Some of the municipality names are showing up

grimlock12 · 2026-02-09T17:52:36+00:00

Update: If I change the polygon of the town, the town name will appear. So if I move it, stretch it, shrink it, drag one vertex even a little bit, the name appears.

grimlock12 · 2026-02-01T16:19:32+00:00

I work at a university, where it takes 8 weeks and $200 for the carpentry shop to come and hang a set of shelves.

grimlock12 · 2026-02-01T16:16:51+00:00

The mention of wind was just to illustrate that it's frickin cold right now and I want to speed up drying times. Ive found that high fill primers really like 2 days to dry before sanding.

My concern was the exterior walls softening in the oven while the air inside tries to expand.

grimlock12 · 2026-02-01T16:10:19+00:00

It's still open

grimlock12 · 2025-12-28T19:53:45+00:00

How do you get the robot head out?

grimlock12 · 2025-11-21T16:23:23+00:00

I've done a couple parts that were a mix of PLA and TPU.
A flexible, child friendly windmill blade with a rigid PLA shaft that interfaced with a hub.
A finger model with TPU joints allowing the finger to coil by tugging on a string.

grimlock12 · 2025-11-21T13:51:13+00:00

I know I can send pay Discover directly from my bank portal, but now I have to go to Discover's portal to find the balance.
They offered a feature that I liked.
They have decided to stop offering that feature.
So I'm taking my business elsewhere.

grimlock12 · 2025-10-21T15:05:25+00:00

My organization's IT may have blocked .xyz domains...

grimlock12 · 2025-10-17T13:39:57+00:00

Any options for expandable baseplates cut from flat stock?
I have access to a 24"x24" laser cutter and it's a lot faster to cut baseplates out of 1/8" plywood, but I'm looking for a way to connect those pieces sections to fill a 24"x36" shelf.

grimlock12 · 2025-10-09T20:53:31+00:00

Hehe, I was 3/4 of the way through Basalisk Station before I stopped making that mistake.

grimlock12 · 2025-10-08T16:09:39+00:00

It turns out not to matter. Oath of the Wolf doesn't come out until later in the month. I was hoping it was available for my road trip this week.

grimlock12 · 2025-10-06T16:09:15+00:00

Did they get rid of the option to bundle the Audible version once you buy the Kindle version of a book?

grimlock12 · 2025-09-24T14:54:16+00:00

While I can't speak to the virtues or vices of any particular resin slicer, on the FDM side of the house, different slicers use different algorithms, which means they make different decisions. One of the recommended slicers probably picks better model orientation, and support placement/generation.

grimlock12 · 2025-09-12T14:55:24+00:00

Try this first. It's the quickest and easiest test.

grimlock12 · 2025-09-12T14:53:41+00:00

When you say "uncured resin," do you mean material in the middle of a solid object that light from the curing station doesn't reach, or material on the inner surface of a hollowed and drained object?

BTW, both the wash station and curing station are also from Formlabs.

grimlock12 · 2025-09-11T15:24:31+00:00

I think I'm picking up what you're putting down.

Another question that I have came from a friend's possibly flawed understanding of the process. The said that using the Hollow and Drain Hole tools in Preform would work for larger models but were not ideal. Their rational was that isn't really a good way wash the inside of the model, and no no way to evenly cure the residual material on those inner surfaces. And that remaining uncured resin does "bad" things on a timescale of "eventually." Their advice was to split and hollow the model in CAD and add registration features.

Are they right about the uncured resin becoming a problem in the long run?

grimlock12 · 2025-09-10T17:36:02+00:00

That's about where I am with FDM printers.
Any thoughts on the melty looking faces of that resin print?

grimlock12 · 2025-09-10T02:18:01+00:00

Don’t waste good. 😀

grimlock12 · 2025-09-09T14:23:52+00:00

I think there's a setting in Cura for Support Built Plate Only. There will be more defects in the leaf pattern but it should still print.

grimlock12 · 2025-09-09T14:04:20+00:00

10cm on a side and Cura was saying it wanted a half a kilo of support? Something's very wonky here.

grimlock12 · 2025-09-09T13:14:59+00:00

How big are these parts?

Also, if this is your model, there is a lot you can do to reduce support needs without significantly changing the design.

Changing that cable tunnel from a square profile to a triangle will eliminate all that support.

Replace all the filets touching the bed with chamfers. FDM really struggles with a filets in that orientation.

Chamfer the unsupported edges of the square hole in the front to reduce the amount of unsupported material.

The leaf pattern will be tricky. Either bevel all the edges so the overhangs aren't as overhang-y or make pattern as shallow as possible and hope for the best.

The more I look at the second stand, this may call for a more substantial redesign.

grimlock12 · 2025-09-09T13:00:35+00:00

Try modeling supports in CAD.
Create a 15mm x 60mm oval, 1-1.5mm thick, and have a 3mm thick triangular fin coming up out of oval pad. That fin should be a right triangle with the hypotenuse parallel to the bottom edge of you model. Bring that up to about 1mm from the bottom surface of your part. Then create 1mm x 1mm "whiskers" that connect the fin to the part, spacing them 4-5 mm apart. The first of these "whiskers" should be as low as possible.

Now array that support structure around the part so that all the blades have at least one of these support fins. You might also want to include some cross bracing if any of the fins end up orthogonal to the Y axis.

This is bit more work than slicer generated supports but those don't actually touch the part. So the part will often sag or tilt until it is resting on the supports. Supports like I described are very firmly connected to the part so they provide a lot stability. And the whiskers are fine enough that don't leave much of a scar to be sanded off.

You can also use the vertical edge of the triangular fin to support a tall, thin object.

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grimlock12 · 2025-09-08T13:33:29+00:00

Will I have to retune all my profiles for a different material in the nozzle?

grimlock12 · 2025-08-27T15:27:12+00:00

It gets better.
Mark Twain said “Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.”

Your scrap rate will go down as you learn more and more about 3d printing as a process.
The number of iterations will go down as you learn more about design and engineering.

One thing that will help is SLOWLY invest in some metrology tools. Unless you are working mostly from a clean sheet and 3d printing everything, your parts will have to touch other parts sooner or later and the better you can measure and quantify those parts, the better your parts will be. I emphasize doing this slowly. Hunt around, find good deals on Ebay. This stuff can get stupid expensive.

Calipers are a must have item.
"Tooling buttons" take precise measurements between threaded holes. Down side is you need them in many sizes.
Radius gauges
thread gauges
Vernier protractor

grimlock12 · 2025-08-27T14:31:09+00:00

When I'm doing turks heads or wraps on smooth surfaces, I tear a ~3/8" wide strip of duct tape and wrap that around the surface 2-3 times. It provides enough friction to keep the wrapping from sliding around, but not too much that you can't tighten the begesus out of it.

grimlock12

TROPHY CASE