Category Archives: possibly useful

printrbot metal plus heated chamber

Posted on January 12, 2016 by paulwallich

I think I could make this one a little better, but only at the cost of making it much harder to watch prints in progress. It’s got an outer frame of bent 3x12mm aluminum strip that clamps itself to the … Continue reading →

Posted in making, possibly useful | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Sometimes it’s just nice to have the right tool

Posted on December 11, 2015 by paulwallich

It’s holiday-cookie time, and the new beater we got for our 15-year-old stand mixer didn’t fit. It went partway on the shaft and then jammed. Grr. So this morning I went down to the basement and over to the old … Continue reading →

Posted in possibly useful | Tagged | Leave a comment

More Big-Nozzle Fun

Posted on December 4, 2015 by paulwallich

This may actually be useful for other people. When I went to test different extrusion speeds for my 0.75mm nozzle on the Ubis13 I was concerned about how fast I could go and still have the heater keep up with … Continue reading →

Posted in making, possibly useful, Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

3D printer nozzle wars

Posted on November 30, 2015 by paulwallich

I finally got around to trying the  0.75mm nozzle on my Metal Plus. It arrived before the holiday, but I didn’t have the time to make a custom wrench for it (the flats appear to be just a hair too … Continue reading →

Posted in possibly useful | Tagged | 2 Comments

Bending acrylic is easier than I thought

Posted on November 11, 2015 by paulwallich

This summer I took the little radiant space heater down from the ceiling of the woodshop — it really wasn’t doing much to keep me warm out there.  And we’ve had the scraps of a bunch of broken acrylic storage … Continue reading →

Posted in possibly useful | Tagged | Leave a comment

Ubis 13: Just a better hot-end?

Posted on October 6, 2015 by paulwallich

So the all-metal hot-ends finally arrived, and I fixed the Metal Plus so I could actually use them, and I’m a convert. First, of course they make it possible for me to print with filaments I couldn’t use before, like … Continue reading →

Posted in possibly useful | Tagged | Leave a comment

Yet another tiny robotic car

Posted on September 9, 2015 by paulwallich

Yes, it’s made mostly out of random parts I had lying around. That’s sort of the point: even if you had to buy all the parts, this thing would be cheap, and if (like me) you accumulate toy and electronic … Continue reading →

Posted in possibly useful | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Anti-aging technology

Posted on July 30, 2015 by paulwallich

Along with some of my mother’s tool collection, I inherited her complaint that as she got older her arms were getting too short to read things. Even if I wanted to just crank up the type size, there’s a limit … Continue reading →

Posted in possibly useful | Tagged | Leave a comment

Measure Once…

Posted on May 27, 2015 by paulwallich

This is what happens when you’re trying to design a part to fit something that you don’t have a good model of. These are all the prototypes of the fan duct I made for my printrbot jrv2, starting on the … Continue reading →

Posted in possibly useful | Tagged | Leave a comment

I don’t know whether to be pleased or annoyed

Posted on May 22, 2015 by paulwallich

I got a refurbished  HP laptop off a discount site a couple months ago, so that I could have a machine for doing hacker/maker stuff away from home (we have a macbook, but it’s flakey with arduinos and only runs … Continue reading →

Posted in possibly useful, probably boring | Tagged , | Leave a comment