Catching Up: 3D Printing, Drought, Biking, and WTF is Wrong With Some People?

The Bambu P2S 3D printer has been working almost non-stop since I got it and it hasn’t missed a beat. I’m still amazed at how much the technology has improved since I had my old Flash Forge. It’s much faster, is as close to being “Plug ‘n Play” as a 3D printer can get. It has automated bed leveling, automated nozzle cleaning, automatic filament changing, automated calibration, etc.

All of the stuff that used to drive me nuts like doing manual bed leveling with the old Flash Forge is now taken care of automatically by the printer.

First thing I did was print a whole bunch of parts for my fume extraction system to make my life a little easier. Things like adaptors to go from the 4″ hose my extractor uses down to the size needed for my lasers. That makes life a lot easier.

A variety of other parts and gadgets were printed including some custom stuff for eldest son who dabbles in retr0-computers and occasionally need special parts that can’t be sourced elsewhere any longer.

Yes, they really work.

And then I found out I can 3D print hose clamps. Seriously. Actual real hose clamps that work beautifully with my fume extraction system.

One of the most useful things I found to print was an extremely sturdy and very handy adjustable easel for my Wacom Cintiq graphics tablet.

I have a half dozen or more batteries for my Dewalt cordless tools and ran across this one day.

A battery carrier/storage thingie for my Dewalt batteries. This thing is so good and so useful I’m surprised it isn’t a commercial product.

My old 3d printer was, to be honest, little more than a toy that wasn’t good for much except printing mildly naughty anime figurines and novelty items. The technology and materials have now gotten so good it’s producing genuinely useful, durable parts. I’m really pleased with this thing.

I thought about doing some kind of review of the P2S but then decided to not bother. It’s been on the market for some time now and there are dozens of reviews alreayd out there on YouTube, etc.

There is some controversy with Bambu Labs, however. It’s been accused of trying to “lock down” its user environment to make it difficult to do things like use 3rd party slicing software and even filament from other makers. And there is some truth to that. Sort of. Apparently now you can use 3rd party slicing software with a bit of fiddling around.

And as for filament, yes Bambu would certainly love to have you buy materials from them and has made it extremely attractive to do so. Bambu filament comes with RFID tags that are read by the AMS which automatically determines what the material is etc. and automatically sets up all of the correct parameters for using that material. And yes, you will pay a bit more for that convenience. But damn, it works nice. No more scrambling to try to find the exact temperatures, flow rates, etc. for a spool of filament. And it doesn’t cost all that much more than generic filament does, to be honest. And if you buy in bulk they give you huge discounts that eliminates the price difference entirely in some cases.

And it will still work with generic filament. You just need to remember to set the temperatures, flow rates, etc. yourself if you go that way. I’ve gone through a half dozen spools of generic PLA I picked up at Hobby Lobby with no problems at all.

What it all boils down to is Bambu 3D printers are the best selling models on the market right now, and for good reason. My experiences with the P2S have been nothing but positive.

But enough of that, let’s get on with this.

It was an absolutely beautiful day yesterday. So nice that when I went out on the bike I ended up putting almost 15 miles on. Rolling down the trails through the woods was absolutely delightful.

But wow, it’s dry here. The branch of the Manitowoc river that runs under the old stone bridge north of town is almost completely dried up.

There are places where you could almost walk across the river without getting your feet wet. I have seen it worse.

And with the low water level crap like this starts to pop up:

WTF is wrong with people? Seriously. I would dearly love to have the people who toss their trash into the river get not just seriously fined but do jail time too. There is simply no excuse for this. We’ve fished old computers, television sets, tires, car parts, car batteries, refrigerators and in one case a complete suite of living room furniture including a sofa, loveseat and recliner, out of that river.

The DNR used to have a sign there warning people that they had cameras set up to catch people doing this. I noticed that the sign has, of course, been stolen. Sigh. The cameras are still up, though, hidden in the trees. So I sincerely hope that they catch the weasel who dumped these tires.

On a more pleasant note, we finally got some rain this morning! We got almost an inch of rain which we needed desperately.

Also MrsGF is finally back from almost a week long trip to Atlanta to some conference so I’m less grouchy than usual.

And to wrap things up, how about a cat holding a carrot?

My carrot! You cannot have it!

It’s Record Time! And Blatant sales pitch for our local charity.

Yes, it’s record sorting and pricing time again! Actually a lot of records have been through here since I did these little mini record reviews but there wasn’t anything exceptional enough to even bother mentioning.

As always, all records mentioned here (whether good or bad) are available for sale at the St. Vincent de Paul shop in Hilbert, Wisconsin on Hwy 57. Proceeds from all sales go to help our neighbors in need. We do not sell on the internet. We do only in person sales at the store.

Technical details: Every LP I get through here is examined for defects. Discs that are scratched, cracked or otherwise damaged in ways that might harm someone’s turntable are go in the bin. If I wouldn’t play it on my own equipment, I sure as heck am not going to put it out for sale. Almost all of the LPs that I get require cleaning. I mean… Come on, people, what the heck do you do with some of these albums, use them to serve pizza or something? Sheesh. Prices are determined by “fair market value” and we charge 1/3 of that price. So an album that’s selling for an average of $15 on eBay or Discog or wherever will go for $5. An album that sells for $5 will go for a buck.

Let’s start out with an absolute stinker.

Yes, it’s the Ray Conniff Singers (shudder). The epitome of the genre that people of my generation called “elevator music”. They took popular songs of the day, removed every trace of originality and emotional content, ran it through the washing machine of dullness, then applied a heavy coating of boring, and this is what we ended up with. Generic background music designed to be utterly ignorable. No outer jacket but the record itself is in pristine, 100% playable condition. Unfortunately. And it can all be yours for just $1 !!!
Now you’d think I must have something good to say about this one. I mean it’s Beethoven’s Concerto #5 in E-flat, for heaven’s sake. And normally I would. Firkusny on piano is technically brilliant and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra was no slouch either when this was produced. But… But dear lord is this recording bad! I don’t know if something happened in the pressing process, in the production process, or what. But it sounds like someone ran it through filters that dulled down the brilliance of the sound. I can admire the technical expertise of the artists, yes, but the sound quality of the recording itself is abysmal and almost lifeless. You can pick this one up for $1 but personally I wouldn’t bother. There are much, much better recordings out there.
Unlike poor Beethoven up there, this one is absolutely brilliant. The philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy doing Christmas classics in a brilliantly produced recording and a disc that is in almost perfect condition. $3 at the store.
A lot of amazing things came out of the Renaissance. This is not one of them. The performances by the singers and musicians are technically excellent but for anyone except a scholar of the period the music itself is, frankly… Well let’s put it this way: When it comes to this album, what happened in the Renaissance should have stayed in the Renaissance. $1
Remember what I said about Ray Conniff? Ditto for this one. There is no excuse for this album to even exist. The 101 Strings weren’t even an actual orchestra. They were a mixed group of studio/free lance musicians that were hired by the job to make this drivel by a fellow named David Miller between the late 1950s and around 1980. Miller cranked out 150 of these albums. Seriously. 150 of them. $1
This one was a total surprise. It was stuffed into the same jacket as the 101 Strings album was and is without an outer jacket. Barnet was a jaz saxophone player, composer and big band leader. I had to run this one through the washer three times to get it clean but now the disc is in nearly perfect condition and it was worth the effort. No skips, no hiss, no pops. it plays like a new pressing. If you enjoy big band jazz music you need this recording. Unfortunately because it has no jacket or inner sleeve I’m going to have to put a generic white sleeve on it and can only put $1 on it. If it gets to the store, that is. I’m very, very tempted to keep this one for myself. It’s that good.
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem were very popular back in the 1950s and 60s. They made appearances on the Ed Sullivan television show, Newport Folk Festival and other prominent venues. They continued to perform until 1998. If you want to know more about them you can go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clancy_Brothers This album is in excellent condition with some minor damage to the corners of the outer jacket. The disc needed cleaning but came out beautifully and plays with no hiss, pop or skps. Not everyone’s cup of tea I admit, but for folk singing enthusiasts it’s a real bargain at just $1 at the store.
Hey, it’s Boston, all right? What can I say? This is a original copy of their debut album. The outer jacket is in worn condition with corner damage but the disc itself has been thoroughly cleaned in the disc washer and plays beautifully on my turntable with no hiss, pops or skips. If I already didn’t have this one in my personal collection it would never make it to the store. Just $5 at the store in Hilbert.
I don’t like Alabama. Not even a tiny, tiny bit. I dislike their whiny, sappy love songs and everything else about them. They’re what I call a purely commercial band. Their music is carefully crafted not to be a genuine expression of their feelings, but carefully and cynically designed to get emotional reactions out of people so they can suck up all that yummy, yummy money. But that’s why I’m here too, to try to get your money for our charity. So I have to grit my teeth and try to sell this sucker for $2

And now I’m getting bored and I’m sure you are too so let’s wrap this up.

As noted above, all of the records listed here are available at the St. Vincent store in Hilbert. So if you get in the area, stop in and check the place out.

Garden Update, Backyard Astronomy and Stuff

With most of the state being under moderate to severe drought conditions we’ve been watering the gardens almost every day for weeks now. Officially our location is listed as being under mild drought conditions. But that doesn’t take into account the fact that the rains we did see have been extremely localized. I just checked my rainfall monitor and we haven’t had any rain here at grouchyfarmer.com’s palatial headquarters while just a couple of miles away they got over an inch of rain the other day. Judging from the way the soil looks here, I’d classify the area here in this locality as being under severe drought conditions.

And no rain means empty rain barrels. So we’ve had to resort to using town water for the gardens and I’m sure I am not going to like our quarterly water bill when it comes in.

Anyway life goes on, as they say. And so does the garden. Despite the dry conditions things have been going pretty good. Mostly.

We’ve pulled all of the onions. They were way, way ahead of normal for whatever reason. We put in a mix of yellow, white and red onions. They generally store pretty well. We pull them, cut off the tops about 2 inches from the bulb, then let them “cure” for about 2 weeks or so before putting them in net bags and hanging them from the ceiling in the basement for long term storage.

Yes, onions are fairly cheap to buy in the store but it’s the flavor I’m interested in. Commercially grown onions just don’t taste good to me. The commercial varieties we see are too mild, too sweet. You shouldn’t be able to bite into an onion like an apple, for heaven’s sake. A good onion should bite back, hard, so to speak. And I only get that sharp, pungent real onion flavor and aroma from the home grown varieties.

The peppers are doing quite well this year. We put in a nice, slightly spicy banana pepper mostly this year, with a few regular bell peppers. They’ve both been producing beautifully with excellent quality fruits in both varieties. The ones we don’t eat fresh either get diced up and frozen for future use or get canned as pickled peppers. MrsGF tried a new recipe this year for a kind of refrigerator pickled pepper as an experiment and we took a pint of them along to a family event and they were a huge hit. People loved them on burgers or even just eating right out of the jar. So that’s going to be a keeper.

We’re going to start harvesting celery this week as well, I think. That’s been doing amazingly well this year. I mean just look at that stuff over there. Very intense, lush flavor. Again I know celery in the store isn’t that expensive, but the commercial varieties seem, at least to me, almost completely flavorless. I think people forget that celery isn’t just a vegetable, it was originally considered an herb and was grown for the flavor it added. This stuff will knock your socks off. I got in the habit of snipping off a stalk and munching on it when I’m out mowing the lawn.

Yes, those are #10 cans around the base of the plants. We’ve always grown it this way. The cans protect the plants when they’re small and first transplanted into the beds not just from wind and from early frost, but also give them some protection from the rabbits we have. We just leave the cans in place until the end of the growing season and then pull them out and use them the next year.

The beets are all done with. Mrs GF just pulled those last few you see in the left side of that bed over there this morning and is processing them as I write this. Some get par-boiled, so to speak, and frozen for use later. Most though end up as pickled beets that we like either as a main vegetable with a meal or just as a snack. There’s also a late crop of lettuce left in that bed. We’ll be using that this week for salads and then we’ll have that bed cleaned out.

The only issue we’ve had this year is blossom end rot on the tomatoes. That’s usually caused by a calcium deficiency I’m told. We’ve been using a calcium supplement but apparently not enough of it? Maybe? It’s very frustrating to see what looks like a nice tomato starting to turn ripe and go to check it and finding the bottom of it is rotted away. Grrr…

Sidenote: I’m making chili for supper tonight, and everything in that pot is stuff we grew ourselves <grin>. Canned tomatoes from last year, MrsGf’s award winning chili sauce, our home grown garlic, onions, celery and peppers. Only thing that we didn’t grow ourselves is the ground beef from our local butcher who sources his meat from local farmers. Ooo, I wish you could smell this stuff simmering!

Astronomy stuff:

I finally got an opportunity to get the Seestar telescope out two nights ago! That was the first time in weeks that we’d had relatively clear skies at night.

That’s an object called IC-1318A, part of the Butterfly Nebula. I did some post processing on this image to darken the sky a bit to improve the contrast. That’s mostly a cloud of ionized hydrogen gas called an emissions nebula. Intense ultraviolet radiation from nearby young, hot stars causes the gas to glow with that reddish color. Normally this is a very faint object that would require a rather large aperture telescope and very dark skies to see. It’s about 4,000 – 4,900 light years away from us. That I can get an image this good of this nebula with a little $500 automated telescope sitting in the driveway is still a bit astonishing to me.

Then there is this…

My sister in law has been remodeling her house and brought this out and set it up in the dining room. This piece is a bit melancholy for me. Let me explain. My wife’s sister married my best friend. John passed away four years ago today of a sudden heart attack. This piece has deep family connections in more ways than one. I made this as an anniversary gift for them many years ago. It was the first large piece of furniture I ever made. On top of that, it was made from white ash boards that were harvested on my wife’s family farm that had sat up in the barn for almost a hundred years from trees that were taken down during an ice storm. So seeing this cabinet out in the dining room on the anniversary of his passing was a kind of heart wrenching moment for me as it brought back many memories.

Anyway, that’s it for now! One of these days I’ll talk about the new Bambu Labs 3D printer in detail.

3D Printers

Well the Bambu P2S arrived the other day and I got it set up and running. That’s it over there on the right.

Wow, has the technology improved since the last one I owned! Much, much faster, much more flexible, much easier to use. And you can get an automatic material changer that holds 4 spools of filament and it can select from any of them on the fly, so to speak, to change colors while printing.

If you get one of these, read the instructions about how to unpack it before you try to do anything! Seriously. There are zip ties to be clipped, tape to be removed, hold down screws that need to be removed, packing material that has to be removed in the right way, etc. I went slowly and carefully and it took me almost an hour to get it all unpacked and ready to turn on for the first time. But that includes becoming distracted halfway through and having to go get a cup of coffee and a sit down, so you’ll probably be able to do it a lot quicker.

Once it’s turned on it goes through a bizarre first initialization procedure where it will shake, rattle, roll, click and make all sorts of bizarre noises while the bed and print head go through odd gyrations as it calibrates everything to get ready for the first use. That took almost a half hour so just relax, go get a coffee, read a book, watch cat videos and be patient.

Setting up the AMS is so simple one of my cats could probably have done it. And once that’s installed it’s ready to go.

The automatic material system is fantastic to work with. You can have 2 of them, meaning you can have up to 8 different color filaments or different materials ready to go when you’re ready to start printing. No more fiddling around loading and loading filament every time you want to change colors or change materials.

First thing I did was the obligatory “benchy” boat. (you can click on the image to enlarge it. I think.) Yes, it’s a silly little boat but it actually is a pretty good test of how good a 3D printer is. In this case I did the multi-color version because I also wanted to test how well switching colors in the middle of a print worked. And it worked very well indeed.

So why did I get another 3D printer? I think I mentioned before that I used to have a model railroad layout that I enjoyed very much. But real life got in the way, as it often does. I needed the space for other things, I was busy with work and family obligations. You get the idea. I now have the time and resources to get back into it.

To be honest while I enjoyed the railroad part of it, what I really enjoyed was making models and designing scenery for the railroad. And that’s where both the lasers and this 3d printer come in.

Anyway I’ll keep you posted about developments in that area.

Oh, and just for the heck of it here’s a short video showing a timelapse of the printer making cat toys because, of course, if you have cats and you have a 3D printer making cat toys is something you have to do.

Speaking of cats, here’s where you’ll find Charlie most mornings now when I’m having my coffee and reading my email.

If there is any space at all between my back and the back of the chair the little goof will sneak in there. I have to be careful because if I get up to lean across the table to get reach something she’ll jump up there without me knowing and I’ve almost sat down on her a couple of times.

Weather and Updates

If you’ve been following the news you know that we got hammered here in Wisconsin on Monday, July 27. A massive storm system roared through here about mid-day with grapefruit sized hail, high winds, downpour rains and tornadoes. The town of Menasha (just 10 miles from me) and the surrounding area got a direct hit from an F2 tornado with winds of up to 135 MPH. Massive damage, buildings destroyed, streets blocked with uprooted trees, power outages for over 100,000 people in the area. Miraculously it seems that no one was killed by the storms but there were some people hurt. At least one large facility, Christ the Rock Church just outside of Menasha opened up as a storm shelter for those displaced. Making things worse was the heat with temperatures well above 90F.

The worst of it missed us, thankfully. Power went out around 1 pm but we hardly noticed because of the solar power system. We can’t run the central AC system off solar but we do have portable AC units that run off the solar system in the bedrooms so we had a place to retreat to when the temps in the main part of the house got intolerable. So all things considered, we were extremely fortunate. The internet was down but we still had cellular service so we could keep track of friends and family and keep updated about weather conditions.

Meanwhile…

I’ve been busy cleaning down in the basement, moving things around, putting things I haven’t used in a long time in storage, etc. to make room for the 3D p Put up new shelves for storage in the main part of the basement.

I don’t plug a lot of products here but I have to mention these Origami shelving units. I have about 8 of these things now and they’re fantastic. Takes just a couple of minutes to assemble them. Basically just unfold them, screw in the wheels and they’re ready to go. All steel construction. No flimsy plastics. They hold an astonishing amount of weight. We have them packed full of canned goods, equipment, paint cans, electronic equipment, you name it. Yeah, they are expensive but damn they’re good. And even better they show up on Woot once in a while for almost half price for some reason and when they do I generally snag a couple more even if I don’t need them. So I had three of them out in the garage still in their packing cases that I got off Woot when they went on sale a few months ago at half price so I set two of those up in the basement to take care of the overflow. One is now dedicated to just holding supplies for the lasers: various bits of hardwood, plywood sheets of various thicknesses, plastic sheets, coin blanks, etc. Also stuff associated with the lasers like the rotary tools, sliding table, paints for the airbrush, and all that fun stuff. I actually should have done that long ago because it makes it a lot easier to find what I need when I need it instead of having it scattered around wherever I could find room.

If FedEx can find my place the 3D printer should be here today. It’s a Bambu P2S with a 4 spool filament changer. The spool holder on top also doubles as a filament dryer so the filaments don’t absorb moisture. A lot of the filaments for 3D printing absorb moisture from the air and that is not a good thing.

This thing makes my old Flashforge look like my Buick compared to a Model T Ford. 3D printing technology has advanced enormously in just the last few years and this thing has capabilities that I could only dream about when I was running the old Flash Forge. And it costs less than my Flash Forge did on top of it all.

Okay, I do remember that once upon a time I swore I would never get another one of these but… Well, things change, okay? My priorities have changed.

When we first moved into this house back in around 1998 or so, one of the rooms in the basement was reserved for my model railroad. I had an HO scale railroad that occupied almost the entire room. But the house also needed a lot of work and having all of my woodworking tools out in the garage just wasn’t a viable option, especially in winter. So the railroad came down and the room became my woodshop and it’s been that way ever since.

Priorities change, as I said. I’ve lost interest in woodworking for a variety of reasons. I don’t foresee having to do major carpentry work on the house in the future, and for some reason I want to get back into model railroading again. And that’s one of the things I’ll be using the P2S for, making models and parts for that. That’s also partly why I got the laser, to cut out parts to make structures and accessories for the upcoming railroad.

Of course considering how I procrastinate and how lazy I am I’m probably going to be, oh, 90 or so, by the time I actually start building the railroad….

GoPro stuff

I really want to like GoPro cameras. I’ve had a couple of them over the years even though I don’t dabble much in videos. But I did buy an older model on sale early last spring with the intention of putting it on the bike. Well first my hip and then the smoke and heat dome and all of that shut that down. But now I’m feeling up to getting out on the bike again and after the storms the weather has cleared.

GoPro’s have their problems. The most notorious is heat. Every single one I’ve had, no matter what model, had heat problems. You’d have thought that they’d have figured out how to deal with that by now but they haven’t.

The other is battery life. For what is supposed to be an “action camera”, battery life is, frankly, abysmal. They claim a battery will last up to 75 minutes. That is a lie. I’ve never gotten more than about 30 – 40 minutes life out of the batteries.

The batteries also self-discharge at what I feel is an alarming rate. Every battery, no matter what its chemistry is, self discharges a bit. That is, they lose power when they’re stored even if they aren’t being used. I can charge the goPro batteries to 100%, set them aside for a week or two, and when I want to use them I find that they’re down to 75%. There is simply no excuse for that with modern battery chemistries.

I’ve reached the point where I don’t think I could ever recommend a GoPro camera. Not unless you can pick up an older model at like half price. There are cameras out there with longer battery life and capabilities almost as good for a heck of a lot less money.

Finally Getting Laser Figured Out! Plus Yes I’m Going To Get Another 3D Printer Even Though I Swore I’d Never Get Another One

I’m finally getting the new Lumos Flex laser figured out. It took a great deal of experimentation and time and burning through a lot of test materials but I finally accomplished something that turned out as good as the sample projects Wecreat shows in its advertising.

for some reason my iphone messed up the color. It is indeed brass and the actual color is what you see in the image in the next paragraph. The design is from Wecreat’s website.
This photo will give you some idea of the size of the coin.

In case you’re wondering, here’s the settings I used. Emboss mode, Fiber laser, Convex mode. Power 100%, speed 500, line density 300, layers 200, frequency 30, Z-step per layer 0.01. And another little trick I figured out is that it works better if I had the laser ever so slightly out of focus before starting.

What was really frustrating was the amount of time and effort I wasted trying to nail down the right settings. Wecreat included absolutely no instructions at all when I got the Flex replacement head for my Lumos except showing how to mount it. About using it? Absolutely nothing. Zilch. The diode laser was no problem. It works just like the one in the original Lumos, only more powerful. But the new fiber laser works entirely differently than the IR laser in the original Lumos does, and the only “instructions” I was able to find were a couple of utterly inadequate 5 minute videos on the company’s website. I wasn’t the only one who had issues. I even resorted to (shudder) joining the abomination that is Facebook just so I could get on the Wecreat Flex forum looking for answers. Anyway I got it figured out now and it does work.

But embossing like this is not something I am likely to do again. Why? Because guess how long it took to emboss that little coin up there. Go ahead. Guess.

Try six and a half hours. Just to do one side of that coin.

And that brings up the topic of money. The Lumos Flex costs about $2,000. Or you can upgrade a standard Lumos to the Flex version for $1,000. No matter how you look at it, that’s a hefty chunk of money.

A lot of craftspersons out there do this as a side gig. They use lasers, 3d printers, etc. to make products that they sell at craft shows, on outlets like Etsy, etc. And when the Flex was first announced everyone got excited because now we could get our hands on a fiber laser at a cost that was almost unheard of. And everyone had visions of making a few extra bucks using it to make things like engraved challenge coins, deep metal or wood engravings, etc.

Only no, you aren’t. Not if your maximum production rate is going to be 2 coins per day.

The Flex is a very nice machine, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t think it’s worth spending $1,000 more for this when the standard Lumos works just fine and dandy for engraving things like lockets. rings, pendants, bracelets, etc. with the IR laser, and does a perfectly fine, even excellent job engraving wood, leather, etc. with the diode laser. Spending an additional $1,000 just for the ability to turn out a single, embossed coin in 12 hours? That doesn’t seem even remotely cost effective to me.

3D Printing

Now I gave away my Flashforge 3D printer some years ago, swearing off 3D printing entirely as being little more than a silly gimmick and only being good for making trinkets, crude decorative items, etc. And swearing that I would never, ever, get another one.

And here I am about to get a Bambu Labs PS2 in a couple of weeks.

So what happened?

Well, a lot, really.

Here’s the thing… When I gave up on 3D printing it was because no matter what I did, no matter what settings I used, no matter what materials I used, the results universally looked like cheap, crappy, 3D printed junk, that degraded rapidly if exposed to moisture or direct sunlight, that was extremely fragile and could stand little or no stress, etc. It was good for little more than making figurines for gaming or models and was useless for any kind of serious application. At least with the equipment and materials I could afford to buy.

Well things have changed. A lot. Amd they’ve changed both with the equipment and perhaps more importantly, with the materials.

On the hardware side everything has gotten better. I mean a lot better. Much better accuracy, much better temperature and ventilation controls, much better stability, and, yes, AI control systems that help with improving the entire printing process.

On the materials side, things have improved even more dramatically. We now have materials that are less moisture sensitive, far stronger, more shock resistant, even flexible materials that let you do things like, oh, print balls that actually bounce. And even engineering materials reinforced with carbon fiber and things like that. You can now make 3D printed objects at the consumer level that are strong enough and shock resistant enough to use for things like gears in RC racing cars, for heaven’s sake.

Anyway, more about that when it happens. I am still dithering about which one to buy. I’m leaning more and more towards the Bambu Labs P2S. It looks like it has the most “bang for the buck” at the moment. I’ll make a decision this weekend and once things start to happen I’m sure it will turn up here.

Smoke

Peer down towards the end of the street there past that red truck and you’ll see just how hazy it has been here today. That isn’t fog or normal haze, that’s smoke. Thick, reeking smoke from wild fires raging up near the Canadian border with Minnesota. So not only are we putting up with temperatures in the mid 90s (it hit 99F in Milwaukee yesterday and 98 here at the house south of Green bay) but the heat dome is pushing the smoke down right on top of us. We’re under a severe air quality alert until tomorrow afternoon and that might be extended farther unless conditions change. They’re saying children and elderly shouldn’t even go outside unless necessary.

We’ve had the house buttoned up tight with the AC going for days now already because of the heat, plus we have the three big HEPA filters going full time so i the house here we can’t even smell it. But as soon as I step outside it… Wow… Just the smell is enough to make my eyes start to water.

This is getting to be a regular thing every summer now. Because of the changes in wind patterns and the increase in wildfires because of droughts, both caused by climate change, we’ve been enduring this every summer for the last three or four years now.

We’d been running the house completely on solar for about 5 days now but I’ve had to switch back to grid power by 5 this afternoon because we just aren’t getting enough power from the panels to keep things going. I could just run the house off batteries but we’re supposed to get thunderstorms tomorrow so I want to keep the batteries topped up in case the storms take down the grid.

Catching Up: Signs Finished, Solar Stuff, Flowers Everywhere, Engraving Lighters, Silly Cats, No More Hip Pain Somehow?

MrsGF finished up the last of the welcome signs the other day with about three coats of all weather polyurethane. We did four all together. We’re keeping one and these three are already spoken for. They turned out pretty nice I think.

We hit a milestone with the new EG4-12000XP inverter. We hit half a megawatt of production earlier today! We’re going to need every watt we can get out of that system because the big central AC unit is still on the grid and it’s been going for something like 3 weeks straight now since we shifted into this hot weather pattern. We decided to leave it on the grid because while the 12000XP would have enough oomph to handle it, I suspect it would would discharge our batteries to a point where I would become uncomfortable overnight. It’s the old style AC system, but it’s only a few years old so replacing it isn’t in the cards at the moment. If we’d known better at the time we would have gone for a heat pump system which is much more energy efficient but at the time we weren’t even dreaming of putting in whole house solar. I looked into it but a heat pump system would have been around twice the cost so I never seriously considered it. Oh, well. Live and learn, as they say.

Our electric rate here isn’t bad, about 20¢/KWh, which is cheap when compared to what those poor buggers out in California are getting hit with thanks to Newsome and the California legislature being owned lock, stock and barrel by the utility companies and the hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes… (cough cough), I mean “campaign donations” and lobbying $$ they pay out every year. But the handwriting is one the wall, as they say. Thanks to the huge amounts of power the massive data centers being built here in the state are gulping down now and will gulp down in the future, the utilities are going to have to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in new generating facilities, substations and high tension power lines to feed them, and you can be damned sure that if Microsoft, Meta, Oracle and the others building those facilities have anything to say about it, it’s going to be us consumers who are going to foot the bill, not them.

But on to a more pleasant subject. Laser engraving.

I had no idea but apparently Zippo lighters are still a thing with some people? I thought that with the rate of smoking going down every year the market for lighters would have shrunk as well but I guess I forgot about the people who smoke “recreational substances”, shall we call it? That’s still illegal here in Wisconsin but all you have to do is nip across the border to Illinois, Minnesota or Michigan if you want to light up.

I did the first one with the brewery logo on it to give to Kyle, one of the owners. And then I started playing around using the Lumos Flex from Wecreat and the fiber laser and wow, it does a nice job engraving stainless steel! Doesn’t take long, either. With the IR laser in my old Lumos it would have probably taken half an hour to do something like this. With the fiber laser it takes about 4 minutes. It actually eteches right into the metal so that design isn’t just discoloration, it’s actually etched in there and will never wear off. I’ve done about four of these for various people to give as gifts and they keep telling me I should put these up on Etsy or somewhere, but no thanks. I do not want to get into that rat race. Plain, genuine Zippo lighters cost me about $18 each. In order to make it worth my while I’d probably have to charge $35 – $40 for one and I don’t think anyone would be silly enough to pay that.

And then we got flowers! Wow, do we have flowers! Here are a couple.

As for the rest of the gardens I’m too lazy at the moment to go out and get pictures so you’ll have to settle for a description. The tomatoes are going gangbusters. They’re already loaded with green fruit. We have 6 plants this year. We were only going to put in 3 but we had 3 or 4 volunteers pop up and MrsGf didn’t have the heart to just pull them so she transplanted them to a better location and they’re looking just as good as the ones we grew from seed ourselves.

The carrots are thriving and we really need to thin them out. The beets? We’ve already been picking some and eating them. They’re doing fantastic. The celery is looking beautiful this year. When I’m mowing the lawn I can’t help but snip off a stalk to nibble on when I’m riding on the mower. If you’ve never grown celery yourself, please give it a try. You won’t believe how intensely flavored the home grown varieties are when compared to the commercial varieties they sell in the grocery store.

The onions are getting to the point where we’re thinking of starting to pull some and curing them off and putting them in storage.

We have a few zucchini plants as well and they’re producing beautifully. The nice thing about zucchini is that it has almost no flavor so you can slip it into anything and nobody will notice they’re eating something healthy. Tonight I’m going to do a zucchini-mushroom stir fry with lots of garlic and onions and parmesan cheese.

I’m eagerly awaiting the tomatoes. Absolutely nothing compares to the flavor of a ripe tomato fresh off the plant from the garden.

Let’s see, what else?

Oh, the hip! Almost forgot about that. I suffered for something like 3 weeks with pain in my right hip that was almost excruciating at times when I bent my leg the wrong way. It started to oh so slowly get better over time. But then the other day I woke up and got out of bed and suddenly realized that the hip didn’t hurt. At all. It was like someone just threw a switch. There’s a bit of soreness there but that’s because the muscles in the leg are stiff from not being used normally for so long.

So what happened? I have no idea. MrsGF thinks it might have been a pinched nerve and I suppose that’s possible?

Anyway, I’m still taking it easy because I’m terrified of doing something that might bring it back. But otherwise things are back to almost normal. I’m even back on the bike again but I’m keeping the riding limited to just a few miles and at a relatively slow pace for the time being.

Let’s see… Oh, almost forgot! Silly cats, right?

That’s Charlie over there in her new favorite stot to sit. If I scoot forward to type on the computer and there is any space at all between me and the back of the chair, she’ll squeeze in there. She is an absolute sweetie. I’ve never seen a cat that loves people as much as she does. She belonged to our daughter in law’s aunt but she had to move into an apartment that doesn’t allow pets so we volunteered to take her in and we’re so happy we did. She’s getting up there, about 14 or 15 years old now, and she has a heart murmur and a benign cyst on her neck that puts some people off but doesn’t seem to bother her at all. The cyst is inoperable because she can’t tolerate anesthesia. They tried once and her heart stopped and she almost died so unless it’s a genuine emergency neither we nor her vet are willing to try it again.

And that’s about it for now!

Hm? Oh, oh, wait… Oh no… That’s not a 3D printer on a truck heading this way, is it? No, it couldn’t be. I swore I’d never buy another one, didn’t I? I seem to distinctly remember saying that, didn’t I?

OMG it’s been hot and a Finished Project

Do I really need to mention how hot it’s been here the last few days? We’re under one of those “heat domes” and it’s been sweltering. Daytime highs have been in the mid to high 90s with the heat index topping out at around 107. So far the AC has been holding up (he said keeping his fingers and toes crossed)

Meanwhile life goes on. MrsGF and I have been cooperating on a “Welcome” sign project. We finished up the first one and have two more to go. Here’s what the first looks like.

We still have to put a few coats of polyurethane on it to seal and weather proof it but we’re rather pleased with how this one turned out.