My Latest Useful 3D Pring

I like to keep a box of tissues in my truck as it comes in very handy after a busy day skiing. Whenever I am done, it feels good to blow my nose as the cold temperatures makes for a runny one. Unfortunately I don't have a great place to store the tissues. I thought about putting Velcro or hook-and-loop fasteners to the bottom of the box and placing it on the carpet floor between the 2 front seats. My wife thought it a bad idea as it would mean replacing the Velcro for each new box. This is a great use for my 3D printer.

I decided I could print a tray that firmly holds the box of tissues and then put the Velcro on the bottom of the tray. The first thing I did was measure the box of tissues I keep in the truck. I took the measurements in millimeters as that is the unit of measure my drawing program expects. Then I went to TinkerCAD.com and drew a hollow box inside a solid one. I made the walls 5mm thick and about an inch high. Then I ran it through the 3D printer software to slice the design into commands for my 3D printer. Next I transferred the GCODE file to my printer on a small SD card and started printing.

The printer said it would take about 23 hours and so I went to bed. In the morning I woke up and checked on my print. I immediately stopped it when I discovered a mistake. I made the floor of my tray about an inch thick. That is way too thick for what I wanted. I also discovered I made the tray a hair too small. I modified my design in TinkerCAD and re-sliced it. Then I started printing it again. The new print only needed 17 hours and so I let it go making sure to check on it throughout the process.

The finished tray looked fabulous. Then I encountered my next problem. The tray stuck to the bed of my 3D printer and it took Herculean effort to get it off. Finally I got it separated and got some Velcro to stick to the bottom. Then I put it in the truck only to discover one final problem. The latest Velcro does not stick to automotive floor carpet. At least not the stuff in my truck. I need to find some of the cheap-no-name-brand stuff and that should work well. Right now there is enough friction to keep the tray from sliding around too much but I want to make sure it is firmly attached and won't slide around as I go around sharp corners.

I talked to my youngest son who also has a 3D printer and we discussed how to modify the design of the tray so it will be easier to remove from my print bed. We have some ideas but right now the tray is working perfectly, as designed. Once I put the correct hook-and-loop fastener on the bottom, it will be finished and I don't need to print another one.

Practice makes perfect and there are a lot of little lessons you will never learn unless you play around with the tool you are using. This story is a great example of that.

Christmas Break Begins

Today I finished up work for the week and don't have to go back to work until January 2nd. I know that kids in school have a week more than I do and that those like my daughter only get one or two days off. I consider myself fortunate to have a week of free time. For me, this is time to relax and take care of some personal projects. The question I have to answer is how many of them are computer related or technical.

Several years ago I purchased a ham-radio antenna. It has sat in my office for 2 winters now and I really should put it together and set it up. Then I can play around with talking to people around the world by bouncing radio waves off the ionosphere. Almost all of my ham radio experience has been using short-distance and line-of-sight frequencies. That is what I use when I help with the Salt Flats Endurance run and the Wastach 100. It would be good to gain some practical knowledge in other areas of the hobby.

There are also quite a few video games I own that I would like to play. Not having to go to work frees up a lot of time and would allow me to at least start one of them. Perhaps I could finish my Spider-Man game and then justify owning Spider-Man 2. I also have the new God of War game that I have yet to take the plastic off. That could be fun. Then there are countless games I own simply by being a member of PlayStation Plus. While most look like a waste of time, there are quite a few that look very interesting.

With Christmas just around the corner, I have finished most of my 3D printing projects. I have printed up quite a few nativity scenes and Christmas-tree ornaments. I suppose I could take on a new project and perhaps print up the model of a battleship I found when I discovered the silver filament I have is really gray. It really would bring my skills up a level as the attention to detail requires me to up my game considerably.

I also wouldn't mind taking some time to do a bit of reading. I have a stack of technical reading that I have been putting off due to other pressing matters. While some might consider the subject matter an extension of work, I find it entertaining and wouldn't mind using my break to increase my technical skills.

Thinking about self improvement, I have really enjoyed learning to play the guitar using the video game RockSmith. I have thought about doing the same thing with drums and getting a copy of Rock Band. The only problem is they don't sell the game with the drum kits any more. Instead you have to purchase an electronic drum set with a MIDI interface and connect it to the game. That would be fun and I could involve my other family members.

Finally there is one last project I think would be a lot of fun. I am in the midst of coming up with a space-ship cockpit. I am thinking it would be fun for my grand kids to have a control panel with illuminated switches, lights, and dials that mimic a fictitious space craft's instrument panel. I have some of it designed but just need to order the parts and assemble it. I think my 6-year-old grandson would have a blast letting it fuel his imagination of flying across the galaxy.

Yes I have a lot I can do during the next week or so. I won't be able to get to all of it especially since I have family visiting and a healthy amount of skiing planned. I still look forward to starting one or two projects listed above. 

Printing 3D Christmas Tree Ornaments

Recently my wife found some interesting Christmas-tree ornaments in a print catalog. She showed them to me and I told her I could 3D print them for significantly less money. While I had filament that would have worked, I ordered special stuff with metallic flakes in it. I picked up a spool of gold flake and a spool of silver flake. Once it arrived, I printed up an ornament very similar to what my wife found in the catalog. It only cost me about 30 cents.

The ornament turned out well but I got to thinking there is so much more I could do and I still had a lot of filament left over. I found a few more designs and gave the prints a try. The first one turned out a lot different than expected. The pictures showed it with a lot of intricate cutout work. That means someone used a sharp razor to remove some of the plastic. I didn't want to do that so I found another ornament. It is a beautiful 8-point snowflake with a nativity scene in the middle of it.

I had been using the gold filament and rather than swap it for the silver, I printed a test ornament. It turned out very regal. Then I swapped colors and the silver turned out amazing. I shared it with my son who also has a 3D printer. He took it one step further and scaled the ornament so he could print 4 at once. My one ornament is so large it takes up most of the print bed so I can only print one at a time. Scaling it down to 75 percent is all it took to increase that number to 4.

This week is Thanksgiving and my son plans to hand 12 of the ornaments out to his extended family so they can decorate the tree with them this year. It is a little thing to help start the Holiday Season right. I'll be interested to hear how the ornaments are received.

My First 3D Print Design

My wife wants to take advantage of me using my 3D printer and asked me to make something useful for her. Normally I just find designs that others have created and print them. The most common designer for the stuff I print is my own son but there are a number of places to get 3D print designs. I won't tell you where they are as you will go there looking for cool things to print and never be heard from again. If I didn't have skiing to pull me away from the computer, I'd still be looking at fun stuff to print from the last time I visited Thingiverse.

My wife has an advent wreath that she pulls out every Christmas. This year she got some really massive candles to go in it but didn't have proper candle stands. She asked me to use my printer and create some. I thought about outsourcing the design to my son but realized he has his own priorities and I didn't want him to tell me I should design it myself. 

As my son is a mechanical engineer that works at an engineering firm, he has access to all sorts of great computer-aided drawing (CAD) software. He also has tried a number of free solutions and suggested I give Tinkercad a try. I logged in this afternoon and went to work.

The first time you go to Tinkercad, there is a quick tutorial you can run through. It gave me enough confidence to start designing. Then I just used my usual search engine to figure out how to get Tinkercad to do things the tutorial didn't show me. Things like how to stack objects on top of each other and how to make a hollow cone. The result is shown in the image below.

I sent it to my son and he immediately gave me some design suggestions. Something about fillets because hard corners tend to be weak spots. I just watched a YouTube video on how to do that but should have added them before I put everything together. I'll print one of these and see how it works. If my wife likes it, I'll consider the project done. If not, I'll spend another 30 minutes and design another candle holder.

Having Someone to Bounce Ideas Off

I have been trying to keep my 3D printer going since I did my first print in over a year. I have been somewhat successful and am starting a new project. The reason you want to keep printing once you start is that the plastic filament used in the printer does not have a very long shelf life. Once you break the vacuum-sealed bag, you only have a month or two before it becomes brittle and breaks easily. That means I need to print a full kilogram of PLA filament.

Not all of my print jobs have gone without issues. I can print about 2 of the ornaments in the link above before something goes wrong. My latest problem is that the memory card that I use in my printer somehow gets corrupted. The print files contain GCODE that tells the printer what to do. When the memory card gets corrupted, the printer starts doing funny things. Most of the time it just prints a tangled mess of plastic. The most recent corruption managed to clog my print nozzle and I had to disassemble the print head to clean the nozzle and remove the clog. Then I just removed the print file from the card and recopied the GCODE file from my computer.

This morning I talked with my son who also managed to clog his 3D printer. We have similar printers and so I asked how he fixed his clog. He ended up having to put his print nozzle in the oven to heat it up and melt the plastic inside. I explained a trick I used and he thought it worthy of trying. My clog was bad enough that I pulled out a drill bit and rolled it between my finger and thumb to break through the clog. My son remarked that the drill bit could damage the print head. I stressed the importance of not putting the bit in an actual drill or that would cause damage. Controlling everything with my thumb and finger made it light enough not to damage any part of the printer. My son felt it was worth a shot.

Normally I will go to my son when I have a problem with my 3D printer. This is the first time I have been able to provide advice. Sometimes having someone that you can talk problems through will help you come up with your own solution. Other times a seemingly novice will have enough of a different perspective to suggest something that you would not have thought about. This second case is what happened today. I'll be interested to hear back from him to see how the drill bit worked.

My First 3D Print in Over a Year

Yesterday I posted my 2021 Christmas List and it got me thinking about my 3D Printer. I have not printed anything in over a year and I have a number of projects I wanted to print. So as soon as I finished the post, I walked over to my 3D printer and started it up. The year has not been kind to the filament I had loaded in the printer and it became incredibly brittle. The first thing I needed to do was to clean the old filament out and put in some brand new PLA. That actually took a bit of work but I got it cleaned out.

My son sent me some STL files for Christmas-tree ornaments that he designed and printed last year. One is an open ball with the Salt Lake Temple inside. It is a prominent building here in Utah and holds special significance for a lot of people in the area. Seeing as that is where my parents were married and they expressed interest in receiving one, I decided to print that first.

 

My 3D printer cannot just print an STL file and so I needed to run it through a slicer program that converts the file to GCODE. Unfortunately my slicer program would not load on my Mac. I'm not sure why and so I downloaded the latest version of Ultimaker Cura. That loaded up fine and I just dropped the STL file into the program. I clicked the "Slice" button and it spit out some GCODE that I sent to the printer. I didn't expect the first print to go smoothly and about 5 minutes into the print, it came unstuck from the printer bed and started turning into a spaghetti mess. I stopped the print and sent a text to my son asking if it should be printed face-down. It turns out that I needed to rotate the ornament 90 degrees in one direction. I did that inside Cura and then generated a fresh set of GCODE. I then sent that to the printer and waited the 13 hours for it to complete. The picture above is the final result that I saw this morning.

Those that do a lot of 3D printing will note that it is not a very clean print. I consider it a huge success because I didn't even bother to level the print bed which is something you should do before every couple prints. The first thing I noticed was all of the spider-web strands and wondered what settings I need to adjust to get rid of that. To salvage this print, I used a pen knife to remove some. That got to be tedious work. When I sent my son this picture, he told me to just carefully use a heat-gun and they will shrivel up and melt into the print. I tried it and it worked like magic.

There are several other things that are wrong with the print. Notice how you can see the print layers on the side of the ball. My printer could use a good nozzle cleaning and that should blend the layers together better. I also need to do a bit of calibration work. This is what I am working on today. My hope is that I can fine tune the printer so it creates good results. We'll see how it goes.

There is a lot you can do with a 3D printer but unfortunately it is not as simple as printing a document. There are quite a few adjustments you can make and understanding what each does is vital to a quality end product. Should you wish to get into 3D printing, remember that it can be more like a hobby than simply click and print.

2021 Christmas List

It is that time of year when people are starting to panic about what to get that computer nerd for Christmas. My wife hates trying to guess what I will want for Christmas and so I have to present a list for her early in September. This year that is probably a good idea as the news keeps talking about supply-chain issues and if you don't order gifts now, they might not arrive before Christmas. So for those of you that have procrastinated getting that computer geek in your life something special, here are some things that I would like.

The Gift of Learning

Technology changes at a rapid pace and I am constantly trying to keep up with new advancements. Several years ago I received a catalog from The Great Courses and ordered a few DVD classes on the National Parks and some others on Photography. Since then I have picked up a guitar course and several others. For a few years, my employer provided me with an unlimited online subscription to all of the courses. My wife and I would sit down about every other night and learn about quite a few number of topics that we both found interesting. Early in my career, computers were also my hobby and so if you have someone like that in your life, I would suggest finding their interests and seeing if there are any courses that match their level of experience. There is a great introduction to Machine Learning course (Christmas special of $50 right now) but if your gift recipient is beyond the beginning level, I would look for something else.

The Gift of Experiences

I find that the older I get, the less stuff I want. This may be because I already have everything I want or maybe I am just tired of throwing technology away when it becomes outdated. In any event, I always appreciate the gift of experiences. My son is giving his children a trip to Disneyland for Christmas and my wife and I have been invited. Of course we have to pay for ourselves but we are looking forward to the trip and have decided that it will be our gift to each other for Christmas. While a trip may be well outside your Christmas budget, there are a lot of ideas to help reduce the cost of a trip for someone. You might give them a gift card to help with airfare. There are a lot of airlines that allow you to give gift cards. Southwest and Delta are my two favorite. You could also give gift cards that can be spent at a destination such as Disneyland.

One of the best deals you can get someone that is looking for experiences is an America the Beautiful pass. It is a card that lets a car-load of people into any of our National Parks and National Monuments. It is only $80 for a year and pays for itself after only 2 visits. This year I have visited Volcanoes National Park, Kilauea Lighthouse and Wildlife Refuge, and Yosemite National Park. I got it in May and will probably use it again for Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park before it expires.

The Gift of Photography

When I found out I would be leaving Sony, I made a list of all the purchases I wanted to make at the online company store. I knew I would lose my discount and so I made sure to pick up a new television. Another thing I wanted was Sony's top-of-the-line digital camera. I have helped plenty of friends pick up cameras and lenses over the years. I figured I should get one for myself. I got a great deal on a Sony A7RIV. The only downside is I also needed to get lenses. I did a bit of research and picked up 5 different ones. I won't go into too many details but I am very happy with the purchase. Now if my wife would let me play with the camera before Christmas I could provide a nice review.

You don't need an expensive camera to give someone the gift of photography for Christmas. Perhaps they already have a great camera but could use an additional lens. My guess though is that a newer smartphone might be a better purchase. I generally go several years before upgrading my phone. Check with your carrier to see if there are free low-cost upgrades. While I have a spectacular camera, I use my mobile phone's camera a lot more. The cameras in the latest phones are nothing short of amazing.

The Gift of 3D Printing

My final gift idea for the year is that of 3D Printing. My youngest son got me into 3D printing while he completed his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering. Now that he has graduated, he purchased his own printer but continues to send me ideas of things to print. You can get your own 3D printer for around $200. If that special nerd in your life already has one, there are countless upgrades and supplies that would make great gifts. Just be sure to make sure any upgrades will work with the existing printer. You can also never have enough printing material and that you can find for around $20. Again, make sure it will work with the printer as filament comes in various sizes.

The Gift of Choice

I hate recommending generic gift cards as a Christmas gift but sometimes that could be the best choice. If you want to get some PLA for your nerd's 3D printer but are not quite sure of the filament size, just get a $20 gift card to Amazon and eliminate any worry about if you got the right stuff. It also allows you to tailor your gift to fit your budget exactly.

Some Things Require Practice

This week my youngest son and I have been running the 3D printer almost non-stop. We have some PLA filament that needs to be used and so we are printing a bunch of fun little toys. As I type this, I am printing a spinner for my grandson. It may sound like a waste of PLA but there is a reason for doing the print other than just using up material that has a finite shelf life: practice.

Several weeks ago I volunteered to use my 3D printer to make some personal protection equipment for a hospital in California. I originally signed up to help and was asked a number of questions about my experience with my 3D printer. The organizers of the service project didn't want me getting in over my head and not be able to deliver on my commitment. Once they felt comfortable with my help, they sent me the assignment. Ultimately, did I have enough practice?

This past week I got a new computer for my home office. I will be using it for a number of different things and one of them is to help create 3D prints. I loaded up Ultimaker Cura which is used to prepare 3D models for print. In the past, I have sent models to my son and had him prepare them. Now I need to learn how to do it and so that is why I am practicing. It is not as simple as dropping an STL file into Cura and having it prepare the model. There are seemingly hundreds of parameters to tune. I think I have them pretty well dialed in based on some help from my son and so now it is time to give it a shot. Naturally I am starting with something small that only takes about an hour or so to print. If it doesn't turn out then I haven't really lost anything because I learned from the experience and can make adjustments.

I know I have lots to learn about 3D printing and so I will continue to print things. Practice is one of the best ways to learn something new. Remember that as you try to pick up a new skill: it may require practice. Don't let that scare you as it is just a part of learning.

Troubleshooting My 3D Printer

One of my tasks for this Christmas break is to figure out a problem I am having with my 3D printer. My youngest son and I sat down today to figure it out. Fortunately we succeeded and now have a better working device.

To troubleshoot the machine, we looked at any changes we had made to the printer. The first is a glass print bed and I highly recommend one as it makes a huge difference in print quality. I didn't think that could be the cause and so we looked at the only other change we made: changing the print nozzle. My son found a great deal on different sized print nozzles on Amazon and ordered them. For some reason he put one of the new nozzles on the printer after trying some of the different sizes. It turns out the new nozzle is not exactly the size advertised. It is supposed to be 0.4 mm in diameter but is slightly smaller. That makes it hard for the print material to bond to lower layers as it gets laid down. We were able to measure the nozzle diameter using a tool included with the printer. Replacing it with a correct-sized nozzle solved the problem and now our prints are working nicely. We measured all of the new nozzles and have identified the 0.4 mm nozzles that really are 0.4 mm.

Since discovering the problem, we have printed a number of small parts and all of them are turning out well. So if you have a 3D printer and suddenly the print material doesn't adhere to the lower layers of your print, the nozzle size could be the problem. Beware of low-cost 3D printer parts found on Amazon. They may not meet the tight tolerance requirements.