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I wasn’t too sure if I wanted to add this since I wanted to keep this place more software tech related but figured if it at least involves some technology it should be fine.
Some people may already know but I tried to build a 3D printer when they were starting to pickup steam. It went kinda OK. Built it. Got it printing. Added a heated bed. Some calibration prints later and I blew the micro-controller. The heated bed short circuit to the microcontroller from bad wiring and fried it. Wasn’t sure how damaged the PCB was so I looked into replacing it. Then decided I didn’t want to buy one pre-made and bought a solder it yourself kit. It required some SMD soldering and I ripped a few pads. This was before I was any good at soldering. Then I kind of moved onto other stuff planning to revisit but with a house move and the power supply went missing, kinda gave up on it/forgot about it.
Well anyway fast forward to the last week and I decided I wanted to make some props using 3D printing. Found a Makerspace nearby and played around with their printer. They are open about once a week plus some other days so I gotta make the days count. Also to be fair on the printer, it is pretty well calibrated just has a little issue printing on edges that overhang a little from the previous layer. Didn’t take a picture but the first few layers are fine but it drops a little after a while and messes up the layers above where it starts doing that. I tried dropping the extrusion multiplier but that didn’t help. Possibly could be a cooling issue so I plan to bring a spare fan or two next time. Maybe reducing the layer hight some more too. I’ll figure it out.
I haven’t started modelling the props. I used Maya a while back but that was more artist pursuits than actual CAD. I messed around quickly with a few open source applications and I like the style of OpenSCAD. Maybe since I code now it makes more sense, well that and modelling in blender felt weird and I didn’t find the key bindings intuitive. So I feel if I go that route it would be a guaranteed time sink vs just using code to generate shapes.