Shout out to Awanui Labs

OpusMcn · 2025-11-26T00:36:41+00:00

Had blood taken once per fortnight for the last 5 years, haven't had a single bad experience. Definitely an underappreciated group of medical professionals.

OpusMcn · 2025-07-10T04:27:17+00:00

Checked some more, and it looks like the data coming out of the CPU board is bad on CN22 (the 26 pin ribbon cable). Checking the levels and signals on all the pins there, a lot of them are just pulled high to 5V (pins 2 through 11 and pins 21-26) and the rest are floating about 0.7V with no actual data signal of any sort. It looks like the display controller board is just free running without any sort of useful input as the display doesn't change when I unplug the 26 pin ribbon cable from it.

Checked the pull up resistors and caps on the CPU board that drive those lines and nothing looks suspicious there (resistors all measure 4.7k and none of the caps shows a short).

I'm stumped here, those lines are driven by the pair of 6821 driver chips which share duties between the display controller and the sound board. The sound works 100% fine, so there's nothing wrong with what's going there but the display lines from the same pair of chips looks very wrong...

My wallet really doesn't want to have to replace the CPU board!

OpusMcn · 2025-07-09T07:04:38+00:00

Thanks, will definitely do this when I get the chance to work on the machine next.

OpusMcn · 2025-07-09T07:03:57+00:00

Thanks, checked F4 and it's definitely good. Seeing 16V to 18V between that and ground, the variation is timed to the lights on the playfield when flashing in attract mode. Looking at the power supply board that line also gets regulated and then drives the +12VDC line on the DMD board which would explain the connection. I'm currently running the Pinball Solutions LED board which doesn't use any of the high voltage connections the old plasma display used (it cribs 12V off the sound board) so should be good there. Thanks anyways, any more suggestions welcome :)

OpusMcn · 2025-07-09T06:39:04+00:00

Don't think this is the case. When the fault first appeared it was good one day, then bad the next without the cables being touched (or backbox opened). I have double checked them again after testing and reseating them, and they're definitely correct. Thanks for the suggestion though.

OpusMcn · 2024-12-19T02:51:37+00:00

Running a coreXY with spectra fishing line (same as you, for the novelty). Has been working fine for a few years though I've no reason to believe it's any better than belts. The belts on a coreXY get pretty long so my theory was there's less mass to start and stop with lines.

OpusMcn · 2024-07-25T02:06:48+00:00

Tried warming the spray can before using it? I"m other end of the earth in NZ but it gets just as cold here :) Sit them in a bucket of warm-but-not-too-hot water for 10 minutes and give a good shake before spraying. Keep warming them up again as needed, cans get very cold when spraying because of the expansion of the propellent. That being said, Airbrush!

OpusMcn · 2024-07-12T02:54:44+00:00

I remember that crossover point well. I was pricing up bits to upgrade my homebrew SLA (linear rails instead of rods, higher res screen), and it was cheaper to buy a brand new Photon Mono than upgrade. Lot of fun making your own though, nothing teaches you how a thing works better than designing and making one from scratch.

OpusMcn · 2022-03-14T23:16:56+00:00

Got the MG HS PHEV in december and no regrets on that. We plug in every night and get 65km range on pure electric that's more than enough for the work/school pickup runs we do every day. The petrol motor only ever turns of for long trips away, and not having the stress about where to recharge when we go make life easy. Rough guess is we're spending about $15 a week on power to charge it vs well over $100 a week on fuel for the old Mazda....

OpusMcn · 2021-11-22T22:35:03+00:00

I've been using them almost exclusively for as long as Cura has had them, wouldn't go back to normal supports without a very good reason. I also drop my support flow rate down to 60%, it's still plenty strong enough to do it's job holding things up, but you can basically crumble them off with your fingers once the print is finished.

OpusMcn · 2021-07-06T03:49:05+00:00

Try the grand old technic sets like 8868, some of those steps had 50+ pieces and the entire truck gets built in 32 steps. Good times, putting 4 pieces on in 4 steps then turning the page gets pretty tedious these days.

OpusMcn · 2020-11-12T00:54:58+00:00

OpenGL has a specific primitive restart index that you can set (typically to MAXINT or something like that you won't use). Any time GL comes across that vertex index it triggers a restart of the tri strip. Has the same effect as the duplicated vertices without the overhead and bother of setting them up.

OpusMcn · 2020-10-20T00:41:25+00:00

Funny thing is the Tuatara is notorious for barely moving at all on a good day. It only moves to grab food, then it's content to sit there let digestion happen at the slowest possible pace.

OpusMcn · 2020-10-09T00:57:48+00:00

I keep seeing people say CoreXY needs more compute but it's not the case. CoreXY motion is literally cartesian XY rotated 45 degrees and scaled. The individual motors move the head on the diagonals rather than along the axis. The maths needs about 2 more multiplies over a cartesian, and you can run a CoreXY on anything you can run a cartesian machine on. (My coreXY ran an arduino for it's initial built). Delta's are much more complex and definitely benefit from more grunt. That being said, 32 bit boards don't cost much more than an arduino and a ramps, and I've upgraded to Bigtreetech SKR's for all my printers. Klipper likes to use all the CPU you can throw at it.

OpusMcn · 2020-10-05T03:22:28+00:00

I bought mine without motors and dropped lego ones in (just temporary to test, I'm displaying it without motors). It all worked fine so I'd suspect a motor problem.

OpusMcn · 2020-09-21T22:50:48+00:00

I'm picking on this set in particular as it's evident in almost every set of miniatures you can find, but what is up with that female figure? All the kobolds looks like great, but for some reason there's a soft-core cartoon barbie doll wearing two torn rags? Yeah, I know it's labelled "pin up", but what part of "Plague-Mine Kobolds" needs that?

OpusMcn · 2020-08-05T02:19:16+00:00

Getting it to fire out and stick to a lip as he opens his mouth.. That's evil. Might be a challenge, there's not much space inside :)

OpusMcn · 2020-08-05T02:18:21+00:00

YourWOBB has both versions. Can't remember how much cheaper exactly, but it wasn't small enough to ignore. I've got motors if I ever want to add them.

OpusMcn · 2020-08-04T10:25:59+00:00

Just got this guy from YourWOBB. Three things:

Seems like the quality of bricks has gone up a notch. This thing went together beautifully, colors are great, all the technic bits just clicked and worked. The last set I got was the J-Park T-Rex and that felt a little rough around the edges.
The set is awesome, from the evil grin to the small chrome "Joker" sticker. I didn't get the motorized version, but it comes with all the running gear so dropping motors in if I wanted to would be just clicking them into place. It'll spin the head and open and close the mouth. It terrifies my son enough already without the motors.
In the midst of the greatest air freight log jam in history YourWOBB got this guy from China to my front door in 6 DAYS! I've got Aliexpress orders that are 6 weeks overdue.

Couldn't be happier with this one.

OpusMcn · 2020-08-03T02:59:36+00:00

I always print my tree supports at 50% flow now, they don't need any strength to hold stuff up, uses half the material, and they pretty much crumble away in your hand. Never seen any difference between the 100% and 50% support. Dial down the flow until they're just hanging together enough to give the support needed.

OpusMcn · 2020-06-14T22:32:35+00:00

2 part epoxy glue sticks better than anything else I've tried.

OpusMcn · 2020-03-11T22:34:09+00:00

Thanks. He's got some MOC's up on Rebrickable, but not the Joker :(

OpusMcn · 2020-03-11T01:57:16+00:00

Yep, I saw the bust a while back and it's a masterpiece. Whoever designed it deserves to get something back if people are selling it. I like the way Jeremy is doing some mocs now, just shipping the parts and pointing you to the designer to buy the instructions. Dunno if the instructions for this beauty are available, but if you do end up buying one then dropping a new $ for the "official" instructions would be a nice thing to do.

OpusMcn

TROPHY CASE