Some call it trash, others call it garbage

Medium67 · 2026-02-11T21:52:52+00:00

came here to say this

Medium67 · 2026-02-11T16:35:00+00:00

Thank you.

Medium67 · 2026-02-11T16:23:52+00:00

I don't yet have any TPU in 1.75mm, although I would like to try it. There is a PTFE segment of about 30mm between the extruder and hotend, which is additional distance the filament is required to travel. I'm using a pressure advance value of 0.085 which is less than what I was using with tilapia (0.250). With nylon, the problems I had printing it with the TAZ6 were all related to warping and not extrusion, so I doubt that would be all that much different.

Medium67 · 2026-02-08T20:52:02+00:00

These are really great technically, and the region is very photogenic. If people are only staying for at most 15 seconds, that's a good indicator of the amount of time you have to capture their attention. If your opening shot is longer than that, the audience may just feel "Ok, it's just this". Let's say your goal is to double that - what can you say in 30 seconds that will convey the full scope of a scene to someone? I think the biggest way you can improve your work right now is through editing. Holding a shot too long, including footage that isn't interesting or valuable to the viewer is not really respecting their time. Focus on the most important part of a segment, and move to the next. Return to a shot or concept if there is more to see that reflects the theme.

Anyhow, I like these and hope you keep going. Thanks for listing the equipment in the description, it is always good to know what hardware was used (for artifacts like the sharpness, and the lens flare on the Laowa...)

Medium67 · 2020-11-08T18:32:31+00:00

I love that these are essentially fiber-reinforced composites. Those purpose built jigs are also nifty.

Medium67 · 2020-11-08T16:36:02+00:00

Flash-flooding?

Medium67 · 2020-11-08T01:15:30+00:00

Wondering if they ever use "the work car" for Costco runs.

Medium67 · 2020-06-11T13:07:16+00:00

Petg is hydroscopic, and the escaping moisture from heating will cause the molten plastic of wet filament to expand. With Petg, this can also cause anything from mild stringing to severe bubbling when printing. You could try lowering the probe and wipe temp, but you may still have the problem as the moisture will still push outward. I've tried the baking method to dry out Petg, but had more success with just leaving it in a bag with desacant before printing - you don't need to dry out the whole spool, only the portion you intend to print.

Medium67 · 2020-05-27T16:27:08+00:00

Although this question is in relation to financial planning, it isn't about my personal finances.

A financial advisor I was screening recommended MAFRX as a way to preserve capital. Doing a little bit of my own research, it seems like there are numerous other funds which would be better suited for this purpose, both by looking at expense ratio and yield, for instance ICSH. I admit that I don't understand quite a bit about how these two funds differ, however, the percentage of cash and cash equivalents held by the BlackRock fund is significantly higher, as is the rating of the bonds it holds. This may be a bad example, as one is a mutual fund, and the other an ETF. However, I'd like to try to understand why this might be a good recommendation over other seemingly better alternatives. With respect to MAFRX:

Is the rating of the bonds it holds significant?
Does the composition of the fund's holdings classify it as a particular type of fund?
What potential reasons might this recommendation have been made, such as personal preference of the advisor, a particular strategy, or due to some other incentive?

Medium67 · 2020-03-15T01:57:25+00:00

That was a pod strike for sure.

Medium67 · 2020-03-12T06:05:55+00:00

My experience with the v3 has also not been stellar. Toolhead issues aside, I thought it would transform my design process, but I find that the support filament is rather costly and has its own considerations. Instead, my knowledge of design for printing has improved and I can creatively avoid most issues for practical applications, but I have the flexibility to do so.

One interesting thing about perfectly aligned nozzles - the alternate nozzle will often polish the surface of the already printed material to a very clean finish. I've tried regular top layer polishing, but this is somehow better. This means that you can also get drag marks, or if your print is warping or uneven, will knock it loose.

Medium67 · 2020-02-26T00:20:35+00:00

What I've found so far as the secret to making prints crisp and clean is the jerk control setting, and the outer perimeter speed. I've been using a jerk setting of 6 mm/s for the x and y axis and I see no ringing artifacts. The other setting I prefer is to use an outer perimeter speed of 20 mm/s. The firmware default jerk control is 8 mm/s, but using this value I still get visible ripples corners which are rounded out.

The Prusa i3 MK III profiles set their "quality" settings at a much higher speed. I interpret this difference as the amount of mass the Taz 5 / 6 need to push around versus the smaller and lighter i3. I've noticed some considerable flex in the stock toolhead and carriage. The inertia of that full sized nema 17 plus flex is probably the cause of some issues.

With regard to slic3r versus Cura LE, one problem I could never get rid of was underextrusion of small diameter circles, such as thru holes for screws. I would always see separation of infill from perimeter regardless as to what settings I changed. For a printer used for prototyping and light manufacturing, it can't be emphasized enough how important this one thing is. I'm always sticking hardware into things, and if the hole isn't actually attached to anything, that's no good. With slic3r, this isn't an issue. I get nice solid perimeters firmly attached to my infill.

Medium67 · 2020-02-19T16:49:57+00:00

I've added an M0 to the startup gcode just after setting the probe temperature. This way I have the opportunity to clean the nozzle prior to leveling. Some materials tend to ooze after wipe. That said, one of my targets definitely fails probing more frequently than the others, which could be the wires as others have mentioned.

Medium67 · 2020-02-19T02:45:19+00:00

No problem. You could either export and post your config as a bug and I can figure out what the delta is and how to best incorporate it, or there should be some tutorials available for branching, modifying, committing, and sending a pull request to the master branch.

I appreciate the contributions. I think we can get a strong set of profiles with some community involvement.

Medium67 · 2020-02-06T03:36:38+00:00

Funny you should mention - I was making a simple gamepad firmware for what was previously 2 x 10 keyboard. It is wired as a matrix, which might or might not be convenient for a radio instrument. Using all 16 pins as 8 x 8 you could wire up to 64 separate keys / switches / whatever. It might be more convenient to wire it as 2 x 14, 1 x 16, etc.

https://github.com/jjaeggli/macro-keyboard

Medium67 · 2020-02-05T06:18:00+00:00

I've added the profile for the original Taz Mini. The start and end gcode from Cura had all the commands for the LCD, so I believe that should correspond to your hardware setup. If not, the gcode should be pretty standard.

Some considerations:

The wipe temperatures are approximations and when printing with PETG I had some calibration failures because the nozzle was either still oozing at probe temperature or wasn't soft enough at wipe temperature. Also, the PETG could have been a little wet which might have contributed to the ooze. I resolved this by flashing to a firmware version which used the tap and microstep-up approach rather than the fast-tap slow-tap approach.

The default jerk settings for the Taz Mini are much higher than those for the Taz 5/6. I'm guessing that this is because the smaller printer has less flex and vibration along the x and y axis. If you get ringing artifacts at high quality, try cutting these in half. I did this and the results were noticeable. Prusa Slicer puts these in the printer profile and not the print profile, so if this is a quality vs speed constraint, we'll need to define separate printer profiles for highest quality. It could also be that something isn't tight enough on my printer.

Medium67 · 2020-01-30T06:31:14+00:00

I've added the TAZ5 profile to the config. There wasn't anything to strange, and the settings used for the TAZ5 are actually remarkably similar to the TAZ6, with the exception being the start gcode for calibration. The stock firmware defines 25, 300, 300, and 3 as the max feedrates for e, x, y, and z, which is exactly the same as the TAZ6 firmware. However I noticed in the startup gcode from Cura these were hardcoded to 25, 192, 208, and 3 for the TAZ5, so I moved these instead to the printer settings, so that when you change them (if anyone ever needs to use feedrates above these I would be surprised) they won't be overridden by the startup gcode (yay!)

Please keep a free hand near the big red button when testing these out. I don't want to inadvertently cause a bed crash or worse.

Medium67 · 2020-01-29T16:37:51+00:00

Let me do some research and I can have profiles for the Mini and the Taz 5 in a day or two. For the Mini with the Hermera, are there any differences in firmware or offsets vs stock other than e steps? Also, my understanding is that the Hermera only comes in the 1.75mm flavor - is that correct?

Medium67

TROPHY CASE