A week ago (or so) I had never seen a 3D printer in person. I dropped off 20 face shields to Temple hospital today (200 in total from our company). I was able to do that almost entirely thanks to the fine folks here at Oppositelock. I’ll name names: Slant6, Shop-Teacher, Censored, benjrblant, chaozbandit, rockingthe2, Akio Ohtori, RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars, f86sabre, and anyone I missed who commented or helped out!
Really neat thing we have going on here!
I was able to modify the file we were given to print 2 masks at once and much faster! Even the young kid who got us all started with this said, “Why do you have to go so hard at everything? I’m embarrassed”. 30+ year old oppos know how nice it feels to have someone younger be impressed with your work (as slight as it may be).
I told him about my secret resource. After he was asking how I was getting all this info so quickly. He said, “what like a car forum?” I said, “not really, haha. It’s kind of hard to explain but it’s car-centric, if you’re interested I’m happy to introduce you around” He’s a car guy too. Rolled an Acura Vigor until we hired him, then he bought a new Toyota 86.
Anyway I have upgraded both my printer and my workspace. Sadly I have decided to re purpose my SUPER nice router table (temporary) as my creation station. The table has feet that screw in allowing me to level the table perfectly, and also I’m not using it because the learning curve is pretty high and I almost lost my hand the first time I tried it.
On the printer side. I have purchased the following:
borosilicate glass print surface
Upgraded “silent” mainboard
Motor smoothers
Upgraded bowden tubing & couplers
A metal extruder
Upgraded knobs and leveling springs
I also bought a bunch of commonly used hardware and electronic bits.
All of these bits and pieces are coming in piece meal (obvi) so I am now really good at leveling, doing the thickness tests, esteps etc... I was going to wait and throw everything on at once, but I think I’d rather see the help or hindrance of each upgrade.
My next plans for printing are almost all pegboard attachments/accessories. Some of you have seen my organized workbench/shop. I have had to do that with the 5-10 options of accessories from home depot. Now possibilities are endless and I am going to be able to squeeze a whole lot more up there in an even more organized fashion. I’m starting with my modeling station as I’m hard into that while I am waiting for face shields to print.
Weekend News:
I store the yard equipment in our basement in the winter, so I don’t put stabil in it or anything and its never an issue. I even leave the gas outside in cans all winter and it has also not been an issue. So when I pulled out the mower this year and it fired right up but then stuttered when I started mowing, I thought “better clean that carb.” I did and it was fine. Then I filled it up using the can that was outside and it ran for a little while and died, did not even give a hint that it would restart again. I cleaned the carb again (before I looked at the plug), fired a little cleaner int the plug socket and it ran while it burned off the carb cleaner and died. So I reluctantly bought a new carb thinking, “no flipping way is this carb bad... it is so simple and it’s clean as a whistle.” Installed it, nothing
I pulled the plug again and actually looked at it. Saw it was wet and black and thought, “could this be my first experience with bad gas?” I texted my best friend, “yo dawg, could bad gas cause my mower not to start at all? Like MF nothing...” You all know the answer is yes, I just needed to hear it from someone else as I had been into diag for too long. Ever feel like that?
After that I felt better, then my wife and I moved 10 cubic yards of soil via shovel and hand carts, 300 yards to the two huge flower beds that my wife just finished building...
Before I hit ya with a couple pics I really have to hand it to my wife. She built those beds almost completely on her own! I bought, cut, and carried the wood...that is it.
We have had chickens for 3-4 years at this point and my wife is forever growing more and more veggies. It’s a really neat time to be semi self reliant particularly with food.
In closing a full and formal Thank You!
