Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...
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Awwwwww, fuck yeah.
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@Polygeekery said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
Awwwwww, fuck yeah.
ooooooooh...... imma need to make me one of those.....
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@Vixen you might need to change some dimensions. It is designed for some European size of bottle caps. I was hoping it was for Powerade type caps. We have a good supply of those in our house.
I went to open the file in Fusion 360 to change the dimensions to suit and even though my workstation has 16 cores, 32 threads and 64GB of RAM it came to a standstill when I tried to open a 6.9kb STL file. You have to love "looks like native apps, but are actually web apps" efficiency.
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Yesterday I upgraded the control board in one of my printers to a SKR V1.3 board with TMC2208 stepper drivers. That was a fucking slog. I had to change out the endstop connectors from 2 pin JST to 3 pin JST even though the endstops only use two adjacent pins since they are simple microswitches. Wiring was a total pain as the factory board had a metric shitton of silastic on them to prevent them coming loose on their trip from Shenzhen to the USA and moving the electronics to the rear of the machine was a pretty tight squeeze both in terms of wire length and just fitting everything in the new position.
Then I had one axis that just shuddered like a stepper crash when I tried to move it. Multiple times of checking and rechecking my wiring, voltages (even though the TMC2208 drivers should set their current via UART) and everything else and I was almost certain that I had a bad driver (which I did, but was fixable) which meant I was going to have to undo everything that I had done and go back to the stock board. But a very close examination with my sexy specs
Revealed a fairly dry and hairline cracked solder joint on one of the header pins that connect to the driver board. A quick dab of proper lead solder and it was working properly.
What an improvement. Best $50 I could have spent on upgrading a 3D printer. No more stepper noise and I can easily print at 100mm/s without losing any steps or degradation of print quality. My new limiting factor is extrusion speed and part cooling. I have a BMG extruder sitting on my desk to install and I have a E3D V6 hotend on the way from one source and a Titan extruder and Microswiss hotend on the way from another.
It is odd to see the printer zipping along and not hear any stepper music at all. Both of my printers are running OctoPrint (which Cura integration with multiple OctoPrint instances is worthy of its own writeup on s all on its own) and the one I upgraded was sitting on the part of the "L" desk in my office that is right next to my iMac. I sliced up a file from my Windows workstation and sent it to print and a few minutes later I had not heard anything so I turned around to see what the issue was, why it had not started, and it already had some layers down and was chugging along silently just doing its thing. Not a peep.
Now to order a second board and upgrade the other printer. This essentially cuts my print times in half. I have some collator plates to print. The last one took 38 hours. This one should be done in ~18 hours.
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Seriously considering printing one of these:
Then leaving it on a friend's desk for them to come back to on Monday. For added amusement I wouldn't say anything to them about it. Just a puzzle, inside a puzzle, inside a puzzle, inside a puzzle, waiting on their desk to waste their entire first day of work in 2020.
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@Polygeekery said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
I have a BMG extruder sitting on my desk to install
Today I installed it. Important to note is the the BMG and Titan extruders both run a 3:1 gear reduction to increase force on the filament and therefore the extrusion pressure. They also both clamp down on the filament much harder and have much sharper hobbing for better filament grip. With the upgraded control board this had become my limiting factor and the stock extruder couldn't keep up anymore. It was shaving the filament and causing underextruding.
So I get it installed and go to load filament for the first time. I wrote a short GCode script for loading and unloading as it is not super convenient to release tension in order to just pull it out. I start the filament, execute the script and moments later POW
The coupler to the Bowden tube on the extruder goes flying out of the extruder body. All of its guts go flying to the dark recesses of my basement, never to be seen again. The filament got jammed on the PTFE tube and just demolished the fitting right out of the gate.
So that's why people chamfer the Bowden tubes where they go in to the extruder. I had seen people do that in videos and it seemed unnecessary, but I was thinking of the stock extractor where you can feel it binding and give the filament a little twist to get it past the slight obstruction. The BMG extruder didn't even grunt, and surprisingly did not shave the filament or anything. It just destroyed itself, before it ever had a chance to get the first millimeter of filament to the hotend. I was impressed.
So, now I am giving the first go to the Titan extruder, and I was a lot more cautious about loading the filament when I got the machine back together....
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@Polygeekery said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
I have a BMG extruder sitting on my desk
.50 BMG "extruder"?
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@HardwareGeek said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
@Polygeekery said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
I have a BMG extruder sitting on my desk
.50 BMG "extruder"?
BLAM BLAM BLAM! I SHOOT YOUR PLASTIC FILAMENT AT YOUR PRINT BED AT THREE TIMES THE SPEED OF SOUND!
....... okay that's enough war movies for you tonight @vixen.......
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@HardwareGeek said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
.50 BMG "extruder"?
Squeeze bores never really caught on. Too difficult to machine.
Good God, that joke was obscure even by gun nut standards.
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My electric foundry arrived and I did my first aluminum smelt-down. Due to the crucible size, I have to cut the pop cans in half with tin snips after crushing them, and that took most of my time. I'm going to try to weld a blade and cut a slot into a can crusher so it can chop cans in half while crushing.
I got nearly 2 pounds of ingots at the end, with more slag than usable aluminum. Not surprising, since pop cans have all that ink and coating and oxide on them.
The next step is to find something to 3D print, and try a lost-PLA cast to convert it to aluminum. As well as smelting down my collection of cans into ingots.
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Okay, so I wouldn't say that I know how to use Fusion 360 yet, but I spent far too much of the weekend wrapping my head around parametric modeling and learned a good portion of the ways not to do it so that now I have a model that is entirely parameter driven and I can change the relative data points to generate the other permutations of the model and not have it go inside out and look like a transporter accident.
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@Polygeekery said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
and not have it go inside out and look like a transporter accident.
Grignak! Grignak! Grignak!
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Well that's going to put a crimp on my plans for ~world domination~ 3D printing......
Any suggestions as to best way to affect repair? Reached out to manufacturer but haven't gotten reply yet (to be fair they did say they were taking the week off for Chinese new year so it's not unexpected.....)
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@Vixen said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
Any suggestions as to best way to affect repair?
There is tools to get the pins out of the connector
Something like
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@TimeBandit said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
@Vixen said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
Any suggestions as to best way to affect repair?
There is tools to get the pins out of the connector
Something like
i mena i was planning on taking the connector and using the SIM removal tool bit from the iFixit kit to get them out, then try not to burn myself soldering patch wires on, then solder the patch wires to the broken connector and ziptie it out of the way on the frame..... but i was wondering if there were better ideas out there before I did that.
mostly because burning fur not smell nice
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@Vixen Just #YOLO and solder everything directly together, bypassing the connectors. What could possibly go wrong?
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@hungrier said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
What could possibly go wrong?
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@Vixen said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
mostly because burning fur not smell nice
Just pinch your nose
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@hungrier said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
solder everything directly together, bypassing the connectors
if the manufacturer doesn't have better idea when they come back from break and i fuck up the male side of the connector.... will probably do that.
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@Vixen said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
i fuck up the male side
That's the back side, right?
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@Vixen As a serious DIY suggestion, if the manufacturer can't help you you could make your own connectors.
Even better, make your own crappy makeshift connectors then 3d print better ones
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@hungrier said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
Even better, make your own crappy makeshift connectors then 3d print better ones
i mean..... why wait to 3d print them?
is only my BIG printer out of action. the smaller one's still going strong.
or did i not mention i got a second one already? could have sworn i had......
Also it's a pretty decent idea. tiny features, possibly smaller than FDM is really good for.....
does that mean i need to get a (M)SLA resin printer now too?
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@Vixen said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
or did i not mention i got a second one already? could have sworn i had......
Maybe. I haven't been keeping meticulous notes of who has how many 3D printers
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@TimeBandit said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
There is tools to get the pins out of the connector
But that's only half the battle. You also need to recrimp the wires using new pins. And while the pins themselves are cheap, crimping tools for this kind of connector are stupidly expensive.
The easiest option is to replace the entire cable. If that's not possible, buy a connector with wires already attached, and connect them to the existing wires using solder and heat-shrink tubing.
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@Zerosquare said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
You also need to recrimp the wires using new pins.
You can also just solder the cables to the old pins
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That's doing it wrong, but yes, you can. Given how thin the wire is, it's probably going to break again sooner or later, however.
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@Zerosquare said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
it's probably going to break again sooner or later, however.
From my understanding, the cable broke because it was in the way of moving parts.
If that issue is fixed, this shouldn't be a problem.I've fixed cars cables like that and never had an issue. YMMV
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But car cables are typically much larger. Thin wires tend to break much more easily when soldered.
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@TimeBandit said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
You can also just solder the cables to the old pins
i did this. soldered bodge wires onto the connector. got continuity with them. now will solder to the bodge wires to the end to the old cable and get ti out of the way of the moving bed...... then as soon as I can arrange just get a proper new wiring harness and replace the whole thing with that.... But that will have to wait until Chinese new year is over because of course the manufacturer that has the spares is in China....
or the bodge works and keeps working so I forget about it until i do something that requires rewiring the printer anyway..... either or.
but that's a tomorrow problem. i know better than to solder sleepy and is sleepy time.
I only had red and black bodge wire so you get red with yellow heatshrink for yellow, black for white and red for red.......
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@Vixen Real pros write "yellow" in blue ink to indicate a yellow wire.
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@hungrier said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
@Vixen Real pros write "yellow" in blue ink to indicate a yellow wire.
Now carefully cut the yellow wire with the blue line NOT the blue wire with the yellow line.*
* - I think it's from The Abyss? there's a bomb dceep under water that's going to blow up an alien something something and this guy dives after it knowing he doesn't have enough o2 to get back. has to defuse it via instructions on the radio with a light that has about a 0 CRI so which wire is which is hard to tell.... manages it then the alien thing does its alien thing and he and the underwater research station that was down there end up on the surface without getting decompression sickness...... man i hope i rememebred the name of the movie right because i want to see it again....
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@Vixen That is The Abyss. I only read the novelization, but a very distinct set of scenarios.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
@Vixen That is The Abyss. I only read the novelization, but a very distinct set of scenarios.
well..... i know what movie i'm looking up on Netflix tonight and watching while i attempt to solder and heatshrink some 22awg bodge wire to some 28 awg wire to fix a 3D printer
with luck i'll not make the breakage worse and not burn myself.....
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@Vixen said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
@Vixen That is The Abyss. I only read the novelization, but a very distinct set of scenarios.
well..... i know what movie i'm looking up on Netflix tonight and watching while i attempt to solder and heatshrink some 22awg bodge wire to some 28 awg wire to fix a 3D printer
with luck i'll not make the breakage worse and not burn myself.....
I was thinking the blimp episode of Archer but they were probably making fun of that part of The Abyss.
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@Vixen said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
i know better than to solder sleepy
Just remember the soldering iron is not a pencil; you do not hold the pointy end.
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@Zerosquare said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
And while the pins themselves are cheap, crimping tools for this kind of connector are stupidly expensive.
A pair of pliers and a properly shaped die works as well most of the time for fixes like this. Little more fiddly than a crimper, but usually gets the job done.
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@Dragoon said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
@Zerosquare said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
And while the pins themselves are cheap, crimping tools for this kind of connector are stupidly expensive.
A pair of pliers and a properly shaped die works as well most of the time for fixes like this. Little more fiddly than a crimper, but usually gets the job done.
SIM removal tool (for coaxing them out of the connector), flush cutters (for forcing them back open), needlenose pliers (for jamming them closed again enough to sock some lead free solder (no idea where my proper leaded solder went in the move) into the join to keep things in place), brute force and ignorance (to get the now soldered connections back in the plug) and a freaking magnet (to find the connectors when they pinged out of the needlenose pliers..... AGAIN!)
i won't claim it was the correct fix, or a good fix...... or even that it is a fix since i'm still not home to finish the job and test, but.... it should work good enough.
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@Dragoon said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
A pair of pliers and a properly shaped die works as well most of the time for fixes like this. Little more fiddly than a crimper, but usually gets the job done.
Yeah, there are several ways to "cheat". Only do that for wires that don't carry any significant power, however. Bad crimping on power wires creates hot spots, which can cause Polygeekeriffic situations.
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@Zerosquare said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
Bad crimping on power wires creates hot spots, which can cause Polygeekeriffic situations.
You avoid this issue by soldering the wire to the pin
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@Zerosquare said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
@Dragoon said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
A pair of pliers and a properly shaped die works as well most of the time for fixes like this. Little more fiddly than a crimper, but usually gets the job done.
Yeah, there are several ways to "cheat". Only do that for wires that don't carry any significant power, however. Bad crimping on power wires creates hot spots, which can cause Polygeekeriffic situations.
this is a limit switch. if it's got more than 5V on the line...... something's wrong. specially if there's any significant amperage.
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@TimeBandit: Counterintuitively, this is not a good idea. Soldered connections have long-term reliability problems crimped ones don't have:
https://millennialdiyer.com/articles/motorcycles/electrical-repair-crimp-or-solder/
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@Vixen said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
@Zerosquare said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
@Dragoon said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
A pair of pliers and a properly shaped die works as well most of the time for fixes like this. Little more fiddly than a crimper, but usually gets the job done.
Yeah, there are several ways to "cheat". Only do that for wires that don't carry any significant power, however. Bad crimping on power wires creates hot spots, which can cause Polygeekeriffic situations.
this is a limit switch. if it's got more than 5V on the line...... something's wrong. specially if there's any significant amperage.
SHE LIIIIIIIIIIIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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@Vixen said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
@Vixen said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
@Zerosquare said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
@Dragoon said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
A pair of pliers and a properly shaped die works as well most of the time for fixes like this. Little more fiddly than a crimper, but usually gets the job done.
Yeah, there are several ways to "cheat". Only do that for wires that don't carry any significant power, however. Bad crimping on power wires creates hot spots, which can cause Polygeekeriffic situations.
this is a limit switch. if it's got more than 5V on the line...... something's wrong. specially if there's any significant amperage.
SHE LIIIIIIIIIIIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Still printing this morning. Forgot to take a snap but the print should be done by the time I get home so I can take a snap of the finished print. It's going to be a self watering plant pot. well the resivoir for it. I printed the inner pot as the final print before this happened in a lovely orange PLA which should look epic contrasted with the white and with a Spider plant in the top.
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First experiment in lost-PLA casting. First, I found this celtic skull thing on Thingiverse and scaled it to something appropriately-small, and added a sprue and vent:
Then, I 3D-printed it using PLA:
...I hate PLA. This happens about 75% of the time whenever I use that type of filament. ABS just works while PLA gives you spaghetti. The second attempt turned out just fine with no changes whatsover to the model or slicer settings.
I stuck it in a cup full of plaster, then baked the whole thing in the oven for probably 6 hours to melt out all the PLA. I didn't take any pictures of this step. Then I tried to pour aluminum into the sprue, and something immediately went wrong. I went ahead and broke the mold up to see what was inside and found about 1/3rd of a skull:
I'm pretty sure the sprue was way too thin and the metal froze in there during the pour, plugging it up and stopping the whole thing. I'll have to re-print with a larger sprue and vent, melt this thing down, and try again later.
Still, the detail turned out very well. If you look really really closely, you can only see the layers in a few parts. It's very hard to tell that this was originally a 3D printed part.
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@mott555 said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
I'm pretty sure the sprue was way too thin and the metal froze in there during the pour, plugging it up and stopping the whole thing. I'll have to re-print with a larger sprue and vent
I've never (yet) done lost PLA casting, but I've done lost wax — same thing as far as the actual casting. Yeah, you generally want the sprue to have the same cross-section area as the thickest section of the model. That's overkill here, assuming the model is solid, but your sprue does look very thin. I'd guess your vent is probably ok; it just needs to pass air, not metal, but my experience is centrifugal casting, where vents are typically not used, not gravity casting.
Also, it's possible to pour molten aluminum into a cold mold — I've seen it done — but you'll probably get better results if the mold is hot. For high-melting metals — bronze, silver, gold, etc. — 100–200° below the melting point is desirable. For gravity casting, you could probably go even hotter, since you don't have to worry about running out of centrifugal force (i.e., the centrifuge slowing down and stopping) before the metal solidifies. You might not be able to use ordinary plaster, though, since it's not formulated to withstand high temperatures.
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@HardwareGeek said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
Also, it's possible to pour molten aluminum into a cold mold — I've seen it done — but you'll probably get better results if the mold is hot
I wanted to pre-heat it with a propane torch, but my torch wouldn't light. I have no idea why. It was a brand-new propane bottle, it definitely smelled like gas with the valve open, but nothing would ignite it.
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@mott555 said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
...I hate PLA. This happens about 75% of the time whenever I use that type of filament.
What printer and what printer settings do you have? heated print bed (i assume so because you can print ABS) what temperatures are you printing at?
It looks like you have bed adhesion issues with PLA, which is weird because PLA is known generally for having easier printing than ABS.... I wonder if you're using temperature profiles for ABS to print PLA which would cause the bed to be too hot for PLA. ABS wants a bed temperature of 100-110 degrees C where PLA really is happier at 50-60 C, so if you're printing at 100 on the bed it might not be cooling down enough and therefore not sticking as well and therefore more prone to being knocked off the print bed by the printer and once that happens...... rats nest city.
if it's not that..... uhh.... i dunno, but that's super weird...
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@Vixen I use a 60 C print bed temperature for PLA. I also coat the build plate with glue stick, which helps quite a bit but does not solve the issue.
@Vixen said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
PLA is known generally for having easier printing than ABS
Everyone I know who is into 3D printing says this, and yet my experience is the exact opposite.
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@mott555 said in Today in Blakeyrat is always several years behind in every tech trend news...:
Everyone I know who is into 3D printing says this, and yet my experience is the exact opposite.
yeah, and i believe you when you say that..... it's just that it's you know...... weird. and weirdness fascinates me.
60c on the bed is good, and usually what i have, what kind of print surface do you have? glass? PEI tape? Blue painters tape? raw steel? aliminiumiumium? buildtak? some sort of fancy space age polymer coated glass like Anycubic's Ultrabase stuff?
or should i take a long hike off a short pier? i can do that too.
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@Vixen My build plate is borosilicate glass (Pyrex).