Oops. You’d think I would have learned my lesson with the toothpaste squeezers. Don’t trust the designs on thingiverse to be made for your situation. Well I didn’t. I took SidVillas’ Printable Spool Roller and thought that it would work for me without modification. I mean isn’t everyone ordering their filament from Makerbot? Apparently not. Fortunately I now have a computer that doesn’t …
Opponent Prototype successful
A few minor tweaks, and a little bit of cleaning up the geometry before I upload to thingiverse, but for the most part the model made on tinkercad works as-is. And it is awesome. Very chess set-like when disassembled, yet with an ominous feel Assembled. Face detail
Opponent Chess Set Development Day
Held off making more TARDIS rings available to spend the day working on this. First test print was mostly successful. Okay, the face was upside down, some of the joints were a little off, and the knight isn’t stable. But I’m fixing it and there was less a lot less tinkering outside of tinkercad than with the last one to do …
Killing the Blob 3
(Killing the blob part 1 and 2.) Last one, I promise. Last one because this may be the minimum necessary, like the ZigZag solution, but cooler. You know… for kids. It’s supposed to be a 5 pointed star, but if you ever see a 5 pointed star your pump is too primed. It’d be easy enough to fix, tho. Just …
A more elegant ring
On the right is my old standard ring that all my TARDIS rings are now. On the left is a new ring that I’m experimenting with. Lower profile, you could actually put this one in your pocket and thinner. The disadvantage is that it needs to be glued together. Still, this ones a ways off before it’s ready for prime time. Meanwhile, …
Chessbot on Popular Mechanics
A little bit ago I got an e-mail from a writer for Popular Mechanics who wanted to…. Hold on a second. That Popular Mechanics? Yes, that Popular Mechanics. And they want to feature my Chessbot in an article. Oh. Okay. Hold on a second while I breath into this paper bag. The article is online only, and my set is …
I want one… and I don’t know what for.
Must… resist… hitting… buy… http://www.makeymakey.com/ I’ve got to sell some chessbots so I can buy one of these. Don’t even know what for, just… I mean look at that thing! Using bananas for keyboards!
Go home and be a family man
So Cubify has appeared twice in my news feed in the past week. First for their modular robot toys that they are selling the designs for and second for their design contest where you could win a (gasp) Cubify 3D printer! The question is do you want to? Now just to be clear, Cubify isn’t just 3D printers. Cubify is one …
Killing the Blob 2
(Killing the blob part 1 and 3) The important part is in the corners of the build platform, not the middle This hack to your choice of start.gcode is based on a suggestion by Tai Cullum that the pump priming double as a platform leveling test. So in each corner a little triangle is printed. Advantage: if they stick you …
Killing the blob
(Killing the blob part 2 and 3.) Last time I hacked the gcode I ended up giving up and reverting to the way it was before. However some recent discussion, including a video by Andrew, plus my mounting frustration with the problems I’ll enumerate below have inspired me to try again. The condensed version of this discussion is: Why not …