Category Archives: possibly useful

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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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Label Your Filament

Posted on May 11, 2015 by paulwallich

“Yeah, right, you say, I would never forget to do that.” And then you start getting filament that comes unspooled in a bag, on a cheapo unlabeled cardboard spool, in an unlabeled bag in a box with a label on … Continue reading →

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Montpelier Maker meetings

Posted on April 10, 2015 by paulwallich

A bunch of us got together in the library basement as usual. The kids made a bunch of eggbot eggs and a blinking arduino; the grownups talked about projects ranging from fan-based lissajous figures and photonic communication demos to mobile … Continue reading →

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All hail our eight-armed server

Posted on March 24, 2015 by paulwallich

Octoprint rules. I read up on it, downloaded Octopi, flashed an SD card, booted up a pi and configured it, printed a up case and bolted it to a random piece of wood, twiddled a few settings, and here I … Continue reading →

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Sometimes you don’t want to be on the internet

Posted on March 23, 2015 by paulwallich

Yesterday I went to a piratebox workshop at Generator. It was a good thing, because although the installation process is fairly straightforward, there are a few places where it’s good to have someone walking you through it. (Yes, it really … Continue reading →

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Nasty things, adventures

Posted on March 18, 2015 by paulwallich

When my freshman-year college roommate was in medical school, he told me that surgeons were trained to say “There!” instead of “Oops” when they made a mistake like cutting the wrong organ, so as not to panic everyone around them. … Continue reading →

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Arduinos need more power pins

Posted on March 12, 2015 by paulwallich

And ground too. This morning I was fresh out of available breadboards. So I made my own power distribution strip out of an IC socket that was lying around on the workbench.  Took a couple of the zillion clipped-off component … Continue reading →

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Less is more

Posted on February 14, 2015 by paulwallich

Yesterday I took off my cobbled-together insulation and installed the simple fix that Printrbot sent out — thank you! Since part of the installation process involved running the bed up to 100c to get the thermal expansion right for tightening … Continue reading →

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