• 1 Post
  • 100 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: September 20th, 2023

help-circle
  • I grew up a poor farm boy, so we never had a VCR when I was a kid. And they really weren’t a thing anyway when I was young. And according to my Father, us kids were the remote!

    Did you ever peer into the back of the TV when a tube would burn out and your Dad would pull the cabinet out, then remove the back and try to see which tube didn’t light up when the set was powered up? It was a marvelous sight! It often took us a few days before we would get to town before we could stop into the local drug store that had a tube tester and had a selection of the common tubes to buy.


  • That’s what I love about mine. Automatic lid raise and lower as you walk in, heated ring and water, (both adjustable temp), air dry, (again heated), and charcoal filtered air filtration to minimize the stench from that drive through burrito.

    It’s the posh life. Very nearly the equal to having your own chamberlain.



  • I was thinking of even older things.

    The feel of the keys and staccato sounds of a mechanical typewriter.

    The sound of a wringer/washer machine

    The muffled sound of my am band 9 transistor pocket radio “hiding” under my pillow late at night for as long as the 9V battery would last (I loved the Mystery Radio Theater show that started at 10pm)

    The soft crackling sound of a tube black and white TV as all the tubes warmed up. (And the time it took to do so)

    The sound and smell of the percolator coffee pot in the morning

    The sound of a wooden screen slamming shut

    The smell and sound of a mimeograph machine printing copies in the school/church office (And the slight buzz you could get from copy fluid-- Petroleum aromatics Yum!)

    Doing my math homework with a slide rule.

    The smell of a fresh fired paper hull shotgun shell on a cold crisp late fall morning

    And so much more that no longer exists.



  • And there is little reason to do input shaping on the start of every print unless you change the mass of the moving parts by a noticeable amount. And even then, it does nothing once the print starts. You get what you get anyway when the print is finished.

    What would be better is if a printer could measure and adapt to the changing resonances as the printer was printing. But I suspect that ain’t going to happen anytime soon due the complexity and the ultimate question: “How good does good enough really need to be.”



  • It’s still the same function at the base level-- to deliver and install/remove, in an easy manor, whatever software package the user wants to use/remove. Whether it’s a good system or not, is a separate issue.

    Every Ubuntu based distro I’ve tested allows snaps. The highly touted beginner’s distro Linux Mint sure does. Even Fedora can use snaps and Ubuntu can use flatpaks if you want to be that silly. I have tested that both ways and it worked. But it was merely OKish. It’s just Ubuntu pushes snaps and Fedora pushes flatpaks. So snaps aren’t as insular as you seem to think.

    For the user, there isn’t much difference between a snap, flatpak, deb, or rpm in use. The basic install or remove experience is meant to be the same, it’s supposed to be a carefully curated point and click. Even Gentoo’s portage is supposed to be simple for the user. The one other not quite as common, but a bit more universal installation method for users is the appImage package. I use several appImages because that’s the only way they are available. And personally, over the nearly 3 decades of fooling with Linux, I’ve had issues with all of the package management methods. I still have PTSD from being repeatedly caught in rpm hell back in the day or needing to compile from source. (Damn, I’m old)

    The longer I use Linux, the more I think that whatever distro you choose, it’s more a matter of how you personally vibe with that distro than anything intrinsically better than the rest of them. Just about everything else is window dressing.






  • I think those linear rods and bearing are the weak part of the system. They are too prone to vibrations and whipping around at high speeds. But I’m too lazy to go after more upgrades on my printer at this point.

    I do have a standard flow .60mm ObXidian for abrasive filament, but they were a LOT cheaper then. Plus I already have a lot of brass Revo nozzles already. But…I want.


  • It could be a fun project for the kids. A bit of googling should get you more information on different brands printers too. Plus all the open source projects available to do mods and accessories that can require some basic to moderate programming skills to be learned.

    I know how hard it can be to kids to have enough fun to learn about how to use technology. I spent a few years teaching CAD and 3D printing to kids in school. I also tried to get the machine shop up and running again. But the school would not allow it.



  • Your Bear mod will be a lot different than my stock frame and E3D Revo V6 hotend. The profiles I have been using are based on what I think I can get away with from what I learned about from the input shaping. I think you can get away with a bit more than I can. Particularly if you went from the 8mm linear rods to a set of linear rails. That would be far more rigid and vibration damping along with the heavier frame. Did you go with a high flow extruder too? I’ve been debating on a .40mm Revo ObXidian high flow nozzle lately. But The cost is high even for the Revo eco-system.


  • Yes, Prusa runs on Marlin which isn’t a bad thing, but so does Bambu printers.

    Klipper does a few things for me.

    1. Klipper allows for a lot of customization if you want it. Everything is a text file. And your printer.cfg is easily editable. And is a cheap way to turn your Mk3s/+ into a Mk3.5 for easily under $100US-- depending on what recommended RPi you decide to buy. Accelerometers are dirt cheap. I bought the expensive recommended $20 KUSBA plus a $5 data cable because I didn’t have one. The RPi 4b I already had for years.

    2. It gives the Mk3s a 32bit controller thanks to a Raspberry Pi 4b running the printer now rather than the 8bit RamBo factory board. The RamBo merely relays the moves that klipper tells it to do.

    3. I can now use an inexpensive accelerometer to setup input shaping very easily.

    4. This gives the printer the ability to print faster without a drop in quality. I went from printing 45mm2/sec to 80mm2/sec and accelerations from 1200mm2 to 4000mm2.

    5. This particular conversion is easily reversible in about 10 minutes if I should ever decide I don’t like it. It’s merely a matter of re-flashing the firmware to the RamBo. And reinstalling OctoPrint to the RPi.

    6. This does not mean it’s now as fast as my mini. It’s not and never will be. But it’s far better than it was. For example, in this run of parts, when printing the same part, (identical test connector), with the same filament, the print times are within 10 minutes of each other. The only difference being the Mk3s has a .60mm nozzle installed and the Mini has a .40mm Nozzle installed. I run a .40mm nozzle in the Mini because Bambu optimizes it’s printers specifically for that size. And there is no difference in tolerances and quality. The parts are perfectly interchangeable.

    If you are interested, this is the git hub I used to klipperize my Mk3s



  • Like you, I have an A1 mini but with the AMS lite, I seldom use it for multi color prints beyond some few pieces of simple signage. But, it’s very effective when you hang multiple materials or colors to do your single material/color prints. So I have to give them that point.

    That said, when I bought the mini this last fall, I was all set to buy the Qidi X Smart 3-- only to discover it had been discontinued and off the website when I went to order. I just wanted a smaller and faster printer.

    I see 3 reasons to save your pennies to get the Plus 4 over the Q1. It’s a bit bigger print volume, what appears to be better specs for printing those high end engineering filaments you want to print, and being a newer model it will be supported longer. The Qidi Box isn’t needed anymore than the AMS system you already don’t have. But I think you will be happier over the long run.


  • That is the rumor so far. Since the heads are going to be swapped out, it’s not difficult at that point. Vinyl cutters are pretty simple 2D machines. All you need is a knife, some rollers to feed the stock, and a couple of stepper motors to move the stock rollers and turn the knife. They can be quite large or small enough to sit on a desktop like a paper printer. I don’t see being able to make stickers as something a lot of people who are interested 3D printing are all that interested in. But maybe I’m wrong about that.

    One thing I do know is history has a good number of examples of companies that thought they could make a multi-purpose machine of some kind. And that they would sell like hotcakes. None of them proved to worth the hassle of the setup time or turned out to be particularly good at any one thing. And they all proved in the end, to not be very popular with their customer base either.


  • The price. It’s going to be noticeably more expensive and probably more locked down than the X1C. You will be able to buy a Qidi IDEX system or Prusa Core 1 with their MMU for less money.

    I have heard that there will be a laser and vinyl cutter attachments for the H2D also. That won’t end well for Bambu. The added complexity and rather useless power and size constraints for those add ons will make them a nearly useless cost for users and support headaches for Bambu.

    Though I do give Bambu large credit for using the A1 series hot ends. They are inexpensive and fast to change out, (provided they don’t stick to the extruder making them a pain to remove).

    Unless there is something they aren’t telling yet, I don’t see this as a popular money making product for Bambu.