assed, no name brand delta printer with a tiny, circular bed that really couldn't take the size of prints I wanted. These two overlapped with my Ender 3 Pro which, quite frankly, wasn't as good print quality as the $150 nameless delta but it sure was reliable... well, except for the stock hotend. Those old hollowbox extruders with the hidden, red, undersized heatsink... ugh. Then there was the Ender 3 Pro II. Same shit extruder and hotend, but, yeah, 32 bit control board. Now we're taking. The Tronxy and the Delta are now retired due to beyond economical maintenance. You can only throw so much money or effort at a steamer, and the more you print, the more stuff wears out. They were also fire risks, no thermal runaway protection. The E3 Pro II churns out basic engineering prints up at Splodgenoodles' place, but nothing pretty, really, it needs work. and

Hallucination is something that's supposed happen when you get good drugs. It can be cathartic, spritual, inspirational or any combination of. The last thing you want, though, when consulting an expert, is for them to be tripping balls. AI has that problem too often. People are being encouraged to use AI for their job's tricky problems, to help them find different ways to communicate, for therapy, even to help them with their homework, this latter case, even at university, even for postgrad theses. Yet, ask one of these 'bots more than a handful of questions, and you'll start to get "hooky" answers. I shouldn't understate it - in my experience, every session goes "pear shaped" withing half a dozen to a dozen queries. Sooner in many cases. Have a really close look at my AI generated site logo... Some, ah, cute... shall we call them "artefacts." I borrow the term from my former profession as an audio engineer - those things we mishear

Making a concerted, pre-spring cleaning effort in the studio/workshop at the moment. Was going well today until I got to my "inheritance," 4 big toolboxes worth of metric thread machine screws, nuts and assorted supporting hardware. I say "inheritance" because they were on a deceased estate, nature strip, hard rubbish pile and the brother of Splodgenoodles (not her real) name scored them for me. Once I find a proper home for the collection, I may never need to buy threaded hardware ever again. At least, not M4 to M10. But OMFG! I'm broken! Half, no, two-thirds of my day has been wrapped arounf sorting, collating, bagging-pending-a-new-home and stacking what feels like a hundredweight of ironmungery from buggeration to buggery and this ballast still doesn't have a permanent home. Sure, the M6 bolts are now sorted to length. AFTER 10 HOURS OF SODDING SORTING!!! M4 and M5 are yet to be sorted. M8 to M12 are sort of only a couple of handfuls, but I have no ide