Day: January 27, 2010

I suppose it was inevitable.  Azimov’s immutable Three Laws of Robotics are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

My bot has injured a human, me.  The other day I leaned in too close to observe a build and the ‘bot’s Z axis pulley/belt yanked out a hair from my head.

My bot has refused to obey the orders of a human.  Refusing to obey my orders is kinda the default mode for my ‘bot.

My bot has harmed itself despite my numerous verbal commands to the contrary.  When aborting a build my ‘bot has occasionally tried to carry out additional orders – by pushing the Y or X carriage so far that either the pulley, belt, or both are shoved out of whack, thus damaging it’s own alignment.

There are at least four thermistor tables out there to choose from.  Zach 1, Zach 2, Jet, and Tim.  The first time I updated my extruder board’s firmware with a new temperature table I used Jet’s and the second time I used Zach 1.  (The second time was because the extruder spark incident and almost certainly unrelated to Jet’s table).

My understanding is that Tim’s table has a higher “resolution,” meaning there’s a lot more resistance / temperature pairs.  However, I’ve been using Zach 1 without a problem so there’s no reason for me to switch.