Category Archives: things that don’t work

A really stupid feature set

Posted on November 14, 2016 by paulwallich

In the process of getting solar panels, we talked ourselves into a heat pump with a couple of split heating/cooling units (gotta find something for all those nice renewable kilowatts to do). But it turns out that Mitsubishi designers are … Continue reading →

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The autopilot conundrum

Posted on May 11, 2016 by paulwallich

This morning I stopped by a local school where some of the kids had crowdfunded a 3D printer (a printrbot Play) to see if I could help them get it working. I seem to have become the town expert, which … Continue reading →

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There’s a reason some things are surplus

Posted on May 3, 2016 by paulwallich

The 11-year-old has been bugging me for a few years now that he wants to build a crystal radio set, and sourcing the parts individually is something of a pain. So when I saw a kit for cheap at a … Continue reading →

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The gift that never ends

Posted on March 22, 2016 by paulwallich

This winter I had the idea of donating my old Cupcake CNC to the local library. Get it out of the basement, I thought. Put it where other people can use it. Find a home for all that extra 3mm … Continue reading →

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Progress is Bad

Posted on February 1, 2016 by paulwallich

I’ve been working for a while on a wearable accelerometer/datalogger project, and I came up with a nice breadboard prototype using a spare Seeduino Stalker plus a bunch of other parts. But that’s kinda big to actually wear. Next up: … Continue reading →

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Right Hand, meet Left Hand

Posted on January 9, 2016 by paulwallich

I am trying desperately not to use the word “stupid”, especially in conjunction with intensifiers such as “incredibly”, “unbelievably” or “predictably”. My delightful spouse got me a new camera for christmas this year. It’s waterproof, shockproof and a bunch of … Continue reading →

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Belt and suspenders

Posted on November 17, 2015 by paulwallich

I really like the idea of Yourduino’s RoboRed: gobs of 3-pin headers for almost all the arduino I/O pins, with n-tuplicated power and ground connections. Heavy-duty regulators built in for two amps of 5V and half an amp of 3V3 … Continue reading →

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I need a better CAD program

Posted on November 13, 2015 by paulwallich

Or to get really good at creating polygon coordinates in my head. My new fan duct is an improvement over the old one, which was an improvement over a bare fan with a dab of packing tape. (I made something … Continue reading →

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I’m a little puzzled by these loops

Posted on October 6, 2015 by paulwallich

(PET+, 250 degrees, .25mm layer height, 60 mm/sec, no additional acceleration control) I think I know what most of the other issues are — the blebs are from not retracting enough on layer change, the ringing is from running too … Continue reading →

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You get what you pay for, yet again

Posted on September 17, 2015 by paulwallich

Dunning and Krueger strike again. I thought I knew the retail PC industry well enough, just because I’ve chatted with so many of the people who invented it. But times have changed. This spring I bought a refurb windows laptop … Continue reading →

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