Author: Maker Block

7 hours, 16 minutes

I’ve got a work meeting tomorrow that will require round trip travel of 7 hours and 16 minutes over 426 miles.

I’m not looking forward to this.  I have to arrive at 10am, which means I have to leave my home at about 6:00 AM.

Believe me, I’m really not a morning person.  Not only am I not a morning person, I don’t really like driving over long distances.  I figure the meeting will take about two hours, I’ll get nothing accomplished, and then I’ll drive back.  I could probably get back to the office at about 4pm or so, but I won’t.  I’m going straight home.

Blech.

Scrapping for parts

Over the weekend I took apart two old DVD players for parts.  I found some interesting small motors, magnets, tiny precision rods, and some other assorted odds and ends.

Today at work our office manager mentioned that some e-waste recyclers were coming out to pick up some old printers and other stuff.  I suggested we pull out any left over paper, toner cartridges, etc from the assemblies.  I would have liked to have scrapped these machines for parts too, but:

  • There’s only so much time in the day.
  • I don’t have any screwdrivers and other assorted tools at work.
  • Hanging out in the middle of the office taking things apart might raise eyebrows. 1

As I did so I realized that the toner cartridges contain thin precision rods.  Those could actually be kinda useful.  I think the next time we have old printer cartridges at home (or work) I might take one apart to see what kind of magic it hides.

  1. “Um, did he forget his meds again?” [↩]

Do you want to learn OpenSCAD with me?

I’m really just learning OpenSCAD right now.  I can make some basic shapes, put things together, and whatnot.  I was thinking about putting together some super super basic tutorials that would take a user from knowing nothing about OpenSCAD to knowing as little about OpenSCAD as I do.1  Is this something you’d be interested in?

Please leave a comment and let me know.  What would you like to know about it?  What would you like to learn?

  1. Perhaps even a little less! [↩]

ReplicatorG v0023 error

“This should never happen, deltaX in addValueSegmentToPixelTable in euclidean is 0.”

And, really, this is just one of MANY such errors.

Also, Marty was kind enough to slice it up in Zaggo’s Pleasant 3D software.  He took a look at the OpenSCAD code and didn’t see anything nasty in there.

I dunno.  Do you?

OpenSCAD, ReplicatorG, why can’t we all just get along?

I need to bolt some shelving to the wall.  Yes, I know the shelves came with some hardware for doing that – but I own a 3D printer and I can design BETTER hardware.  I whipped something up in Sketchup and printed off some brackets.  Next, I needed a slight variation in order to bolt two shelving units to each other.  (Something for which their hardware wasn’t designed).

Unfortunately, ReplicatorG just puked all over itself as soon as I tried to slice the bracket.  I had been tinkering with OpenSCAD for the last week or so, so I figured I’d give that a shot.  Here’s what I tried:

  • First, I tried building the bracket up out of just rectangular boxes.  This was okay, but cumbersome.
  • Next, I tried to design a really really complex polyhedron in the shape of my bracket.  This was a nightmare.  To do it properly, you need to design your object such that you’re defining each of the triangles that make up the object.  If you get set up the triangles by putting the numbers for each corner in the wrong order, in a less-right order, or did some other benign thing, it would make a mess.
  • After chatting with Clothbot, I tried to define a cross section of my bracket as a flat image in Sketchup (again), then tried to expert it to a DXF through a plugin.  I just couldn’t manage to extrude that flat DXF into a 3D image.
  • So, I went back to Sketchup and tried to tinker with the file again, fixed it in CADSpan, exported to STL again, fixed it up with NetFabb again, and ReplicatorG still barfed it up.
  • Back to OpenSCAD (again).  This time I tried to assemble a 2D cross section of other shapes.  This didn’t work as I tried to tinker with the “linear_extrude” function.
  • THEN, finally, I tried to define a polygon (not a polyhedron) based upon the coordinates I had used originally to describe the bracket when I was attempting to build it out of triangles.  This worked to describe a flat 2D section of the bracket.  I tried the “linear_extrude” function again and it worked well.  I then punched a few holes into the bracket with some small cylinders and exported to an STL again.  It’s my understanding that OpenSCAD makes quality STL files – without holes or other cleanup required.  While that may be the case, you guessed it, ReplicatorG tossed its cookies when it saw this bracket.

So, what is it? Is it the bracket?  Sketchup and ReplicatorG?  Is it OpenSCAD?  Suggestions?

Added Flattr

The interesting thing about Flattr is that in order to be eligible to receive funds, you need to be willing to share funds.  In any case, I’ve added a Flattr button to this site as well as to my MakerBlock Thingiverse page.

Because I’m such an optimistic guy, I also just ordered an extra large wallet from Amazon. 1

  1. And tore up my ticket for tonight’s lottery.  Pretty sure I won’t be needing THAT… [↩]

Old DVD player – what should I salvage?

We own two DVD players.  Well, three.  Well, four – but one is a portable DVD player for trips and one is a replacement for one of the first two.   The first two are really old – and were just failing.  They had problems loading DVD’s or just even turning on.  I was curious what I would find inside.

Of interest I found a bunch of small motors, a few LED’s, springs, magnets, tiny mirrors, rubber belts and super tiny precision rods.

There are obviously lots of little capacitors and whatnot.  What else should I pull out of these things?

Note to self

If I could send a message to myself when I was a kid, to blow my own mind, here’s what I would tell myself:

One day you will own several computers known as “laptops,” the least of which is more powerful than the biggest most bad ass mainframe under the control of any company or government.  You will own a telephone/movie and music player/computer that can wirelessly communicate with anyone in the world who also has a similar device, which is pretty much everyone.  That telephone/computer will be so small you can carry it in your pocket.  It will have enough “hard drive” capacity to hold every song on every single cassette tape you own, more processing power than your IBM, and better resolution than your monitor or television.  It will be able to pinpoint your location anywhere in the world and give you real time directions to anywhere.  You will have cable TV that plays Doctor Who at least three times a day.  You will have a machine that will automatically archive those shows for you.  Your “laptops” and phone will be able to access something called the internet.  It’s like a BBS system – only nearly every computer in the world is interconnected.  You will be able to look up any fact about anything at all on your phone.  There will exist affordable robots that can make anything you wish out plastic, just draw it on your computer and send it to your robot.  You will own TWO of them.

Wibbly wobbly timey wimey.  (That will make sense one day).