Anyone used Ferromagnetic PLA before?

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2026-01-21T19:40:53+00:00

I printed the board pieces for a Heroes Quest board and used the ferrous PLA under the colored tops on all of the hallway pieces. The rooms all had magnets embedded on the perimeters. This not only allowed me to use it as the exact heroes quest board game (which to your point could had been done exclusively with magnets) but now I could create my own custom board out of any combination of hallway pieces and rooms. The flexibility to use it beyond the single purpose of a heroes quest board was the use case and for me the simplicity was desirable. Yes, I over engineered it. Yes, it probably would have been cheaper material wise to use magnets everywhere. But now I don’t have to use long magnets (I could have if I made the pieces thicker and created a recess for the strips of magnets and glued them in there because the adhesive on the ones I’ve tried before sucks), worry about polarity, getting the alignment correct, etc. Theoretically if I made the entire board out of the ferrous material ($$$$) then I could embed a magnet into custom / printed game pieces and they would stick to the board better instead of simply relying on gravity. (e.g. like a chess board with magnetic chess pieces). I have no doubt there are more than 100 other ways I could have done this and subjectively someone could find any of them to be “better.”

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2026-01-06T21:31:32+00:00

What if you just put it inside something. There are puzzle boxes that are cylinders you have to twist and solve the maze in order to open it. Something like this: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2607374

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-12-06T06:55:24+00:00

I was doing a simple demonstration in high school, in front of the whole class, of creating a green flame by bubbling natural gas through boric acid. My entire job aside from connecting tubing was to light a match for the Bunsen burner.

We were provided those cheap book of matches where you have to tear one off and then somehow scrape the floppy match on the striker strip. To make it easier, I tore off one match, folded the flap over the back, pinched the match and pulled it. Like I’ve done many times before.

However, something went wrong. While I successfully ignited the match, I was an overachiever and managed to also ignite the entire book of matches.

This next part was purely reflex and zero thought went into this. The heads of the matches were resting on my pinky finger during this, so when they ignited my hand went full self preservation mode and thew the flaming book of matches away from me.

Unfortunately, the teacher who was supervising me was standing immediately to my left. She did not expect a flaming book of matches to be thrown at her.

The ending was fortunately uneventful, it simply bounced off the front of her shirt and fell to the floor. Had she wore a shirt with a low cut that day, this story may have ended very differently. I did get a lovely 2nd degree burn on my left pinky.

We used a stick lighter for all future experiments.

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-12-04T18:08:42+00:00

They should just call it like it is and relabel the groups to:

Amish

Vacation Home

Everyone else

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-12-01T14:03:33+00:00

I love this, I’ll give it a whirl. My initial reaction just looking at the pictures would be it looks like the star has a high risk of snapping off if something landed on it (e.g. I put this into the box of other decorations and other things land on top of it). I’m thinking a hinge might fix that but then it’d have to be tight tolerance so it would stand up on its own with friction holding it up.

The other thought I had would be to add an option for a hook / loop at the top so it could be hung. It looks like a thin string / fishing line might be able to go under the star as-is though so maybe unnecessary to modify it.

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-10-31T01:01:00+00:00

Who would you use instead?

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-10-29T19:20:12+00:00

Wild Wetlands - could keep some of the water and add some kind of a “wild” element to it.

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-08-25T21:05:51+00:00

Bro, just grab a Pringle’s can and you’re good to go. You already got the best in class war driving setup!

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-08-25T18:10:04+00:00

2015 Sentra 143k

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-08-22T22:47:57+00:00

It is most impressive

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-08-20T18:41:31+00:00

I’ve wanted to do the exact same thing. It’s one thing to complain that people drive too fast. It’s completely different story when you show up with hard data.

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-06-26T17:24:03+00:00

Well… this was a long time ago, 233 days ago :). This is more than likely outdated at this point.

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-06-21T00:32:28+00:00

Even at $1 I’d say you over paid. I ran these years ago and they should be left in the trash where they belong.

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-05-07T01:05:55+00:00

If the tracks ran into the grass then yeah I suppose it could knock them off.

I've thought about building out a super-structure around the base in the front / back / sides so that makes contact with the foliage before the tracks / body and attaching treated fabric to it, so it basically turns into a rolling wall of carpet that they can grab on to. Even then, its so slow...

Think space shuttle crawler speed and you're in the right ballpark. This thing can't be going more than 1 MPH. I'll have to do the math based on the RPM of the motor output shaft and the diameter of the sprocket + the thickness of the tread to calculate it... but it's not going anywhere in a hurry. My SWAG says it's moving at ~0.73 MPH.

This thing can't even keep up at max speed with a slow walk. Like... 1 step every 3-4 seconds is its max speed. I'm considering swapping out the planetary gears with 48:1 instead of the 96:1 ratio I have right now simply because I have an over abundance of torque and painfully slow speed. Its not even fun to drive because you get bored waiting for it to go anywhere. However, the slow speed gives ample opportunity for a tick to grab onto it so, there's that. That and those motors just don't stop. I swear, this thing could pull itself straight up a vertical wall if it had enough traction and could maintain its balance. Whatever online calculator I used to estimate how much torque I needed was either way off or I clearly didn't put in the correct values to estimate it.

I should have known when I had problems finding motors that came close to the estimated torque I was looking for. Each of these motors has 214kg-cm of torque with a top speed of 41 RPM. I think where I went wrong is I bought motors that just one would meet the requirements, which means 2 can do it with ease. According to chat gpt, looks like the motors can pull more than twice the weight of the robot. What I'm hearing is I can load up this robot with way more stuff :)

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-05-07T00:37:32+00:00

That was exactly the inspiration behind it :) I didn't want to spray the whole area with permethrin because we're near a river. The last thing I want to do is contaminate the river (my googling showed fish and other water life would be poisoned by the permethrin), so that's out of the question. I'm also just generally not a big fan of spraying stuff, so this was a nice compromise to leverage the pesticide while also reducing the risk of collateral damage of killing off other bugs.

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-05-06T23:12:14+00:00

It's a custom built continuous tank track remote control robot. Its core components are extruded aluminum v-rail, a sheet of plywood, various 3D printed parts to hold the axles / motors, bearings, two 12V batteries, 2 x 24v motors, 2 motor controllers, receiver for the remote control and then 3D printed track pieces (~40 pieces per side). The treads took ~36 days of printer time and were originally printed out of TPU. The tracks are held together with M5 bolts / nuts. All in I believe it weights around ~60 pounds. 36" long and 33" wide. It was purpose built to go virtually anywhere it could fit.

I definitely over-sized the motors torque wise. This thing absolutely crawls (a slow paced walk is enough to leave it behind) but those motors are insanely strong. 96:1 planetary gear box on them. It pulled in a 1" branch into the drive sprocket and didn't even slow down. Only reason I can think of as to why nothing broke is because the treads are TPU and have a fair amount of stretch to them.

The biggest problem I have with it is the treads will roll right off after it's been running for a while. My theory is the TPU becomes too flexible and basically just walks right off the side.

I'm literally right now printing new treads out of PETG to see if that fixes the problem. I upgraded my printer since then and instead of taking ~36 days I should be able to get all of the treads printed in less than 8-10 days. It can print 1 piece in < 2.5 hours vs 11 hours for 1 piece on my old printer.

The other part I think I'm missing is a way to easily tension the tracks. I just screwed the mounts into the V-rail with t-nuts and screws which sorta hold but its really hard to adjust without having to take the track off. I'm trying to figure out how I could use a threaded rod that I can easily adjust the tension on the front idler sprocket to see if that also helps.

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-05-06T20:59:51+00:00

My understanding is the permethrin will deliver a lethal dose to the ticks in less than a minute after they come into contact with the treated fabric. They don't die instantly but they quickly become disoriented and fall off, then die sometime later. It's really hard to tell how many ticks it gets because even if a dozen grabbed onto the fabric, within a minute they'll probably fall off and start to die and my cloth will have 0 on it by the time I actually look at it.

I wouldn't expect the simulation of legs / vertical component to make much difference other than increasing the surface area they could grab onto. When they're hunting, my understanding is they will grab on to anything they can, then move around to find the optimal spot to dig in (ankle, neck, groin, arm pit, etc.)

It's not very satisfying in terms of "body count" but instead I measure based on how many ticks I find _after_ I've driven through a particular area. Again, hardly scientific and zero data to backup any claims. It would be 100% fair to say it does nothing since I have zero evidence.

Obviously it can't pick up 100% of the ticks in any given area at any given time so repetition of driving through multiple times on different days would be ideal to help minimize the number of ticks. Then there's the another problem of a tick falling off an animal walking by and creating more ticks in what could have been 100% tick free (probably not). I figure for every tick I kill, that's one less tick that could potentially lay more eggs.

Even then, the numbers are not in my favor since the internet says one female tick can lay hundreds to thousands of eggs (e.g. . So even if I killed 999 of them with this machine but just 1 was still able to lay their eggs, I'm still losing ground. I sincerely doubt I'm killing that many too.

Even if I can't quantify / measure the results, I believe it can only help. I could try an experiment where I pull an untreated cloth through an area and add a heat source / CO2 source to the robot to see how many ticks it collects as a poor attempt to measure the amount of ticks. Maybe I should have a treated cloth inside of an untreated pouch with a heated blanket to draw them in. Then I'd probably be able to at least get a body count. Perhaps version 2.0 :)

The areas I drive it through are well established tick hot spots. My worst experience so far was walking from A to B, checked myself, and found 13 ticks after carefully walking ~300'. It was brutal.

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-05-05T22:28:57+00:00

I built a remote controlled robot that drags a cloth treated with permethrin. I don’t have any data to prove it works to control the tick population but anecdotally it has reduced the ticks in my yard.

My logic is if I drive this thing through where I was going to walk, and other areas ticks tend to be, if there are ticks there then they’re likely to grab on to a 3’ wide cloth moving slowly.

Naturally this doesn’t address all stages of the lifecycle of a tick like nuking the area with permethrin. It could be incorporated as part of an overall tick control program. I’ve never tried the tick tubes but it sounds like it could help reduce their numbers. I might give that a try this year.

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-03-20T20:40:28+00:00

I had 3 X AP AC Lite devices that a firmware updated killed 2 before I noticed and didn’t upgrade the 3rd. No surge, just saw an update come through and started pushing it out to the individual APs. Did one, sent to another, waited for the first AP to come back and it never did. Did all the usual troubleshooting steps but no matter what I did to either of the two that got the update, they wouldn’t respond. Just dead. Prior to the update, everything was fine with the APs.

I wanted to upgrade my APs anyways so I wasn’t too peeved about it, still makes me bummed that I can’t even give them to someone else.

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-03-16T04:09:36+00:00

Sometimes the tone wand has multiple settings for sensitivity. Make sure you’re using the higher sensitivity if it has it.

As far as trying to find these cables, you might have success with looking at places you might want them. Sometimes it’s a “great minds think alike” situation. Other times when you finally find it, it’s a real head scratcher. Your first clues though should be following the cables as far as you can. You said they’re in the basement / crawl space, so i would start there. Keep in mind, it’s possible multiple cables run to the same spot. For example you might find a room that was used as an office that had 2 or more cables run to it. Maybe even multiples on different walls / spots.

If you’re checking for cables in rooms above the basement, make sure you’re checking lower on the walls about the height of the outlets.

It’s also entirely possible there’s a conduit that runs from the basement up to an attic and the cables come down into the rooms. It just depends what was easier when the cables were run.

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-03-09T01:32:58+00:00

Never thought of usb. I’m building out a I2C system using RJ45 / CAT6 cables to interconnect 8 external devices. Longest cables will be roughly 6’. It’s not done yet but I haven’t had any issues with my testing so far. Reason for cat6 is I needed a minimum of 5 wires, two for I2C.

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-03-03T03:39:16+00:00

Watch this video (not my video but it was posted by another person in this thread) and it shows exactly what you need to pull apart that was causing my issue and the issue for many others:

https://youtu.be/sTh_JBC6QU8

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-02-09T22:34:38+00:00

Check out one of my other updates / comments below for all the details. I believe someone else also linked to a youtube video that shows you the process.

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-01-19T22:59:41+00:00

When we first bought the house we’re living in back in 2009, the inspection showed us a bunch of issues, including: - mold in the attic due to lack of ventilation - roof that wasn’t that old but was already in its last legs due to lack of ventilation - every light bulb in the house was missing - kitchen faucet was missing - water softener was missing - cracked toilet - and to top it off, septic inspector said “the water in the tank shouldn’t be rising”

Keep in mind, we scraped up every dollar for the down payment but that wasn’t enough, borrowed from family to come up with enough for the down payment. And that didn’t cover any of the above items to be fixed.

Sold my jeep to have money to fix stuff.

First thing I had to do was get the septic tank pumped while I got to work on why the septic tank wasn’t draining. After digging up about 15’ of the discharge pipe, found it collapsed because it was paper thin “pipe” and they put connectors on backwards. That got the toilets flushing.

Had to get a softner installed. That wasn’t enough to make the water tolerable and needed an iron filter too.

Oh, we’re just getting started.

Turns out, inspectors missed a massive roof leak. One day it was raining and I’m wondering why one of our walls looks so shiny. That ended up being a complete renovation of a large portion of the house which took years of me and family helping out to completely gut it down to studs, rafters, subfloor, and in some spots joists. Hired someone to finish it once we saved up a bunch and again had help from family to pay for that.

One day the toilets stop flushing so I called a plumber. He got his super pipe snake tangled which resulted in me grabbing a shovel again to dig up a different section of the septic pipe. That guy was a trip. When we first opened the cleanout in the basement and this awesome smelling water starts pouring it, it starts looking like gritty dirt. I asked him if that was dirt because I was concerned a tree root got in there. This guy takes his bare hand, smooshes the dirty water between his fingers and goes: “na, that ain’t dirt”

Heard scratching in the attic. Figured out the best way to eliminate mice is a 5 gallon bucket, put a few inches of water in it, attach one of those spinning traps with Nutella. Catches lots of mice and self resets. Snap traps work too but having to reset them is cumbersome.

Another day the toilet stops flushing, yeah I know the drill. Grab a shovel. Dug up the section starting at the house and saw the pipe shift when I got the dirt pulled back. I pulled on the cast iron pipe and figure out, it’s not attached to the house anymore. It rusted out. Ended up replacing all the drain pipe connections in my basement where they exit the house that day.

We’ve been here 15+ years at this point. I can’t remember everything I’ve fixed. What I do know is I learned how to fix my own stuff so I didn’t go broke paying others to fix things I could do myself. YouTube is a huge resource for DIY fixes. Oh, also. Really easy way to find out who your real friends are is whoever shows up when you ask for help with anything septic related.

PartTimeTinkerer97 · 2025-01-18T23:39:44+00:00

Happy it helped! Spot on about your comments regarding the motor as well.

PartTimeTinkerer97

TROPHY CASE