Work log - Week 5 - February 23, 2022¶
2/23 - Wednesday¶
Attended class in the morning.
Class Links and Notes¶
https://fabacademy.org/2021/labs/dassault/students/griffin-vanhorne/projects/final-project/
http://archive.fabacademy.org/fabacademy2016/fablabmadridue/students/280/eixo.html
superbrightleds, pretty sure Neil gets paid to endorse them: https://www.superbrightleds.com/
Classifying 3d printers Gaps Angles Bridges How thin a self-supporting wall Size/resolution XYZ dimensions Ansiotropic - mechanical properties Surface Finish Infill - amount and type
Reality Capture
realsense d435 3d camera
Slicer for Fusion 360
How to design PCB’s in Fusion 360
https://lingdong.works/ http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/863.21/CBA/people/lingdong/site/
Knocked out a ton of test parts in OpenSCAD for the group project. OpenSCAD is made for this sort of thing.
2/24 - Thursday¶
Spent a lot of time working with the really crappy Flashforge printers in the Fablab. Don’t buy these printers.
I had to babysit them. Had many print fails, too many.
2/25 - Friday¶
I was so angry at the flashforge printers, I spent a lot of time looking through NC procurement rules and regulations, trolling all the vendors/suppliers trying to find a way around “you can only buy really crappy or really expensive, or most of the time both, printers from state approved contractors.” I don’t want to buy a $800 printer that’s horribly proprietary and traps you into using their filament with DRM.
I just want a cheap printer that students can use, break (and easy to buy parts for, and easy for the students to learn how to fix the printers when they break) and that has a decent print quality and has a low total cost of ownership.
But nope, we’re forced to spend a ridiculous amount of taxpayer money on inferior products.
It’s incredibly frustrating.
However, it seems like a horrible vendor who shall go nameless now carries creality products. They’re twice the price that everyone else charges, but it’s better than the alternatives.
It shouldn’t be this hard to buy inexpensive, quality 3d printers in 2022.
2/26 - Saturday¶
Spent time looking into 3d scanning. It seems most of the real difficulty lies in good software.
Moving to next week¶
I felt I had the 3d printing part under control, so I wanted to try and get started on an area that I know I will struggle… designing a pcb.
I started to design a pcb for an attiny412 that will be able to gather data from a rotary encoder and forward the data via I2C.
I took a lot of design ideas from Neils designs, Adam Harris’ designs, as well as a number of previous fabacademy student designs.
Spent time playing with Fusion360. That was a bit annoying. Fusion360 does a lot of things right. This isn’t one of them.
Switched to KiCad. And while there was a large learning curve, I found it easier to navigate and use than Fusion360 for designing schematics and pcbs.
Made a lot of mistakes. Had a lot of frustration, but I was able to make a lot of progress.
2/27 - Sunday¶
Documentation. Caught up with a few details/notes/images I wanted to add to previous weeks. Printed a few test parts at home.
Continued playing with designs for attiny412 pcb.
