bluewing @ bluewing @lemm.ee

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2 yr. ago

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.

I grew up watching my Mother make "laundry soap" from scratch as a kid. She would make a batch every fall from basically the tallow from the cow we home butchered for the winter and lye. I still remember that brown colored hard lump of soap and the wringer/washer she had. She would carve thin pieces off into the tub while it was agitating wait for a few minutes, then toss the clothes in to wash tub. There was no fancy detergent metering devices or small amounts of water. Even her first modern "spin dry" washer didn't have detergent dispensers. You simply poured the detergent directly on top of the clothes in the tub.

Modern washers are designed specifically to use liquid soaps or the pods. Though when using powders by pouring them directly into the tub won't cause anymore harm to the machine than any liquid will. Though you should probably use a longer wash cycle to make sure the powder dissolves completely. Back in the day, wash cycles were noticeably longer.

From my understanding, the old fire gear I wore as a much younger man, the fabric was treated with special chemicals that could be washed out if not laundered correctly.

Yes, and it will even say so right on the tags. At least it did on the 35 year old bunker gear I wore when I was young and a volunteer fireman in my small rural town. They had special washing instructions right on a big tag sewn on the inside to the coat and pants.

You should enjoy the smell of them after they were freeze dried on the clothes line in the winter time. Growing up, my mother had a wringer/washer but no clothes drier. So she had to hang almost all the laundry outside on a clothes line-- even when it was well below freezing out. My Mother and Grandmother also made our own soap from tallow and lye after we butchered a cow for the winter.

We used it for everything, laundry, hand soap, and bath soap. Stuff would remove to hide off your ass due to the amount of lye used. Ahhh, the life of growing up dirt poor on a small farm.

So the metric units? Those were used by racists and genocidal tyrants throughout history.

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.

I've switched away from DDG after many years of use. I have gone to Ghostery Private search. It seems to be better for my search results with a lot less garbage mixed in.

Yeah, you might want to grind your paper dry to prevent that.

A couple of quick things I see as an old toolmaker.

The first photo looks pretty darned good actually. Nicely textured and worn rustic. The top of the mold as filled nicely and it has dried without warping from what I can tell. The flashing around the bottom of the tile is to be expected and required for air and excess material to escape and allow for better fill. It can be simply removed with say, a dremel tool.

To get your material to fill better with the paper medium, you will need to either apply more pressure, which probably will not do your 3D printed mold much good. Or you need to use a wetter and looser material to get it to flow better and more easily. A more finely ground material will also flow better than paper that is simply torn into little pieces by hand. A tighter fit between the plunger and the frame of the mold with also increase the detail of the edges. But you still need to allow room for air and excess material to escape.

As far as mold release, you probably need to finish the inside of your mold better. Those layer lines will act like little velcro hooks. Sanding, filling, and painting to a smooth surface is a requirement for a good release. With a proper finished mold surface, a light spray of PAM cooking oil should be all you need for this.

That's true. But it's the numbers that will really tell the story if lemm.ee grows and how it grows. That's why it's far more telling in the months ahead and not some random single day.

First, how did you measure the rods? If you used a calipers, then the measurement is guaranteed to be inaccurate, (there is too much wishful thinking with a caliper). You need to use a real micrometer to get an accurate measurement for this job. Source: This old Toolmaker.

Second, I don't know the manufacturing tolerances for those rods, but I have to think it's more like +/-.01mm and not +/-.05mm. So I would assume you have irreparably damaged those carbon fiber rods by coating them in grease.

Third, yes the carbon fiber rods have absorbed some of the oils in the grease. This is not good. The good news is, if you contact customer service and talk to them, they can sell you a whole new xy carriage even though it's only available from customer service and NOT their parts store. You might even need a whole new extruder and bearings to banish all traces of the grease.

That's really good to see. But it will be far more interesting to see what the numbers are a month and longer are from now. If they don't stick, it's pretty meaningless.

You probably need to adjust those settings. Ironing settings can be fussy and the little I've done in Bambu Studio shows their settings aren't much more than a starting point.

Are you trying to iron the top surfaces?

It's a part for a corded snow thrower I use on my deck. It allows the the handle to be quickly and easily folded for compact storage. I would post a picture of it, but it's currently 4F/-16C outside and I'm not walking to the shop. Besides, I would need to disassemble the handle to show the parts. So, Y'all will need to settle for a picture of the model.

That's what most people don't get about investing-- there is money to be made in both market directions. The rich understand that.

I would set my goals to mastering PETG next. It's easy to get and inexpensive in price. It offers more toughness, (do not confuse toughness with hardness), plus it's more heat and UV resistant also, (though PLA has surprised me with several outdoor repair parts I have made) . But it can suffer from creep in assemblies. It can make durable car accessories like phone holders or a cup holder cheap and easy to design.

ABS/ASA really needs a heated enclosure to print reliably day in and day out. And the fumes they give off during the print process are dangerous to your health. And you must have proper ventilation to use them safely. I keep as spool around, but I very seldom find the need for ABS anymore.

TPU, while a fun material to play with, is pretty much a one trick pony. The vast majority of things you will print will seldom require TPU. I try to very hard not to print just one item in TPU because it's not worth the effort. I try to line up several projects that need TPU to make it worth my while because there is hours of drying time involved before printing.

If you want branch with different materials, you will need to add a filament dryer. You can get a purpose designed unit that can quite spendy or you can get a cheap food dehydrator and get the same results in the same amount of time.

Openscad is fine for pretty basic one item things. It's not so good for complex designs like the model steam engines I sometimes amuse myself with. And it's sure not capable in a commercial setting.

But if you enjoy openscad and writing code, more power to you and enjoy what you are doing with it!