Category Archives: things that don’t work

One step forward, multiple steps back.

Posted on August 28, 2015 by paulwallich

The good news: after 7 months I finally got the metal hot-ends for my printrbot metal plus. The bad news: I need a new printrboard. The irrelevant news: I think I’ve discovered a  failure mode for printrbot’s extruder board that … Continue reading →

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Beware the clearance tech, my son

Posted on June 12, 2015 by paulwallich

For it will drag you down a rathole. When I saw that tricolor LED strip marked down to seven bucks at the local Radio Shack this winter, I thought, “what the heck, might as well pick it up.” Less that … Continue reading →

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And this is why you make really sure which USB port you’re writing to

Posted on March 16, 2015 by paulwallich

(Update: Mostly fixed. If reflashing a Printrboard from the bootloader on up interests you, see the next post.) I was getting ready to print a nice big dragon on my Printrbot, but I knew it was going to take several … Continue reading →

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It’s all in the background.

Posted on March 2, 2015 by paulwallich

When I was in college, I worked in a laser lab one summer, for a visiting professor who was doing research on metal-vapor lasers. The first half-dozen times we turned his apparatus on, all it did was make the grad … Continue reading →

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My office is too small for a mobile robot

Posted on February 24, 2015 by paulwallich

Why four-wheel drive is a bad idea for ostensibly simple bots Continue reading →

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First rule of holes

Posted on February 20, 2015 by paulwallich

I wanted to get something printed before this afternoon’s maker meeting, So when Repetier crashed (it does that on and off) I figured it would be no problem to just restart, reconnect and get the print going. Nerp. Apparently it … Continue reading →

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An organized workplace is a sane workplace

Posted on February 5, 2015 by paulwallich

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to build a bunch of the kits that have accumulated in the basement over the years. Among them a cheap 4-wheel-drive robot chassis (well, actually the previous version, which will become significant in … Continue reading →

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Too clever is dumb

Posted on January 30, 2015 by paulwallich

My nice new printrbot Metal Plus (of which more some other time) has a bunch of holes in the kapton film on the build plate, and it’s my fault. I was trying to be smart, but I ended up stupid. … Continue reading →

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30 years ago seems like yesterday

Posted on January 28, 2015 by paulwallich

Okay, no, it seems like 30 years ago. 20 years ago seems like yesterday. My spouse has wanted a Macquarium for years, and maybe three or four years back she got an old mac on ebay. And finally the other … Continue reading →

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The encrustation of the analog on the digital

Posted on December 8, 2014 by paulwallich

If Henri Bergson had been writing around the turn of the millennium, he would have talked about abstraction violations. In his time, it was about living beings acting like mechanisms. For me this weekend, it was about digital devices acting … Continue reading →

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