solarbird

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I've printed a couple of spools at different sizes, it's really kind of nice to have them. Particularly smaller spools for smaller sample lengths, super worth it.

But another thing you can do is just print a little single-wall cylinder that friction fits inside one of your existing spools, then cut the existing (non-printed) spool in half down the middle and use the cylinder as a friction-fit sleeve to hold the two halves together. That also gives you the same functionality. It's not as cool but it saves on filament? ^_^

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Eyyy, someone else playing with PHA!

I have a bunch of PHA commentary (and experimentation) over on the kbin 3d-printing group:

https://kbin.social/m/3DPrinting/t/40862/PHA-filament-heat-resistance-testing

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, under the build plate there are four bolts pointing down. Those bolts.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Or stash bricks of it in dead salt mines.

Seriously. All the carbon in it comes from plants which means it came from CO2 in the atmosphere. Stored this way, it's a medium-term (as in hundreds of years) carbon store.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

My next printer will be multifilament ^_^

I'm already doing like four-colour prints with my 3v2 but obviously there are severe limits in placement.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It has pegs but I was able to see that there are rather typical screw heads in the heating plate to hold it down onto the bed's support frame, and if you look you can see the bolt ends coming down out of the underside of the supporting arms.

So I think what's here is pretty simple: regular bolts with fixed length spacer tubes around them.

And that means that OP should be able to sort this out with, say, the right collection of 0.5mm-thick washers. One on the front left screw, three on the right rear screw, uh, six on the back left screw should get close enough for the mesh to handle the remaining difference.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

HVAC assist system. It cut our peak electricity bill by 40% year over year under similar conditions, too, with substantially better performance.

But really it's very simple. All I'm doing is improving the effectiveness of very traditional methods of temperature control by being more accurate and much more aggressive about exchanging air in and out when appropriate. Obviously in the middle of a 90-110F heat wave that's not going to matter, so it's more of a northern thing - but it really does a great deal in a lot of climates. (And in spring and autumn in more southern climates, I suppose.)

One of the key elements is that outdoor temperature varies a lot from point to point on the property, so we have air exchange measured at five points around the house, keyed to local indoor vs. local outdoor air temperature. (And air quality and a few other things, of course.) The actual air exchange is a combination of the original air-exchange system plus just opening and closing windows. We overcool at night with air exchange so we're always below ambient outdoor temperature during the day.

It's remarkably effective. We went from... well, it varied a lot, but +7 to +10 F above ambient to -7 to -5 below. (I was doing all this in C internally but F because I was talking about it to Americans.)

Again, I'm in an environment where this is particularly effective, but it costs so little and saves so much money and energy use I have to think it has some general utility many places.

Here are some of my posts about it:

https://solarbird.net/blog/tag/ambient-hvac/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People sell them on craigslist fairly often, if you have that. Just be honest about the problems. It'll also help if you kept the original parts and sell them with it.

(I don't suppose you're in Seattle, are you?)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. More sense than the Magic Mouse, at least. xD

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Thanks! And honestly it's one of the best parts of 3D printing, being able to come up with things like this.

The really annoying part is that the indoor matching sensor, the companion to this one? That USB port sticks out the side, like it was designed by a sane person. xD

 

I know this is incredibly niche but if you need it, you kinda really need it. xD

Anyway, as part of my ongoing air-exchange-based HVAC project, I have an outdoor air quality sensor from Ambient Weather (no sponsorship, I bought with my own money, etc). It's battery/solar powered, and that's fine... except for the part where that doesn't work here in the winter. We just don't get enough sun or close to it.

But it plugs in to charge and keeps working when plugged in, so winner winner chicken dinner, right?

WRONG! Because to do that you have to take the bottom off the case, and then, the charge plug sticks directly out from the bottom facing down, like a goddamn Apple Magic Mouse.

So maybe I can't fix the mouse, but I can fix this, and so I have made a printable tray and rack system that lets you use it that way without it being stupid. Enjoy!

https://cdn.thingiverse.com/assets/8c/fc/44/4e/16/fceb8b64-655b-4677-9233-0eb649cab5a9.jpg

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I do, but with a temperature tower. You get top and sides, curves and spanning, overhangs, and, well... temperature. ^_^

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Y'know just in general I really strongly recommend going all-metal or better bimetallic on your hot end? It cleared up so many problems for me. The Ender 3-series hotends really aren't bad if you just back that PTFE up a bit.

I like this one (no affiliation other than I bought one) quite a lot, and I got it on sale so it was cheaper than the current price. But even at the current price I'd definitely say it's still worth it.

 

Over on Mastodon - though obviously anyone anywhere can participate - there's a weekly monster-film watching event called #Monsterdon where we all watch a movie together and comment as it's running.

One of the regulars made a bingo card for last Sunday's movie, and being a Godzilla movie, I of course had to make 3D-printable TOHO stamps to go with it.

I used 20% wood-infill PHA, since it's got that little bit of softness that helps with things like stamps, and 20% wood infill variant to help take up ink.

Even with an FDM printer and a 0.6mm nozzle I was able to get a very usable/functional result! The positive is only 20mm across (and the negative/invert only a couple of millimetres more) and yet detail is reasonably preserved.

First layer is extremely important, though I guess that goes without saying. But I think you can make some decent - not amazing, not as good as real rubber stamp material, but decent - stamps this way if you wanted.

image of stamps and bingo card

 

Oh so 3D printing on kbin is mostly in microblog form and not top level in the magazines, okay. That's a little harder to find, but hi!

#3DPrinting

 

This is the most recent update on the open vertical-storage-system project I've been building out for several months. Think of it as gridfinity for walls.

It's really been working for me as a project organiser and storage system - the idea originally was that you could put all the project bits in one (1) container, grab it off the wall, bring it over to the bench, hook it onto the wall there, and have all the parts right in front of you in one place, ding.

It also serves as kind of a reminder system since stuff is visible. Half the projects I had on it at first were tasks sitting around for ages but hidden in closets so I never got to them. But now I have visual cues, and all the parts are in one place meaning nearly zero barrier to work, so I get to them!

 

I like the thermal mass of glass for temperature stability, as I've found that's pretty key to getting good print adhesion. But I really wanted to try out PEI without having to stick a giant magnet directly to my heater plate, something I definitely did not trust.

Turns out, you can solve both problems! This was how I did it.

 

Even with modern circuit-board-style 3D printer beds, they still have thermal momentum and the beds on lower-end printers might experience some temperature irregularities without being "broken" or otherwise fully out-of-spec.

This article discusses how to address that with tailored under-bed insulation, with surface-temperature measurements and other observations.

 

Hey, bringing over some of my more technical content from reddit. This link goes to an article I wrote up describing testing I did of PHA filament, a carbon-extractive more-compostible-than-PLA filament that's harder to get than PLA but has a lot of interesting properties.

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