Now, this is a project I’ve had in the works for quite some time… It started out simply as a clever way to read Twitch chat whilst doing my professional imaginary spaceship pilot gig, without taking my eyes off what I’m doing, but I believe it has a lot more potential. Read more…
It’s 2am the morning after Thanksgiving. I’m standing in the middle of the dimly-lit kitchen bare-handing a slice of the pumpkin pie I didn’t get to try before succumbing to a food coma nine hours earlier, as I stare at the pile of aluminium sheet stock in one corner of the room…
They say “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” …it seems the same goes for “if you get a really really spiffy new hammer,” because I’ve basically been solving everything—even the most mundane of everyday needs —with my 3D printer… Well, I aim to change that with my current project, if only because trying to design all the parts to be printable was getting fucking tiresome.
For the longest time I’ve really needed a bigger plotter than my Silhouette SD (i.e. CraftRobo) because the narrow working envelope was a real limitation. I also wanted something heavy duty that could tackle more tasks…
Update: 05/14/2018 – Well, that escalated quickly slowly.
So, in the SIX MONTHS since I started writing this post—hell, in the month since I last touched it —I actually just said screw it and got a Silhouette Cameo 3, and I’ll talk about that in another post. Anyway, at some point I’ll revisit this, but what I was getting to was the fact that I was designing a CoreXY-based plotter and I was going to build it out of aluminium.
The few people who actually visit my site intentionally, and those non-bots who stumble upon it by accident, have probably been wondering where the hell I’ve been and what manner of hell I’ve been up to for the past five months year. Well, I wish I could say I had a lot to show for my time…but it would be a damned dirty lie. Then again, I’m occasionally told that I’m overly-critical of myself…so I guess you’ll just have to read the highlights and decide for yourself if I’ve wasted half a year of my life!
Probably the biggest thing is that I bought an embroidery machine, a small and inexpensive home model that can do up to 4×4 inch patterns. And then I acquired digitizing software… Wilcom Hatch Embroidery… Which costs $1200—yes, twelve-hundred god damn dollars —if you want the version that you can actually make art in. Luckily they offer flex-pay and I’ve been paying $99.99 a month since.
So, I’ve been making embroidered patches. Why? Because like damn-near everything I pursue, I wanted a thing; then, having decided I was too poor to have somebody else make it for me, I proceeded to somehow spend obscene amounts of money—seemingly beyond my means —to give myself the capability to make the thing that I wanted. This is where I’d normally say something about doing a more in-depth post on this later, but by now we all know that is also a damned dirty lie.
This was not without tangible benefits beyond, you know, the literally tangible ones —as it forced me to finally open an Etsy store which has so far generated 10 sales, averaging a sale a week— and a dollar of profit a day —for 73 days. Not bad considering I’m only selling two items and at the moment not doing anything to really put my shop out there to get noticed.
Other notable things that I may or may not elaborate on later:
Shenzhen I/O is the latest puzzle game from Zachtronics, and in it you play a newly-minted Electrical Engineer, fresh out of school, and faced with the reality that we make all of jack and shit in this country. (So apparently not much changes between now and 2026…) And so you get a job with a company in Shenzhen, and are off to China! I’d previously played TIS-100 which was a puzzle game about programming in assembly– because I am exactly that kind of nerd –and enjoyed it immensely. Shenzhen I/O builds upon that formula by adding hardware design…needless to say that just makes me that much more into the game. Read more…
H***y H***days! (Don’t ask. You’ll follow my example if you don’t want to be hounded by C*****mas-themed spambots until the heat-death of the universe.)
Okay, so here we are. The end of the year. I guess first and foremost, the responsible thing would be to list the things I still haven’t managed to do this year, as a reminder to myself…
I have a few nearly-finished posts in draft form that haven’t made it up yet:
That’s actually a lot less than I expected! …of course then there’s the ones I never got around to even starting… Foremost among these is probably the one about 3D printing-related crowdfunding campaigns I’ve backed… And it’s probably just as well that I haven’t done it yet, because the biggest one of all hasn’t arrived yet! (But it’s sitting on a boat in customs at the port of Long Beach!)
There’s also the progress I’ve been meaning to write about regarding my HOTAS modifications, which will eventually turn into a complete custom stick and throttle project… For now, I’ll give you a sample… Since I just finished it the other day!
Anyway, next weekend I’ll talk about what I hope to do in the coming year! (Ironically, New Years Day is still technically the last day of the 52nd week of 2016… #JustISOThings )
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…