Tag Archives: Don

He’s saying the things I think!

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…only in a way that is far less wordy and verbose than the manner in which I would typically attempt to describe the sorts of things I am thinking about.

Thank you, Cory Doctorow.

“”The way you improve your iPad isn’t to figure out how it works and making it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn’t a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it’s a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.”

This is part of what is at the core of the Maker philosophy – empowering people to learn about the stuff of which civilizations are made, rather than being a plankton-like consumer/spectator.  When something goes wrong, you don’t have to take it back to the store or call the (*shudder*) Geek Squad. 1

This is the heart of civilization, improving upon the work of prior generations.  You have the luxury of being smarter than Einstein and wiser than Oppenheimer with 20-20 hindsight.  You can know everything they know and improve upon it all.  You can fix it yourself. 2  You have all of the tools you need right now, in your home right now.  You can use the stuff you already have to build the tools you need to build absolutely anything within imagination.

  1. Geek Squad.  Don’t get me started. [↩]
  2. Or, heaven forbid, improve it yourself. [↩]

Mendel FAIL

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I can’t find my camera, so my camera phone will have to do. Here was my second attempt at printing Spacexula‘s Mendel production STL files.  Don’t even ask about the first attempt.

RepRap Mendel FAIL

RepRap Mendel FAIL

Spacexula offered some advice on how to fix this.  I have the Stretch feature turned on so that I can (hopefully) print better small circular features without the parts getting all globby.  He suggested turning Stretch off and just drilling out the holes if needs be.  Wise words from a man cranking out Mendel sets.

Unfortunately, I won’t have time to spent printing up parts until the weekend.  :/

These parts are not unusable.  Of the 13 parts on the sheet, I think five are probably perfectly serviceable.  The tall toothed gears are the most miserable parts – they are swayed and the teeth are basically intermittent bumps.  This has been one of my least successful completed prints in a long time.

Anyone want some Mendel parts?  Drop me a line.

How to unclog your extruder barrel and nozzle

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Nozzle and barrel apart

Nozzle and barrel apart

Here’s the process I used to unclog my extruder barrel and nozzle without a lot of extra equipment.  Obviously you should take all reasonable safety precautions with goggles, gloves, tongs, with a fire extinguisher, etc.  Plan ahead and be safe.

1. Materials:

  • Clogged extruder
  • Yarn
  • Q-tips
  • Heavy iron hook
  • Wrench
  • A big rock
  • Ethernet cable
  • Wire strippers
  • Blow torch
  • Safety equipment
  • Drill bits
  • Thick rubber band
Cleaning the inside of the nozzle - kinda gross

Cleaning the inside of the nozzle - kinda gross

2. Process:

  1. Disassemble the extruder
    1. Since PLA had gotten into the threads I had to leave the extruder warm as I unscrewed the PTFE insulating barrier.
    2. Unwrap the heater – taking off the ceramic tape, thermistor, nichrome, and Kapton tape.
  2. Remove plastic from the extruder
    1. I wrapped the unsharp end of my smallest drill bit in a thick rubber band to give it a grip.
    2. I then rotated the drill bit into the barrel by hand.
      3. Extruder barrel and thick yarn

      Extruder barrel and thick yarn

    3. When I had gotten as much out as I could, I switched to a slightly larger drill bit (again wrapped in a rubber band for grip) and drilled out as much as I could.  I repeated this until I had gotten to my largest drill bit that would fit in the barrel.
    4. I used a precision flathead screwdriver to follow along the threads of the extruder barrel and chip out plastic.
    5. I used the same precision flathead screwdriver to follow the threads inside the PTFE and chip out plastic.
  3. Heat the barrel
    1. This prior post has pictures for the entire setup.
    2. I was unable to remove the nozzle from the barrel.  Don’t worry if you can’t either.
    3. Put the extruder nozzle and barrel inside the large washer so the barrel is hanging down through the washer with the nozzle keeping it in place.
    4. Place the washer on a big iron hook or some similar piece of large thick heavy metal.
    5. Weigh down one end of the hook with the rock.
    6. With all reasonable proper safety measures in place and with adult supervision, heat the barrel and nozzle with the blow torch until it emits black smoke (which you should NOT breathe) and then keep it hot until it stops emitting smoke.
      7. Flossing the nozzle with copper wire

      Flossing the nozzle with copper wire

    7. Use the wrench to pick up the assembly and check if you can see through the nozzle.
    8. If you can’t see through the nozzle, keep heating it.
    9. Once you can see through the nozzle, it’s time to clean the extruder again
  4. Clean the extruder
    1. Once the barrel and nozzle had been heated, I found the nozzle came off very easily.
    2. Clean out the large cavity of the nozzle with the Q tip.
    3. Clean out the barrel with the yarn by inserting the yarn and “flossing” it.
    4. I happened to have pieces of an ethernet cable lying around.  I cut open one of the wires inside and pulled out the thin copper strands.  I took two of them and fed them through the 0.5mm nozzle.  I “flossed” the nozzle until it felt reasonably clean.
  5. Reassemble!

Things I learned while trying to unclog my extruder barrel

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I learned a lot this morning!  And now you don’t have to learn, as they say, the hard way.

  1. Never ever ever use tiles. I thought I was being very clever with the tile idea.  Apparently leftover kitchen tiles can shatter and fly apart when you heat them.  Who knew?
  2. Instead, use a big piece of metal to hold the barrel. I ended up using a piece of metal I had laying around to hold the extruder barrel and weight it down with a rock.  This worked perfectly.
  3. Don’t tilt your blow torch too much. Probably an elementary thing for most people.  My torch kept going out when I tilted it too far – probably a safety feature.  This meant I had to change the set up so that the barrel was somewhat elevated so I could keep the torch mostly vertical.
  4. Keep a friend handy. This was one of my few ideas/preconceptions that actually worked out.  Thankfully I didn’t need him to use the fire extinguisher or garden hose, but I very well could have.
  5. Don’t leave a nut on the extruder barrel. At the last minute I decided to screw a nut part way on the barrel.  I figured I could prop the extruder barrel up in the washer, heat it, and not discolor the nut or washer.  This didn’t work out because I needed to apply more heat to the barrel to get the clog out.

Printed Dinos!

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Don’t get me wrong – I like the acrylic dinos I have.  But what if you want to replace yours with a printed set?  Or what if you want to print up a full extruder kit for a friend?  Well, now you can!  I just uploaded some designs for a printed set of dinos.  Depending upon your batch you may have Big/Little dinos or Weird/Big dinos.  These should work in place of either, assuming that the placement of the bolt holes in the Z stage haven’t changed. 1

I’ve uploaded the sketchup files to make it easy to play with the designs.  As I was mocking these up I was tempted to turn them into bunnies instead of dinos.  Or to give the dinos some more features.  Since I was so torn about which route to take I decided to upload the bland models and let others embellish if they want.

So, print up printstruder and a few dinos for an authentic fully printed printruder.

Update:  Try out Zaggo’s printed dinos instead.  His is a much cleaner more elegant design.

  1. Doubtful [↩]