RepRap update

I spent the weekend basically talking about 3D printing - my throat was sore by Saturday night, but that's not unusual at a convention. If I'd been able to buy blue PLA before the con, I would have been printing TARDISes all weekend. I did print 2 blue, 2 translucent cerulean and 2 white ones. Translucent doesn't look as good, you can't see detail on translucent plastic.

In future, I need to come with a box of a wide variety of printed things. I didn't have a lot with me at first, and everyone asked "well, what can you make with it?" What CAN'T you make with it? But the possibilities don't seem to register with people very well unless they've got stuff they can touch.

I printed out a TriLego piece Sunday morning and got as much excitement out of that as I did anything else.

I think I might try to make an entry for the Duckon Critter Crunch out of mostly printed parts. There are already gearboxes and tank treads up on Thingiverse. That'd be a good demo.

I found a nice 8 tooth pulley for X and Y axes and printed some out last night, so I'm switched from 10 to 8 tooth. That should increase my resolution by about 20% on those axes. I did have to reduce my jerk settings a bit, I'd cranked them up a few days ago because I didn't know how high they could go with these motors. 20mm/s2 is apparently too high because the splines started misaligning during the print, so it's at 10 now and a set of 4 pulleys printed out very well.

Vehicle stuff

Wow, eBay to the rescue. I picked up the three broken bits for the front end of the Malibu for about $100. Locally just one of them was $200 and the three together would have probably pushed > $350. Total time for the fix should be about 3 hours.

Not replacing the hood right now, because I can't put a new one in the winter weather in primer or it'll rust, and I can't really paint a hood in the current weather either, too cold. The existing hood isn't too bad after some jumping up and down and punching (literally). I'll probably replace the front bumper cover at the same time.

I still need to straighten out the hood latch, it's shoved back almost into the radiator.

I put my new Nokian W240s on the bike today, it was time to give in to the inevitable. On a quick trip down the driveway, wow, are those things noisy. Very aggressive studs. I'll see how they roll tomorrow.

Odometer: 25958