There’s definitely been a chill in the air here for the past couple of days. Hitting the freeze point at night so bring the plants in. But with the sun out it was a beautiful day and I took advantage to clean up all the limbs twigs and leaves that I’ve been meaning to for months. Great time to break out the burn barrel and get rid of it.
Blog
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Fire Starters
I ran across this on Pinterest I believe and I got a chance to try it and I’m super impressed. You takes these ‘cotton rounds’ and dip them in wax and let them harden. You can stick them in the kindling and light them and boom, fire!
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3D – Print – Coin Sorter
This is by far the biggest print job so far, almost 6 hours each for the base and the tubes, the top tray was only about an hour. As someone who’s trying to get rid of the little junk in life, this 3D printer is apparently a step in the wrong direction.
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3D – Print – PPE Helpers
So one of the nice things about having a 3D printer is that you can print useful things, unlike a 2D printer which is good for paper airplane graphics. Ha ha…
In any case one of the first things I printed were mask nose guards that prevent your mask from steaming up your glasses. They seem to work very well. Then my sister asked about the ‘ear saver’ mask holders so I found those and printed off several for her to check out. It’s nice to be able to help with little things like this. -
Food Prep Day
I don’t know if I said yesterday but the new battery came from Sam’s club. That gave me time to do some shopping. I got about 10 pounds of ground beef and 6 pounds of pork chops. I’m lucky enough to have a side by side garage fridge and ample freezer storage along with the prerequisite vacuum sealer and scales. Now I have enough ground beef and pork chops to keep us in food for a little bit.
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New Battery for the Xterra
So almost 3 years to the day I had to get a new battery for the Xterra, I had been using the AutoZone Duralast for the past decade basically because they kept dying and giving me a new one. I really think that batteries should last more than 3 years so this year I went with Sam’s Club and they hooked me up with a Duracell 3 year battery for $114 out the door. We’ll see how this one holds up.
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3D – Print – Seat Back Hooks
This is my favorite so far! Primarily because although I’ve had the Xterra for about 8 years now, the back is solid plastic and there isn’t anything to keep things from sliding around, more than once I’ve made it home from the grocery store with the bread a casualty of a sliding case of ice tea. These hook on to the headrest posts of the back seat of the Xterra and provide me hooks to hand the bags on for a safe and uncrushed ride home.
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3D – Important FYI
I’ve finally gotten the printer to play nice. The key to this is in the software that you use to ‘slice’ the 3D diagram. This is very specific to the printer and manufacturer. It is immensely important that you follow the directions for setup. In my case I’m using Ultimaker Cura. Knowing next to nothing about 3D modeling software this is just what came with the system, do yourself a favor and go find the latest version, it did not ship with it guaranteed. This Cura software is open source and seems to be well developed so I’m rather happy with it. I still need to find some tutorials to learn to use it, for the most part I’m just finding stuff to print but the goal is to be able to create stuff to give back to the community as well as print stuff I need.
My particular printer can hook up to a computer but recommends putting the file on a SD card and sneaker netting it over to the printer. I’m honestly fine with this for the most part but it does bring up an interesting observation. Everything that happens after you push the print button on the unit is defined in this file, print temperature, bed temperature, flow rate, X, Y, Z positions… EVERYTHING. This should reaffirm the first paragraph in that you mush have the software setup properly so that it has all the settings that your printer has. Just do it!
So let’s look at file types. When you’re hunting print objects, you will find them (mostly) as .STL files (stereolithography). STL has several acronyms such as “Standard Triangle Language” and “Standard Tessellation Language”. This file will be opened with the above mentioned software and then converted (sliced) to a *.gcode file that is specific to your printer. This is the file you select to print.
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3D – Towel Holder
Trying to get the hang of this 3D printing and this seemed simple enough, it’s a towel holder that I was thinking about using in the RV. It seems to work well enough an they’re small enough that you could use three and hang more towels than you’d need in that small of a space. The printer is a little wonky, I’m still trying to take in all that’s involved, seems to have a lot to do with the level, always the level.
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Happy Thanksgiving!!!
It’s a day to be thankful towards the end of a most stressful year. I’m thankful for the roof over my head and family and friends and hoping that my brain holds out long enough to get a degree:)
