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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • i was thinking along those lines for equipment monitoring stuff, klipper works with Prometheus & grafana (have metrics from my printers), was thinking about looking at using the extra accelerometers I have to do something like vibration monitoring.

    I could see using a second sbc for extra sensors as well for support, thinking about printers that don’t run klipper, so long as you can correlate data it should still be useful. Honestly kinda thinking something similar to PLC data, was fantastic for fault finding and failure investigations, also useful for process control + condition based maintenance, there’s a heck of a lot that could be done with it.

    Edit: You have me thinking about this now, what would be really cool is an ability to anonymously federate data tied to events, I recall some enterprise software I used like 5-6 years ago could do this with condition indicators, I have 2 machines, I won’t see every failure mode, but if we had 1000 machines you can get much more accurate information about things like MTBF. Heck I’d even just be happy with some community FMEAs, really just thinking of taking a technical approach to my printer maintenance and usage.


  • What type of filament? Acetone doesn’t do much to things like pla or petg, stuff that works aren’t things you generally want around the house, industrial solvents and stuff. The jar of acetone can soften it up some but you’ll need to soak for some time, I’ve used MEK too, but that’s in the “don’t keep that at home” category, it’s really flammable and should use ppe (I mean should use ppe for a lot of the stuff we use, 99% IPA is harsh on your skin, I use nitriles because it irritates my hands something fierce.)

    Cold pull as others recommended, nozzles are consumables, def should keep some around. Cleaning filament works pretty well in my experience if you have a partial clog.

    I’ve been there though, first block I didn’t use a sock and the set screws got encased in degraded petg, I ended up scrapping it and putting it on the shelf as a learning moment, def recommend a sock if you don’t have, it’s saved me a lot of grief.


  • Seen this clip from some american fundie podcast that was… a choice.

    This person was asked something like, if you could have world peace, but all governments become socialist, would you do it? They said no and fucking justified their answer with a partial quote from something like Deuteronomy 15:7-11, claiming that well the bible says there’ll always be the poor so socialism is actually bad because of that, and a quick search to see if I could find it there’s a lot of stuff echoing the same stuff, that socialism is unbiblical etc.

    What the actual fuck is wrong with these people? I’m irreligious but was raised Christian, this is so vehemently counter to my understanding of Christian teachings (the flavour of which I was raised has atheist ministers so there’s that), which was more or less, raise everyone up, accept everyone for who they are, help people, don’t turn a blind eye to injustice and like just be decent to each other. Was this podcast prosperity doctrine shit or something else because yeah wow, it’s honestly sinister to me.


  • I kept them with linear rods, rails were more than I wanted to do at the time. I changed over to a dragon HF after liking it on my voron, just to keep common parts. Hey, its good to know at least that I can probably push more, tuning a profile for it is definitely going to be on my list.

    The ObXidian nozzles are really nice, I just have a 0.4mm and 0.6mm regular nozzles, I’ve used a bunch of hardened coated nozzles before, seem nicer than those but haven’t tested much.






  • Ultimately use what works for you, digital only doesn’t for me, I end up using whatever project tool the project uses (often az devops or jira) for large tasks, but I’ve kept logbooks/journals since uni using a symbol system that makes sense to me, refine it over time especially in the last 8 years or so. A star is important, ? Bubble is investigation, o is a regular task/thought, arrows for sub/related thoughts. Also like to tag my commit messages with my ticket/item number, some systems auto link them but even without, nice to have that linkage for recollection.

    I’m not the best at indexing but everything is dated, memory is usually solid enough to recall the types of work I did in a period so been able to pull up past stuff pretty readily when need be. I have ADHD so found that externalised thought works well for me, I tend to spend a bit in the morning reviewing the day prior or time at the end of the day moving stuff I’ve not got to. Generally they’re notes while working, just to capture frame of mind or future ideas. I could see using markdown for the same idea, but I’ve seen suggestions that paper notes are better for retention and anecdotally I’ve found that to be true.

    Has actually helped a few times for cyoa purposes, but that’s a secondary benefit to me. My email inbox is horrendous (so much advertising and spam emails for people who don’t work here anymore but were on my team so they’re forwarded to me), even my BACN filters aren’t perfect and I frankly don’t bother reading everything. Should delete or purge more often but if it’s important, I’ll read it and make a ticket.




  • I’m a mechanical eng turned software, computing and the like are super visible but there’s been a huge amount of advancement in physical things in our lifetime, Steel in particular. By no means an expert, some of this I’ve been out of the industry for a while so just operating on memory, totally welcome any corrections!

    I’m not a metallurgist, but worked with them, there’s lots of grades out there but some of the stuff being used in automotive is seriously interesting (I think they’re boron grades but I can’t recall), needs specific treatment like hot stamping but they can easily hit into the 1-2 GPa range for yield strength once it’s processed. It’s allowed material to be rolled thinner for the same part strength so you end up with lighter vehicles.

    Coatings too have changed a lot, non-chromium passivation is a thing, galvanised materials are no longer just zinc + a bit of aluminum, there’s aluminum + silicon coatings that are supposed to offer decent corrosion resistance at high temperatures, those fancy automotive steels get coated in it for things like mufflers. Construction there were zinc+magnesium coatings starting to show up, supposed to be resistant to coating damage.

    Processing has changed a lot in a century too, steel is substantially metallurgically cleaner these days, probably actually cleaner too with more electric arc furnaces and hydrogen direct reduced iron.

    It’s oldish these days but pipeline inspection was increasingly using Electromagnetic Acoustic Transducer (EMAT) tools when I worked in that field. It let you do ultrasound inspection of steel pipes without needing a liquid medium, so things like cracks and material defects that are hard (or nearly impossible) to find using Magnetic Flux Leakage tools are a lot more accessible to gas pipeline operators as they don’t need to do things like plan around liquid batching.



  • Bit of a, bit of b, thermal protection on printers sets a minimum hotend and bed temperature, it’s configurable but 0c is pretty common. Drop below that and the firmware will trip an emergency shutdown in klipper, some (mk3s) set off an alarm beeper when that happens.

    Higher ambient helps with chamber temps too depending on what you print. I let my printers heat soak for at least an hour before I print anyhow, the space heater gives some stability in ambient temps.

    Also done prints where I’ve just blasted the hotend and build plate with a heatgun to get above the min temps to be able to get a heat soak going. Vorons have a decently powerful bed heater (~600w if I recall), my mk3s isn’t nearly as powerful but still capable of sustaining itself (would definitely benefit from insulation)


  • I don’t live in the coldest place but it’ll hit -20s c at the coldest in the winter with -10 +/-5, summer is 30 +/-5. My garage isn’t climate controlled but not the largest, a space heater is enough to bring ambient up enough to be comfortable, certainly enough where the printer firmware doesn’t kick out on low temperatures.

    I have enclosures so it helps some, mk3s doesn’t get super warm as it’s currently setup but I do regularly successfully print abs on it, petg and pla aren’t an issue at all, voron gets substantially warmer. Summer, enclosures need to be open to print pla depending how hot it is. Even with all that, I’d recommend it, I do it primarily for air quality reasons, I’ve printed abs indoors without an enclosure in the same room exactly once a long time ago, 0/10 don’t recommend.


  • Stuff that’s in use I try to keep inside the enclosure, no humidity control in my garage so at the whims of humid continental climate, gets nasty in the summer. I keep things vac sealed with silca gel for long periods and print from dry boxes or enclosure mounts to take advantage of the lower humidity while printing.

    Working on a powered dry box using solid state dehumidifiers like used in this, hope that’ll help with humidity issues.

    Some filament isn’t super sensitive, my experience pa6>petg>abs=pla.