Chris Johnson

I went with a Bambu Lab P2S printer. It is an enclosed printer; it has excellent support and ecosystem. And it has strong vertical integration.

In order to 3D print something, you need the printer, a build plate, filament, a model, and a slicer.

The build plate is a surface that the filament will adhere to when you want it to and release your printed part when you want it to release.

Filament is a thermoset plastic. I.e., a plastic that melts when heated and can be reshaped and then will hold that new shape after it cools.

The model is a digital 3D solid. It is normally generated with a CAD package.

The slicer take the 3D solid and slices it into layers, then creates a sequence of g-code instructions to recreate that solid in plastic.

The First Print

To start with, I purchased filament from Bambu Lab to use on my printer. Their filament spools come with RFID tags. When you put the spool in the AMS, it will read the RFID, which tells the AMS what type of filament it is and what color. It also says it is Bambu Lab filament, but nobody else has permission (cryptographic) to create RFID tags that the printer/AMS will read.

I selected a useful “print” from the prints that are preloaded in the printer. Then I pressed “go”.
It printed exactly what I wanted, and it has been in use ever since.

The Second Print

It is nice to have models preloaded to print, but that would get boring rapidly. The next step was to use their phone app to print something.

This consisted of starting their app, pointing my phone camera at a QR code on a box. That QR took me to a model in the Bambu Lab cloud. I clicked the print button and a short time later I had a 3D version of that print.

There were more things I printed this way, but it was time to move up.

The slicer

The approved software is Bambu Studio. Which is an Apple or Windows program, no Linux version. I choose to go with OrcaSlicer because it is well respected and integrates nicely with Bambu Lab printers.

Using the slicer, I was able to download models from other sites, outside of the Bambu Lab cloud, slice them, and then send them to the printer. I could then use the Bambu App to start the print, or print directly from the printer control panel.

Over time, I’ve moved away from the Bambu Lab Cloud. I’m doing everything locally now. I still use their cloud to find models ready to print, but that is only because it is easy. I can use their phone app, search for a model, tag it, then download and print it later.

ReMix

My first major print was a riser for the AMS. This was printed in four large parts and a set of TPU gaskets. Yes, I can print custom gaskets.

The riser holds two drawers. I printed those drawers with a Gridfinity base.

All is good so far. I then print a deburring tool Gridfinity bin. It should fit perfectly. It does, except it is too tall. I can’t close the drawer.

This lead to me doing my first remix. I pulled the STL into FreeCAD, then created a sold cube the right size. Intersected the two solids and ended up with a shortened version.

This worked. My deburring tool now fits perfectly in my Gridfinity drawer.

This type of remix is simple. More complex remixes take more time. I’m not good at it yet because it requires me to create a solid from an STL or STEP file.

My First Model

I wanted a Gridfinity box to hold my ultra-precision torque screwdriver. I did all the right things, except I did a shit job of my B-splines. I also took a bad picture. I was too close, so lines that should have been straight were not.

Regardless, I printed it. What came out fit the Gridfinity base. The bin was short enough that the drawer would close.

The issue? The finger holes to lift the tool out were way too small. I’ve learned that I need between 20 mm and 30 mm to bake it easy to grip.

I have a second attempt ready to go, but I haven’t printed it yet. It was cool to see. It is a disappointment for it to not work.

My Latest Model

To control the path of filament, 3D printers use lots of PTFE tubing. This is 4 mm OD and about 2 mm ID pneumatic tubing. These fit into PTFE couplers. One of the coupler/connectors I’m using is a PC4-M10. This has a push connector on one side and is threaded M10 on the other.

I’m using a printed replacement cap for a cereal container. A 4L cereal container will hold a 1 KG spool on rollers with space for a hygrometer and desiccant. With a hole in the container, you can feed your filament out and directly to your printer without ever exposing your filament to the moisture in the air.

One method is to drill a 10 mm hole in the side of the container and use a PC4-M10 screwed into the side. A better method is to put a M10 flanged nut on the backside.

I would rather not drill holes, so I went with the replacement cap with a socket for the PC4-M10.

The model prints the cap, a sealing plug, a threaded and knurled screw-on cap. The cap proper has an inset threaded boss for the knurled cap to screw onto to seal the container.

That boss holds a PC4-M10. The model also contains a printed nut for the PC5-M10. Now here is my issue: the person that printed this seems to have found PC4-M10 with M10x1.5 threads. The PC4-M10 I have is measured with M10x1.0 threads.

I went into FreeCAD, I created a solid with a flange, 17mm hex nut, and a proper M10x1.0 threaded hole.

And it worked. Those nuts are now in use.

I am that much closer to being able to print my patterns for castings.

It has been a learning week for me. I’ve actually gotten to the point where I’m printing things for me rather than for the printer and the printing process.

Every part of the process is so much better than it was the last time I was attempting 3D prints. I have one confirmed model that is a failure. I’ll work with the least failed print to get the tool I need.

The two biggest issues in 3D printing today are bed adhesion and bad filament. Now bad filament isn’t always bad, sometimes it is just that it has absorbed too much water from the air.

There is a relatively simple fix for that: dry your filament.

My printer came with an AMS (automatic material system). It consists of a chamber that holds four spools of filament; each spool has its extruder/feeder. The printer controls the AMS. When the printer wants a particular filament, it unloads the current filament, then it tells the feed motor to push the filament down a sequence of PTFE tubes and Y connectors until the filament is at the extruder proper.

The printer then pushes out the old plastic from the hot end with the new filament, leaving the nozzle loaded with the new filament. It is cool to watch.

The AMS is designed for four small packages of silica desiccant. One of the first things I printed was a set of boxes to hold more desiccant. The AMS now has about between 10 and 20 times as much desiccant as it started with.

The AMS is sealed, has circulating fans and a heater. This means it can be used to dry filament as well as feed it.

There is one small issue: you can’t print while it is drying. You have to have a separate power supply for the AMS to dry while printing.

Which takes me to my “quick” fix, a SunLu S1 Plus filament dryer. This holds one spool of filament, it can run at up to 55°C, and it does a good job of PLA, PETG, and one or two other filaments.

Using it I have been able to rescue some 10 year old PLA that was stored open. It has all just printed, after it was dryed.

Now the fix to this temperature issue is to use a “blast oven”. A blast oven means an oven that can maintain a constant temperature for an extended period of time while air is forced around the filament.

I don’t have a blast oven. What I do have is a printer that can maintain a constant temperature but doesn’t have a fan.

The manufacturer recommends printing a cover in Polycarbonate (PC). But PC is extremely hygroscopic. Straight from the package, it has to be dried at 90°C. Which my SunLU can’t do.

If I had a PC drying cover, I could dry the PC in the printer. All I need is some dry PC but what I have is wet PC.

And this issue exists for every filament I have. So I’m doing a bootstrap.

I did a printer bed drying of some ASA. This took around 12 hours. I used a cardboard box, as recommended. To make a fake cover.

With the ASA dry enough to print, I’m printing a blast oven. This is a two part filament dryer that uses the printer bed for the heat source and a carefully designed drying chamber with forced air.

Now all I have to do is hope that part two prints successfully tonight.

What is the stupidest thing you’ve heard somebody say in the last two weeks?

When I make a statement, I know that I am correct. The proper temperature for the bed of my 3D printer for PLA is 55°C. As far as I know, this is correct.

If someone were to question that statement, I would consider that I am wrong. Being wrong is part of being human.

Assuming that I am wrong, I will go verify the statement. And what I would find is that there are more pieces that go into that statement, for example, the build plate I’m using.

Having an open, learning mind allows me to self-correct when I am wrong. I actually do this so fast, in real time, that people don’t even notice that I had something wrong. Somebody says I’m wrong because of a particular reason. I evaluate and change my position, taking in the new information.

People remember the outcome, where I’m usually correct; they don’t remember the incorrect starting point. It is a process to get to the correct answer.

I’ve done this here. I’ve made a statement; one of you has corrected me or added more information. I verify, then move forward with the new information.

Unfortunately, we are surrounded by people that are incapable of doing this.

These people cannot conceive that they might be wrong. They argue by expert.

My second wife used argument by expert constantly in our interactions. Since she wasn’t able to support her opinions, she turned to an expert and would tell me I was wrong because this expert was saying what she was saying.

This would require me to locate experts who she would accept, which she never did.

The problem with this style of argument is that you are not looking at the subject. You are not investigating the subject. Instead, you are vetting a third party. You have lost the point of the discussion.

I don’t need an expert to tell me that dropping hot glass into cold water is a good way to end up with shards of glass.

The need for people that are so stupid they require an “expert” to tell them what they should think drives me bonkers.

An example. NH has no income tax. Most of the tax revenue comes from property taxes. You are taxed a certain amount per $1000 of value your property has.

For one area of the state, the tax rate is $34.37/$1000. With an average home/property assessed at $215,000, giving an annual tax of $7389.55.

Now consider a small farm with 40 acres at $5,000/acre. That puts the value at $200,000. The assessed value at around $120,000 with an annual tax of $4124.40.

Now NH wants to protect farmers from heavy taxes so they have an option for your land to be put into “current use.” This covers undeveloped land (hunting, fishing areas) and farmland. If your land is in current use, you only pay taxes on 10% of your assessed value. So the farmer won’t be paying $4124; instead, he’ll be paying $412.40. A significant savings.

This is all well documented in the state’s laws. There are people who do nothing but defend current use cases. The gist is that if you have at least 10 acres in current use, you get this tax break.

A person I knew worked for a town. The town was having a shortfall. They were attempting to raise revenue by getting more land pulled out of current use. This person was concerned about their land, 125 acres, 123 of which were in current use. They asked the town lawyer about their concerns about putting up a small 10×20 hunting cabin in the woods.

The city lawyer told her that the hunting cabin would cause all 123 acres to come out of current use.

Even when I showed her the statutes, even when she was presented with the literature from the current use defenders, she took the word of her “expert” over what the plain text of the law said.

Nothing I said would convince her that she was wrong. She didn’t need to consider that she was wrong because it wasn’t her opinion; it was her “experts” opinion.

She was stupid.

On the other hand, she wanted to post the land as no hunting. That would have taken the acres out of current use.

Because she never learned to read the law for herself, nor did she hire a lawyer to advise her, she didn’t know that posting the land could have taken it out of current use.

The left is full of stupid people. People that can’t think, but they can certainly regurgitate what they have been told.

COVID-19 is so deadly that healthy children must be vaccinated against COVID-19. And you should wear your mask when in your car alone or out on a surfboard or in a boat in the middle of a lake.

They could never apply logic to their position because they never evaluated how they got there.

The other day I heard from a teacher friend that they had observed ICE removing a student from the middle school. Except it turned out that she hadn’t observed it. Two of her fellow teachers had observed it.

I was concerned. Was this the mythical unicorn ICE action? ICE agents storming schools to grab kids, throw them into handcuffs, and drag them out?

Well, no. It turns out that the kid was an illegal alien. His parents have removal orders against them. They had been picked up while the kid was in school.

ICE came to the school, told the admin that they needed to pick up the kid. The admin walked the agents to the classroom; the ICE agents and the kid walked out together. No muss, no fuss.

They were making sure the kid didn’t come home to an empty home.

Still no unicorns.

These people do not know how to think for themselves. They are too stupid to hold an opinion, so they borrow other people’s opinions.

They think they know the law because they had a one-hour seminar taught by radical activists.

A deportation enforcement officer will have between 100 and 200 HOURS of training in the law, focusing on immigration law. ICE agents are required to be college graduates. Their training is provided by actual experts in the law, and they are tested to confirm their knowledge.

You can’t fix stupid.

Mobs are an organism. They act like a living creature. They might be made of people, but they react in known and predictable ways.

Mobs move in the path of least resistance towards their goal. If one person chooses a different path, others in the mob will follow, not a lot. But more people will follow those, and pretty soon there is a significant part of the mob moving in that new direction.

This is why breaking contact with the mob can be difficult. You need to fade out of the mob, not attract attention that causes parts to follow.

When there is a junction, the mob will flow down multiple paths from that junction unless guided. This is how multiple blocks can become involved with the mob: they move in the same general direction, but they fill all available space.

Mobs avoid hard points. They will flow around those hard points, but hard points cause a pain-like response, and the mob recoils from contact.

Riots are a type of mob behavior. My mentor told the story of how he and his Johns Hopkins buddies rushed to the rowhouse of one of the buddy’s moms. There they set up in the front window with long guns.

As the story was recounted to me, every rowhouse on that block suffered serious damage except for three. The rowhouse they were in and the two rowhouses directly across the street from them.

The mob avoided that hardpoint. It wasn’t worth the pain, and the organism retreated.

Mobs are dangerous. People get caught up in them and don’t know how to extract themselves. People that would never dream of being violent or vandalizing property will do it without even a thought. They follow anybody who acts like a leader.

During student protests that turned into riots at my University in the 60s, before I got there, there was no vandalism until one person threw a brick through the plate glass window of an upscale store. The student newspaper ran a picture of the man throwing that brick through the window to go with the story of the police vowing to track down the student who did it.

Oh, the man throwing the brick? He was dressed as a police officer.

The REST of the windows, those were broken by students who followed suit. Once one act of violence happened, the rest of the mob followed suit.

During the January 6th march to the Capitol, instigators changed the protest into a mob. That mob did not turn into a riot; they just did things that, as individuals, they would not normally do.

The reason that it didn’t turn into a riot was because there was no drive among the people to be violent.

We compare that to the BLM riots.

In Kenosha, we saw protests turn to mobs turn to riots. One of the interesting things that was caught on camera was people in all-black clothing, carrying umbrellas, throwing those first bricks. Starting the process of turning the mob into a riot.

The people in the streets were already angry. The media had been stirring up hate and anger for days and weeks. It took very little to drive the protests into mobs and the mobs into riots.

But there are things that mobs don’t do. They don’t have Command and Control structures. They don’t have security details. They don’t have assigned tasks for different units. They don’t have units.

One of the interesting, but not surprising, features of the “mobs” in MN is just how well organized they are.

All of which leads me to believe that they are not organic. There are parts that are useful fools/tools. But there are other parts that are most definitely acting to destabilize societal norms in the area. To foment a revolution.

We have some good delivery drivers, but my goodness, some are horrible.

I’ve had a half dozen packages delivered to my “porch or front door”. With pictures of boxes, or packages in a white garbage bag sitting in a pile of snow under my mailbox. 2 feet from where the melt puddle forms.

On Saturday they promised a delivery. They then told me they couldn’t deliver because of severe weather.

The cause? They didn’t want to go up the driveway.

Sunday they delivered up the same driveway with no changes.

I’m sad to say that USPS does a better job of package delivery. Amazon drivers will flat-out lie.

That’s nto to say we don’t have some good ones, Saturday and Sunday drivers are bad, in general.

When I purchased my first 3D printer, it came as a kit. One of the “spider” style.

By this I mean it had three towers with arms that supported a hot-end platform. By moving the base of the arms up and down the towers, the platform would move in 3 space.

It was the fastest type of printer available.

Unfortunately, it was not a good choice. The instructions were not good, and in particular, they got the size of one of the drive wheels wrong.

The printer was designed around 3mm filament at a time when most hotends had moved to 1.75mm. I paid to have a 3D printer dude tune my printer to make it work. It didn’t, but he did upgrade it to 1.75mm filament.

There were three types of filament at the time, PLA, PA, and ABS.

PLA is a starch-based plastic; it has a relatively low melting point but is cheap. It is the standard for most prints.
ABS is the standard plastic you find almost everywhere.
PA is Nylon.

I purchased some ABS and Nylon but never had what I would consider a successful print.

Fast forward to today, and the types of filaments have exploded.

Besides the three listed above, they now have PETG, TPU, PC, ASA, PLA+, PA6, PA12. And many of these are available with CF (carbon fiber) or GF (glass fiber) added.

PETG is stronger than PLA and has a higher melting point. It is commonly used. I use it anywhere I might need something that will withstand a little heat.

TPU is a printable rubber. You can print custom gaskets with it. It is also used for non-slip feet.

PC is polycarbonate; it prints clear and is heat resistant and strong. ASA is a stronger than ABS material.

All of these do a job well. And I’m going a bit bonkers trying to make sure I hit the correct price/performance mark.

The good news, for me, is that I’m starting to come out of the print for the printer and starting to print tools and organizational things for me.

In May of 1963, there were mass protests in Birmingham, AL. Blacks were protesting racist laws, passed by Democrats, and enforced by Democrats.

The laws were bad. The leaders were bad. The cops and other enforcers were bad.

That isn’t to say there wasn’t more than a bit of propaganda going around.

A motel manager was told to get the blacks out of the motel pool. His orders were ignored. The police were being ignored.

The law was bad. The people enforcing it were bad. The hotel manager? We don’t know, but he was painted as bad.

The gallon of acid he poured into that pool would not have done a damn thing to anybody in the pool. Unless it was poured on somebody, it was so diluted b the time it entered the pool that it did not and could not cause harm.

He used fear and ignorance to drive the blacks from his pool, because he was ordered to do so.

Not every person in the South was racist. Not every person was bad. Enough of them were to paint an entire section of our country as evil racists.

64 years later, conservatives are still being painted as racist using these images of Democrats enforcing Democrat-passed laws.

The problem with dealing with people in the spur of the moment is that “bad” or “evil” is not visible in the moment. It takes time.

I still remember the first time I saw the George Floyd video. I was enraged. I was glad I didn’t have to choose between watching a cop kill a black man or shooting the cop and spending the rest of my life in jail.

It turned out that every single thing told to me by that video was a lie. And my country burned.

The evil that is the modern (and historic) Democrat came to the forefront. They held “protests” that turned into riot after riot after riot.

They attacked federal buildings for weeks on end. They took over parts of cities and refused to allow people free travel through their city.

And they lied to us. The entire memo of “mostly peaceful” comes from a reporter telling us that the “protest” was mostly peaceful while the rioters set fires in the background.

When Kyle showed up to defend a commercial property, because the Minneapolis police wouldn’t or couldn’t, he ended up being chased by a convicted felon. When that felon attempted to take Kyle’s rifle from him, Kyle shot him, and made a good communist out of him.

A little later, another man became known as Lefty. He was carrying concealed. He attempted a sneak attack on Kyle, when Kyle pointed his rifle at Lefty, Lefty stopped, then continued his attack, quickly losing the use of his right arm.

Lefty was not legally carrying, by the laws of Minnesota. His permit to carry had expired.

He absolutely had the right to carry. The Second Amendment protects the right of every person to armed self-defense, and more. The law that made it illegal for Lefty to carry was unconstitutional. It might not have been found such, yet, but it is.

I will stand up to anyone to clearly, loudly state that Lefty had the right to carry.

He did not have the right to misuse his gun. When his gun came out of its holster to threaten Kyle, he was no longer on Second Amendment protected grounds.

You have the right to carry. You have the right to defend yourself. You don’t have the right to use your gun for criminal acts.

We need to be aware that rights are not situational. Your right to carry doesn’t end when you go to protest. Your right to carry doesn’t end when you go to a restaurant that serves beer. Your right to carry doesn’t end because somebody else is scared.

The Fifth Amendment does NOTend when a person is accused. That would make it worthless.

Your rights are not situational.

I’ve been told I live in a MAGA bubble. If I wasn’t brainwashed by FauxNews and actually cared about others, I would no longer be a Maggot.

The reality is that I can’t escape their noise and opinions. It is everywhere.

Ally and I noticed a while ago that every cop show on TV talks about “legally registered guns.” Every single one of them. NCIS was horrible about this. Law and Order had the excuse that it was taking place in NYC where all “legal” guns are supposed to be registered.

Though an egregious one popped up recently. The detectives of L&O were investigating a “sniper.” They tracked the gun back to the FFL that sold the gun.

They then accused the FFL of attempting to hide the identity of the purchaser because the signature on the 4473 was illegible. They made a big deal about it.

Every 4473 that I’ve ever filled out requires me to fill out the form with my printed information and the FFL then copies my government ID information (DL) onto the form. If the left didn’t lie they wouldn’t have anything to say.

The Question

What is a trope or common “everybody knows” that you see in movies or shows that is pure left-wing talking points?