And Probably Faster, too…
So I’m currently working on this wonderful Fallout 4 Pipe Pistol by lilykil. I’m still in the process of printing it, after which will follow the sanding and priming, and finally the painting and weathering!
I’ll update this post with additional 3D printery as it happens, and then make a new post once I get to the painting stage.
One spool down!
Well, it’s taken well over a year and a half, but I finally reached the end of a spool of a filament. Until now it seems I’ve just used some of each of my 40+ spools. But I’ve settled on Push Plastic light grey for printing props, because it just prints so nicely, and it shows up great on camera…so it wasn’t long before I used up my first spool.
Luckily there’s more where that came from!
So I’ve been working on some Fallout 4 stuff. Fusion Core, Fusion Cell, etc. The Fusion Core I found was the wrong size, like obviously so… It needed to be like 33% bigger, so I upsized it, and printed it in several pieces so they could all printed oriented in the best way. The Fusion Cell is just sort of…wrong. I’m going to have to model my own, again. After this I plan to finish my 10mm before I move on to bigger and awesomer things.
Original Fusion Core, rather small!
Fusion Cell
I’m going to have to sand, glue, and spot-putty the fusion core sections together.
Upsized Fusion Core, and original Fusion Core.
Like the picture? Upvote it on imgur and/or the Steam community! :D
Just my fabulous collection of Fallout stuff! Details of the photo, after the jump!
Read more…
So I’ve had a lot on my plate these last couple of months, a lot of irons in the fire, a lot of balls in the air, [insert additional metaphors here]… And of course, my finances being what they are, it’s slow-going acquiring the tools and materials that I need…but things are starting to come together. I’ve got a series of blog posts that I’m putting the finishing touches on, about undertakings that are finally coming to fruition, or projects that can finally begin, all of which are very exciting.
For now, I’ll give you the quick hits:
Now, all I have to do…is actually write about any of that shit. ┐(シ)┌
Well, I’m shooting a lot of video, so unless I want all that HDD space to be used up in vain, I’ve gotta do something.
I’m getting the ball rolling on a lot of stuff this month, from the MAKE COOL THINGS livestream and YouTube channel, to some prop making, to maybe even doing a little work on a simple fun little game project I’ve had in mind for a while… See a breakdown of this month’s acquisitions after the jump! Read more…
It’s probably no secret that I’m an inconsiderate jerk…for that reason, I love mechanical keyboards and how incredibly loud they are! Kidding, kidding! …mostly. I love mechanical keyboards though, I used to use nothing but the holy grail of old-school keyboards; the IBM Model-M, a ‘buckling spring’ keyboard, and the original PS/2 keyboard…because, duh, it was the keyboard that came with the IBM PS/2. Loud as hell and built like a tank, made out of other smaller tanks, made from an alloy of adamantium and mithril. Anyway, when you spend over a decade on the computer 18 hours a day, typically on no less than half a dozen IRC channels at any given time, eventually you’re going to need an ergonomic keyboard or your hands are quite simply going to drop off at the wrists…
This meant giving up my glorious Model M…and for about another decade, I’ve been stuck using Microsoft Natural keyboards… Capacitive, rubber-dome based keyboards… They’re garbage, and they feel like garbage to type on. But what exactly is the alternative? Anyway, I go through a keyboard every 2-3 years because I simply start wearing out some keys– Oddly enough, the “U”, “F”, “K”, and “C”… (Kidding, kidding! …mostly.) –and it’s really annoying, and they’re expensive, and they still feel like complete garbage to type on.
The original ErgoDox was a keyboard designed by Dominic “Dox” Beauchamp in October 2011, based on the key64 keyboard. (You can find the original GeekHack forum thread here.) Now, even though I’d seen it a couple times, it was just so bloody expensive that I wasn’t too excited…but I knew it was the kind of thing I desperately needed.
I’d been introduced to Massdrop a while back, and through their group buys, I managed to reacquire the greatest writing implement known to man, and level up one of my important Vault Dweller skills. So, when the opportunity presented itself around the end of January, I got on board the group buy for the Infinity ErgoDox by Input-Club. It makes a number of improvements over the original, including the addition of two RGB-backlit LCD screens, one on either half, which can display information such as which ‘layer’ the keyboard is currently in. See, the ErgoDox isn’t just fully customizable, but it’s got this crazy firmware setup where instead of just having an ‘Fn’ key layer like a laptop keyboard, you have the base layout and 7 additional layers that can be locked, shifted into, or locked for just the next key-press, etc. And it’s left/right side independent. So, even though it drastically reduces the number of keys versus a standard 104/105 key layout, you have limitless possibilities.
It was $199.99 with switches (plus another $39 for keycaps), I got it down to $155.99 for just the keyboard kit, because I was going to buy switches and keycaps separately…the latter would turn out to be a mistake however…
It’d be 4 months before the ErgoDox shipped, so I had time to source other items. A little while later, another group buy popped up, this one for Gateron Switches. (Clones of the standard Cherry MX mechanical switches that are held in such high regard by gamers and typists alike.) Of course, I didn’t really know what type of switches I wanted… Though I kind of figured I wanted ‘clicky’… That’s when I learned about ‘switch testers’, and oh hey, there was one on Massdrop! A switch tester is just a means of holding a bunch of different key switches so that you can test the feel. What was really cool about this one, was that for an additional $9 they were offering a PCB to turn it into a functional USB keypad. (Including keycaps, the PCB, and shipping, the total was $35.87) Now, obviously it wasn’t going to arrive in time for me to figure out which Gateron switches I wanted, so I bought a small one off Amazon with just Cherry MX switches and sort of guesstimated.
In the end, I went with Greens, because they’re clackers, and because they require the most force, and I’m a fairly heavy-handed typist.
So, in February, the switches arrived. In March, the switch tester arrived. And finally, just this last week, the Infinity ErgoDox arrived.
EDIT: This is interesting. So apparently, the switch tester was supposed to ship with the version 2.0 of the PCB, but they shipped the old one… So, at no additional cost, they sent us all a replacement, which turned out to be the brand new version 3.0, fresh off the production line.
Stay tuned for my next post on this subject where I’ll have a writeup on assembling my Infinity ErgoDox kit, the NKPC Switch Tester– including videos, I hope! –and probably some crazy mods to one or both of them. (Not to mention some other mechanical keyboard goodies!)
In the meantime, the like-minded clickity-clacky among you might be interested in the Mechanical Keyboards subreddit, or the Mechanical Keyboards community at Massdrop!
I’ve been trying to catch Bill and Brittany Doran’s terrific twice-weekly Twitch streams as often as possible. They are the dynamic duo who comprise Punished Props, and the streams are always entertaining and educational. (Holy hell that’s an almost obscene overabundance of alliteration!)
This past Tuesday, Britt was the only one in the shop, and she did a stream where she cast a medallion of the Hearthstone emblem in different materials…then she gave them away to three lucky viewers. (Well, two lucky viewers, and a glitterbomb victim.)
Here’s mine! Cold-cast copper spritzed with a patina solution to oxidize it! :D (I haven’t taken the picture yet, d’oh!)
I was so blown away when the chatbot randomly picked me for the first drawing, because of how interested I am in cold-casting!
Anyway, read more to see the video… Read more…
First of all, let’s take a moment to talk about prop making; It’s something that I have a real interest in but I can never seem to afford moldmaking and casting supplies… Well, I’m not going to let that stop me from making some props before I have the ability to duplicate them.
Right now, my biggest obstacle– putting aside money issues and for the moment just looking at what I have –is the surface quality of my 3D prints. To that end I spent some money on some basic necessities like Bondo body filler, Bondo spot putty, some quality automotive wet/dry sandpaper, and a sanding block. Bill Doran has a great video on using Bondo, and his video on preparing mold masters also contains some applicable info.
Propaganda! By which I mean videoblogging! I just got a cheap little steadicam thing for my video camera so I can do handheld shots that are actually stable. It’s really quite something.
Programming! I’ve got some cool Arduino ideas I want to play with, one of them is inspired by this cool post I found about making an Arduino Wi-Fi scanner that displays the SSIDs of open wifi APs on a little OLED display.
Projects! I’ve got a 3D printing and prop making project in the works based on my current favorite videogame; Tom Clancy’s The Division, which inspired an additional project which I can’t talk about right now… ;D
Gonna be pretty cool though!
So, out of the blue, I got a package this morning… I wasn’t expecting a package at all, let alone one from Digi-Key, because while they may be one of my two go-to domestic suppliers for electronic components (The other being Mouser), I hadn’t even ordered anything from them!
When I opened the package I got quite the surprise. I was greeted by a brand new extra-shiny Fluke 117 ‘Electrician’s True RMS Multimeter’, and the appropriate soft carrying case… (Total retail value: about $225, not including the Digi-Key logo stickers. ;P) Needless to say I was ecstatic, my best multimeter is some Chinese bootleg that– while it has served me well enough –I can’t vouch for the accuracy of like I can a Fluke.
Yessss! A real multimeter!
Okay, I had however taken part in a contest via their Twitter account, as I have many times in the past. The contest was a series of ‘word jumble’ puzzles, one every day, all week. Each jumbled word had circled letters that made up the answer to an initial question… And the whole thing was rather fun, though I really wonder where they got the puzzles…it’s like there’s a book of ‘Electrical Engineer Dad Jokes’ out there. Example: “Q: Why was the capacitor angry at the marketing department? A: It’s not a farad.”
In case you aren’t enough of an enormous NERD to have gotten that– count your lucky stars –the joke is: farad (unit of capacitance) -> homophone of ‘fair ad’ -> etc. (cue sad-trombone.wav)
Yes, they were all terrible puns and wordplay like that. Seriously, is there a book of those? I want it in case I ever need to torture somebody to death without leaving any evidence.
Amusing aside: Out of curiosity I tracked the package, and it was shipped the afternoon of the second day of the contest…which pretty much means I had to have been the first day’s daily winner. :D There was an overall grand prize as well, a stunningly-expensive Fluke ‘ScopeMeter’…a portable full-color digital oscilloscope. No idea who won that, though. (Obviously not me. And frankly, if I had I would’ve sold it on eBay, bought a cheap bench scope, and used the difference to help fund my business.)
Okay, I got off to a slow start this year. But things are looking very promising.
First things first, on a sad note one of my internet comrades, Tim Lazicki, had his house burn down on Christmas. Some of us banded together to make a new PC for him… It seemed like the appropriate thing to do, after all if it weren’t for computers and internet access, none of us would know him…and his absence due to no longer having one had not gone unnoticed. (I’ll write a separate in-depth post about this later.) Anyway, working on a new computer for Tim inspired a few other projects which I will be posting about…
The new year also marked my acquisition of a video camera. The quality isn’t the best without super-duper lighting, which I don’t yet possess, but it’s a hella nice little camera… A Canon VIXIA HF-R62. I got it very cheap right before Canon debuted the R72…which seems like a thinly-veiled excuse to go back to getting full price on a camera… Since as far as I can tell it is all but identical to the R62 in every way.
I plan to start shooting YouTube videos regularly… Things would go a lot easier if I got some contributions to that end, and I will be making a Patreon and a couple different Amazon Wish Lists once I start posting videos.
I’m going to replace my previous ‘brain dump’ post type with “What’s On The ‘Bench?” videos, where I do a 1-2 minute (each) pitch about any ideas I have or things I’m working on. This way I can try and both gauge and garner interest in nascent ideas in a more natural and conversational way than simply writing a post about them.
I got so sidetracked with stuff after removing the stock bed of the laser cutter that I never got around to draining the water or doing anything about the coolant loop, and now I think there’s algae growing in it… FML Oh well, these things happen. I ordered some Copper Sulfate Pentahydrate to add to the coolant loop, that oughta take care of the stuff. (Good thing I hadn’t finished the coolant system and added all the water yet.)
Things are getting started, I would expect videos to start showing up any time now.