Author: Maker Block

Got my groove back

It just wasn’t the same without my old theme.

Of the several WordPress websites I have, this was the first one I moved to WordPress 3.0 when it came out.  Unfortunately, 3.0 totally broke the hell out of my theme.  I suspect it happened when the database was upgraded and it nuked the theme options.  But, an upgrade to the theme1 and a little CSS spit and polish…  and I’m back!

Edit: One unfortunate side effect of upgrading the theme was that it nuked my logo image.  I found the original on Flickr, resized it, and dropped it back in.  However, as you can tell from the nasty pixelation – I used “Paint” to resize.  Blech.  I’m going to have to redo that.

  1. the super flexible and customizeable Constructor [↩]

Documenting Skeinforge settings

Uncool tower, cool tower
Uncool tower, cool tower

BotHacker recently documented his adventures in cooling fans and Skeinforge options – to amazing effect. 1  You should read the entire post, because there’s a lot of good info in there.  However, to summarize:

  1. Numerous permutations of cooling fan sizes and speeds offered some improvement.
  2. Using no cooling fans and putting the Skeinforge Cool setting at a minimum layer time of 10 seconds offered a dramatic improvement.

BotHacker’s post is what Skeinforge documentation should look like.

Update: Per BotHacker’s comment below, “Skeinforge must be told to ‘Slow Down’ for this to work. The other option is ‘Orbit’, and may lead to poorer results.”

  1. BotHacker – your photo to the right on Flickr says “all rights reserved” but I thought you might not mind me discussing your post and photos favorably.  If you don’t want me to link or post a copy of your photo, let me know and I’ll take it down. – MakerBlock [↩]

MakerBot Upgrades

I just noticed that two parts I designed (an X-axis tensioner and Y-axis tensioner) are suggested prints on the MakerBot wiki.  (Yes, I know it’s an open wiki – but I swear I didn’t add these things myself).  It’s pretty cool that generations of MakerBots may be using upgrades I designed.

Internet fame and fortune are mine!

Sketchup STL Importer Plugins

As I’ve mentioned before, I do all of my 3D modeling in Sketchup.  It’s not open source, but it is free.1

Well, I’ve been monitoring the Capolight Electronics Blog lately – and it’s a good thing too.  Besides having some seriously amazing information about the thermal properties of plastic, he’s just posted about some useful importing/exporting plugins for Sketchup.  As easy as Sketchup is to use, it’s just not very good at exporting to STL.  I haven’t tried these plugins out – but I’m hopeful they will do the job.

If you try them out, please let me know how it goes!

  1. I suppose it’s really a “freemium” business model… [↩]

The price of early adoption

I’m a huge fan of WordPress.  I’ve enjoyed rolling my own plugins and helping people with theirs.  I’ve also been following the WordPress development blog – and anxiously awaiting version 3.0.  Unlike a lot of other programs, WordPress just assigns the next version number by incrementing by 0.1.  This is, in part, to avoid version inflation (the unnecessary and excessive increasing of versions).

Except…  updating to the last WordPress and latest version for my current theme ToTaLy broke my site.  :/

So you want to learn about the thermal properties of plastic…

Okay, I need to bookmark this site and add it to my RSS feed.  After having read this blog on materials science as it relates to plastics, polymers with a specific focus on RepRap tech, I feel smarter!  Or, at least, more informed about why my fussy robot gnome can be so fussy.

Richard – thanks for these informative and down-to-earth posts!

Edit:  Hot Melt Adhesive Principles (2 of 2)

When good-robo-blogs go bad

I’ve played with the idea of a “robo-blog” before.  Basically it is a WordPress blog with a plugin that searches for content, truncates it, and includes it as a very short link/post.  It can be useful as long as it isn’t overused.  The moment people think they’re reading a bunch of posts collated by a computer (Computers???  Blech!) they’ll tune out.

Just as important as avoiding the overuse of this kind of auto-content/robo-blog system is that you set up the filters to be really really narrow so not just anything makes it onto your blog.

What happens if you set up your robo-blog with too wide a filter or to post too often?  We’ll, let’s take a look:

  • “Florence Printing Co., 233 SC 567, 573, 106 SE2d 258, 261 (1958)). Thus, contrary to State Farm’s assertion, the policy reasons supporting an award of …”
  • “525 F.3d at 65. A mere summary description of a cross-reference, as in paragraph 11, is a different matter and cannot alter the unambiguous language that …“
  • “App.3d 642, an employee of the Office of State Printing called in sick and then was seen two hours later playing cards in a cardroom. …”

What’s up with this “3d” stuff”?  Well, it looks like Botmill’s robo-blog settings are set a little too loose.  Yes, content is king, but better to have one highly relevant post a week than five off-topic posts a day.  The “3d” in the above teasers has to do with legal case citations to California and Federal cases – cases that happen to be in the third (3d) district.  Anyhow, I point this out because I found it amusing – not because I’m poking fun at Botmill.  Their robo-blog has found some neat stuff I didn’t see in the RepRap Feed – so thanks guys.

Although, wouldn’t it be great to live in the 3-D district of California?

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