This week in 3d Printing:

Image courtesy of Filastruder

It has been about two or three weeks since I last blogged, because of break and I've been quite busy.  Here is a list of all the things i've done that are printer related.

1. I finally installed my build volume upgrade for the Printrbot Simple(it only took about three months, I might have procrastinated... a bit), the reason I have been putting it off, is the rods that came with it were about .75 inches to short so I made a wrap-around for the smooth rod that interfaces with the wood.  If you have the same problem of the rods being cut to short, just leave a comment and I'll email you the rod extender.  Now I have an eight inch by four inch but 8 inch build volume, i've been printing so much more now(which can get quite costly) this brings me onto the next point. 

2. I bought a broken Filastruder, for only $60 plus it came with eleven pounds of PLA.  What the Filastruder does, is convert super cheap plastic pellets into 3d printing filament, which is quite expensive.  I got it extremely cheaply(They sell for $300 plus I got about $40 in plastic) because it was broken, he said it had a problem with the thermocouple, auger, and hopper. After getting it, I noticed it was assembled horribly, wood was at an eighty degree angle, and the hopper was completely destroyed, however after dissolving the ABS left in the funnel with acetone,  I discovered the auger was completely fine.  Two days ago, I got everything running individually, the motor, PID(which was wired incorrectly), and the heater.  The Thermocouple wasn't broken, it was just cut to short, so I ordered a new one for $5, and printed a new hopper for about $1.50.  I have to get everything reassembled once I get the thermocouple in.   Hopefully in less than a week I should have a fully functional Filastruder, that in the end only will cost a bit under $67.00!

3. I am also building a partially heated build chamber for my simple, because sometimes i'll open the window if my room needs fresh air.  Sadly, when I do that, it cools down the printer too much, causing the layers below to freeze, which then crumbles and ruins the print.  The build chamber will get up to about hundred degrees using the excess heat put off from the 450 degree extruder.  I have all the parts printed and the the plexiglass cut, it came out to about $30 after all.  I designed the hinges(for the door to the printer) and the angled bits (to make sure everything lines up), if you want the files, leave a comment and I will happily email them to you.

4. The phone case I have been designing for the past three or so months, just got a major redesign(made possible through the build volume upgrade).  It is now nearly completely done, which I am super psyched for.

5. Last week I was replacing the 400 grit sandpaper on the vinyl tube, with 70 grit for better traction, after sanding off all the additional sandpaper(I know sanding sandpaper sounds stupid, but I had to because It had been super glued on)I was washing off the tube, when I dropped it down the drain...( I might have said a curse word, or two) Without the vinyl tube the printer simply(see what I did there Printrbot simple, simply, it's funny) can't run.  Without a running printer to print a tube substitute, I thought I was going to be without my printer all break.  Then I went to my closet and saw that I had three or four extra plastic hanger.  I quickly took one, cut an inch long section from it, then using the drillpress, drilled a holed, then acted as if I were a CNC mill and slowly let the drill press take material fromt the inside walls, until I had a perfectly fitting piece. I then glued the 70 grit on and my printer has been running perfectly.  

Well, thats all for this week, next week will likely be on how everything turned out(the case, the Filastruder, and the build chamber).  

Last Minute Valentines Prep

Well, its that special time greeting card and companies make money, and I feel especially awkward.  This year my friends and I decided to get valentines for each other.  I ordered red filament just for the occasion, I planning on it getting in on yesterday, but alas it did not so I waited until today, the day before valentines day to print all of my friends things so I could use red.  It still has not come in so, right now it is six P.M. and I have to print four items in less than five hours.  I'll keep you guys posted on how it's going every hour.


 7:00 P.M. My struggles have just begun. I found what I am to make everybody, a Dino head for Emi (long story behind this), A twisted heart vase for Sky, and a puzzle heart box for Lulu. Plus two additional twisted heart vases just incase anyone has a valentine for me, and I don't for them.   Here are the beginning of my struggles  I updated my repetier host earlier today and I dislike the new version, it's probably easier to use for some people, but I liked it the old way.  Struggle two, The Dino head intended for Emi is a forty two megabyte file.  By twenty first century file size, that is tiny.  But compared to normal object file sizes its gigantic.   Most of my files are below one MB.  When attempting to load this file, my computer crashed three times (my computer is an adware infected dinosaur, that I would like to see burn in a blaze of hatred).  After the third time of crashing I gave up on that Dino head.  I have started on slicing the heart vase for Sky(this is now what Emi is also getting now).

7:30 P.M. Slicing has just finished after 30 long minutes, normally things take 45 seconds, but because of the twisted hi-res features,  It had 13,000 faces, for a total of 28,000 lines of G-code.  However, due to the thin walls, it will only take 30 minutes to print.

8:00 P.M. The print just finished a minute ago, I took it off, and realized that it had made the hole perimeter 1 layer thick, do you know how strong .3mm of PLA is?  Well, about as strong as half of a toothpick.  So needless to say it failed.  I resized it making it twice as tall and adding 2 layers to the sides instead of 1.  I just started slicing, I'll tell you guys when it's done.

9:00 P.M. 23,000 faces, nearly 50,000 lines of g-code.  It just started a few minutes ago, and it will take an estimated 1 hour and four minutes. Right now I see, that it will be a late night.  I'll be back in an hour to tell you guys how it went.

10:00 P.M.  Well, its certainly big enough, however, it's still just a single walled thing.  But, I have an awesome Idea to make it strong enough.  I plan to spray the outer edges with an aerosol version of plastidip, this will help bind all the layer together.   Bye now, I must go print my remaining two, lulu is also now getting the twisted heart vase.

10:01 P.M.  Oh, shitty crap!  I deleted my g-code and have no time to re-slice it.  Luckily though, I saved the smaller version, so that will have to do for now. It will do better because I will actually have time to sleep tonight.

11:00  P.M.  Everything is printed.  I am just about to rubberize them.

11:15 P.M.  I just rubberized everything and Will be getting them out in the morning.

Why I really don't have a girlfriend

Image Courtesy of "Mathhelper"

All my friends have been writing post about relationships, so I decided to join in on the fad.  OK, so I could blame this(why I don't have a girl friend) on a whole bunch of reasons.  However, I don't understand all of those reasons, largely because I don't understand people in general.  So, I decided to use one of the only things that I fully understand, math.  OK, so I based my thoughts off of probabilities.  I set my probability to run over a year.  In a year I am likely to meet 35 or so new females.  Now, to narrow the field.  About 5 or so of these female's genetic make-up would be to similar to mine for it to be possible for me to like them. Now I have 30 possible females left, of these about 15 of them would annoy me, or be too unintelligent for me to find attractive.

Ok, so now I have 15 left that are possible for me to find attractive.  Lets say I like a girl for about 2 months before I like someone new.  Because I am doing it over a year, this means that I would like 6 girl a year.  Lets assume that another girl has 15 boys that they could possibly like also, and that she too likes 6 people a year.  Every 2 months she has a 1/15 chance of liking me.  Which boils down to about a a 6% chance times 6 times a year,  or a 36% chance every year, but that not the end of it.  I only have a 30 or so percent chance of realizing that they like me, which is required for me to ask them out.  It comes out in the end, that I have a 12% chance a year of getting a girlfriend.

 This is where it gets odd though, over half of my friend have a girlfriend or boyfriend and lets for probabilities sake say that relationships last about 6 months, this puts the probability per year up to about 50 percent, a far cry from my measly 12% chance.  So where does this disparity between the truth and my estimate come from? I am nearly as attractive as my friends, and they are nearly as smart as I.  They are also nearly as socially awkward as I am.  I don't quite understand people so I can't say why they have partners and I don't, maybe we have a special mechanism in our limbic system that makes us like people if we know they like us.  If that is the case then possibly mine is broken.  Or, it could be that they just notice when a person likes them.