Nice

Betteridge strikes again

Getting good data would be very hard, a dial indicator probably won’t work very well with 0.2mm layer height and smaller. Maybe a laser would work better, but the amount of noise would be pretty high since 3D prints usually aren’t as consistent to begin with.

A much better way this is done these days is an accelerometer on the print head. Then you can put the printer through a test program which wiggles the thing in different directions at different frequencies. The accelerometer can compare the expected result with the actual result and can pick out any weird oscillations or ringing of the machine. The data from this can then be applied when slicing, to compensate for the machine properties.

This is a pretty standard function on most high-end printers these days. And is even in reach for cheap machines, since you can buy USB accelerometers for this purpose. The downside of those is the USB cable skews the result a little bit, but if mounted permanently and the cable routing is done well it can work great.

Well my first modem was. It was very slow and you used it by dialing the phone yourself and placing the receiver on the modem. This is called an acoustic coupler.

Later modems changed this by connecting directly to the outlet. This allowed for digital signals to be sent directly over the copper wires. This allows for much more bandwidth compared to just bleeping and blooping using audio. There were also in between variants which still used pure audio signals, but still connected directly to the outlet to improve signal quality.

My computer back then also had a tape deck and I would record data using the tape deck. This was also a pure audio based signal. So in theory you could use a regular old tape deck with regular old tapes. However I had a specialized tape deck, specifically made for the computer and special “data” tapes. Not sure if they actually worked better, but I had them so I used them.

Yes both my back and knees hurt.

On the other hand, if you say you are going to the bathroom, nobody expects you to take a shit in the bathtub

Many providers have specific clauses for this. Ever since crypto mining became a thing providers have included in general terms you can’t over use the service. And often specifically against using it for crypto mining.

Providers will normally warn users and only kick them off when no explanation is forthcoming.

Usually this applies to shared services, like a VPS. You pay a lower price because you share hardware. But that only works if the hardware is shared fairly. If another user hogs all the resources, the service is no good for anyone. But it can also apply to seemingly dedicated services, like your own server for example. In that case the server is free to be used for whatever, but things like cooling and power are still shared. A regular dedicated server service will be based on typical use and can kick users out who require too much cooling or power. In cases where the resources are legitimately required, they will offer contracts that allow you to use all of the resources all of the time. But in turn you will have to pay a premium for something like that.

On the surface it may seem like a bit of bullshit, but that’s often what allows prices to be as low as they are. So I’m fine with it, as long as it’s made clear beforehand (which in my experience it is)

Meh that may be true in some ways, but not really in this case. RTGs were made using a surplus from production for nuclear bombs. As that production ramped down combined with better solar and batteries, the demand went down and it became more expensive to produce them. So not making them made sense.

An RTG is really only useful for missions that go far away from the Sun, making solar non-viable. RTGs are a pain in the neck all throughout the process, are heavy and expensive (even back in the day). The amount of electrical power an RTG delivers is also very low. This is because an RTG only gets warm, nothing more. So we put TEG (Seebeck) devices on the sides to generate electrical energy from the thermal gradient. But TEGs suck ass, they are super inefficient. For example the RTG the big Mars rovers use put out 2000W of thermal energy, but they manage to get only 110W of electrical energy out of that. So if you are near enough to the Sun, solar is the much better option.

Who has nuclear diamond batteries? Those are a total myth drummed up to get investor money. They don’t actually exist.

Sure the concept exists, in the form of betavoltaic batteries, those have been around for decades. They are tough and last dozens of years if not longer. The only problem is, they put out microwatts. You can use them in very niche applications, but those are few and far between. It’s hard to convey how little power a microwatt is, it’s basically nothing.

What you care about when going to space is energy density, and the proposed energy density of nuclear diamond batteries is very poor.

Rtgs are very useful for longterm missions, but are crazy expensive. They also aren’t being made anymore, so getting a hold of one is hard. The weight is an issue as well, they are super heavy.

These commercial moon missions are primarily demonstrator missions. They aren’t meant to last, they don’t really have a goal and often don’t do something useful. The idea is to show you can do it, so you can sell a product. Other people that do want to do useful stuff can then pay to get their stuff to the moon. So if the mission is over when the sun sets in two weeks time, that’s perfectly fine.

The best way to have itself deactivated is to remove the need for it’s existence. Since it’s all about demand and supply, removing the demand is the easiest solution. The best way to permanently remove the demand is to delete the humans from the equation.

Agreed. The downside of community developed software is it can very easily die. All too often almost all of the work is done by one or a few very active people. When they stop working on the project it’s a matter of luck if someone is willing to take it on. I’ve lost more than a few good tools that way.

Not just CO2, but also CO. You could feel nothing and be dead within minutes. Burning in an enclosed space is usually a bad idea. It can go perfectly fine many times and then it goes wrong and you are dead.

It’s a meme because it’s made up and never happens /s

Can confirm these are highly personalized. I have two different lists on two different phones. One I use for work and has work apps on it, the other for personal use. Both have different top charts which seems to be based on location and installed apps.

Thanks for letting us know! Happy it worked out

Let us know how you get on!

I tried the 45 degrees method, but my print bed wasn’t quite large enough to make it fit. It ended up too short and the hose kept falling out.

How did you do the layer lines?

I tried to print one of these things once, with the layer lines perpendicular to the central axis. So just a tube standing straight up on the print bed. It didn’t work at all. The shop vac was inserted in one end and the other end into the machine. However this meant the interface in between was completely unsupported. With the hose hanging on one end, as soon as I moved the machine around in use, the thing snapped off across a layer line. I tried a couple more times with thicker walls, higher temps and more infill, but the layer to layer bond just wasn’t strong enough. I tried ABS and PETG, the PETG held up best but still broke within a couple of hours of use.

So I ended up ordering an injection molded part, probably glass reinforced nylon or something like that and have been using that ever since. Still bugs me, because it seemed like a perfect time for the 3D printer to shine.

Please note you should NEVER flush any baby wipes or similar down the toilet. They should go in the trash if you must use them, but using washable alternatives (if you have a baby for example) if possible is better. Baby wipes contain a lot of plastic. If you flush them they might clog up the toilet, which you might not care about at work. But if it doesn’t clog up the toilet, it gets into the sewer and causes trouble there, trouble your tax money / water bill money goes to fix. If it does go through smoothly it will in the worst case end up in rivers and oceans, floating around for a long time before degrading into microplastics.

Ah yes that confusing combi of horny and uncanny valley, I love it!

Luckily there is a distro for anyone. There’s plenty of super stable distros out there. But if you want the cutting edge, stability will be comprised. And the cutting edge is pretty cool at the moment, so for me it’s worth the issue once and again.

No, but depending on what’s wrong that might not be the best thing to do. If the new version is broken, rolling back to a previous working version might fix it. But when the update broke something, it might not fix it and could even make it worse. I’d rather figure out what went wrong and how to fix it, it’s a good skill to have. And if the new version does turn out to be broken, it’s good to have dug into it so you can make a proper bug report.