Adaptive Curmudgeon

It didn’t take long to make the forklift, and it was super fun. That last part is key!

Do you remember when you were a kid? Did you make model cars or model airplanes? I think I made this one (it’s long gone). I don’t remember much about it other than it was fun and I had to be very careful to avoid glue getting out of control. (Which I think I did.)

I also recall the cat ate a few parts. Some things are the same forever.

Anyway, my point is that we treat “fun” as “optional” or even with disdain but fun is good for ya! We’re now grown ass men and women. Unlike when we had kid sized finances, we can afford a basic level of fun shit. But most of us are failing to pursue enough “fun”. We’re busy at the office, or fretting over taxes, or doomscrolling on social media (which will genuinely fuck you up!).

Why not indulge in good clean stupid enjoyment? If you had fun gluing shit to other shit when you were 12, why are you denying yourself now that you’re… ahem… vintage age?

Of course, part of your “fun” activities will be due to unplanned circumstances. In my case I’m gluing shit to other shit because I just ain’t healthy enough to ride a dirtbike across Wyoming (what I was doing almost exactly one year ago). Is making a toy forklift as fun and wholesome and uplifting as crossing mountains solo on a little motorcycle? Hell no! Even so, it’s fun to build stuff and it’s better for ya’ than passively watching the idiot box.

The remote was surprisingly simple. It’s 2025, people have been making remote electronic shit for many decades and it’s easy now. Here’s the electronic bits.

Here’s the 3d printed bits:

Here’s the two together:

Poof! All of a sudden you’re done!*

I printed out some pallets because why not?

(*One caveat, you need to link the gadgets you’ve made to something that uses Bluetooth. You can use a computer but the universe assumes this will be your phone. The B0rg will not be denied. You link to both the remote and the forklift (sequentially, not simultaneously) via Bluetooth, download simple little, premade, pythonish, scripts to the forklift and the remote respectively, teach them to play nice with each other, and then you’re done programming. It took me half an hour total and someone who’s done it once before could do it in 5 minutes.)

[I interrupted this series. I was rambling away about my little nerd amusements when I got a negative comment. That’s not a big deal. Anyone who’s done anything on the internet (or in life) has gotten negative comments. But for some reason, probably because I’ve been sick half the year, I just… disengaged. What can I say? It’s my blog, I can ghost it if I want.

As a counterpoint, I got several positive comments, which is both normal* and appreciated. (*No kidding, in a world that’s practically tearing itself apart, my small audience has been the nicest sweetest most supportive group anyone could imagine. Over years and years of posting about all sorts of shit, I’ve gotten less negativity than I’d hear on a random trip to Walmart. For that I thank y’all!)

Anyway, it dawned on me that “even if it is boring, it interests me”. I mean for God’s sake my wife watches TV shows about people cooking. Like, lots of them. I like to eat food, I’m not interested in watching food be made that I can’t eat (or even smell). Stuff that bores one person is riveting to another and that’s a good thing. Thank goodness we live in a world of options where us free people can always change the channel!

So, here goes with the rest of my nerdy little project…]

(Starting right after Cyberbrick #3.) After the TPU adventure I loaded some simple PLA and went back to using the AMS Lite. This was the same material as the pre-TPU components, just a different color. In this case PLA Yellow.

This group of parts required more “support”. The support settings were pre-programmed into the project. They instructed the slicer in what to do. My job was to pry the supports off with small needle nose pliers; a task which was oddly satisfying.

I also printed a second “plate” that would become the handheld remote. I stuck with yellow.

These are the printed parts that became the remote (a few parts of the remote are black PLA).

I geek out about variations in material even as I don’t care too much about color. One tiny bit of the project involves lenses for little LED “headlights”. The lenses are clear translucent PETG. I made a mistake and bought a whole spool of clear PETG. I already had a partial spool. Whoops. The lenses are about the size of a dime and now I’ve got a ton of leftover filament. The lenses are installed on the end of a black PLA “light bar”.

The first part of the actual build was a surprisingly complex set of reduction gears and a little motor. I made two, one for left and one for right. The forklift steers like a bulldozer.

Very quickly the forklift came together.

The lift itself has just one tiny motor, but it has a “gear and pulley” mechanical advantage system. This is pretty similar to how certain real forklifts function. Notice that I kept everything corralled in a box and had to resort to a magnifying lens. (Having a separate motor means it can be controlled separately from the remote. This is all dirt simple, but it’s another place you could plug in a cable incorrectly.)

I’ll stop here before I wear out my welcome. I’ll do the controller in the next post.

I’ve been off line long enough to lose some physical fitness. My Dr. encourages me to go to the gym… which is just the kind of bullshit doctors say. Looking at a guy like me and thinking “this bearded maniac ought to be on a treadmill, in an air conditioned gym, getting his mental shorts in a wad because CNN is blasting propaganda at him” is missing… everything! My whole way of being just ain’t that way. It infuriates me when a Dr. sees a widget and not a human. I’d at least consider wrestling alligators for exercise and this dweeb thinks I ought to go to a gym… in a mall. (Actually I live so far in the hinterlands there is no mall.)

On the other hand, I’ve taken a hit and can’t deny it. One year ago I was riding a dirtbike solo across Wyoming at high altitude. That’s technically not “safe” for anyone but I did it. It’s certainly strenuous (especially in the thin air) and (at the time) I had more to give but just ran out of time. Last year’s accomplishments are a baseline I’m clearly not up to yet.

As a “compromise” I’ve been cutting firewood… cautiously. I’m only doing small amounts while I build stamina. Short “sessions”, only a few days a week. But it’s something. At first I was using my little electric saw, but as I got more “into it” I was working harder and needed to switch to gas. (Don’t get impressed, moving up from battery saws to gas is progress but I’m still slow as shit compared to true production logging, or even me a few years ago.)

I have a Stihl MS361. It spent many months ignored but it’s a loyal friend and I’m glad to be using it again. I’ve had it about 15+ years. I’ve worked it like a rented mule.

Unfortunately, it got a little out of tune. I’m not sure why, only that it did. It would start easily and run strong, but it would stall out on any extended pause. If I felled a tree and the saw was idle for 30 seconds while I waded through the brush to get to the first part of bucking the log… it would be dead when I got there. It would start up right away, but stalling was an issue that I could no longer ignore.

I looked online and found the instructions to tweak the idle speed. Here they are. Looks simple to me:

I carefully turned the low speed screw (L) 1/4 turn. Then started her up to adjust the idle speed (LA). Except I couldn’t. She wouldn’t start.

Here’s the thing. Saws are finicky and my saw is peculiar in that it’ll either start right away or not at all. I know what you’re all thinking. You’re leaping to give advice about blowing off, replacing, or gapping the sparkplug, cleaning the air filter, checking the fuel intake, etc… Please spare me. I’ve been through it all before. The saw’s just got personality. Works great but you’d better set the choke right when you start it cold or your day is over before it starts.

That said, it has been flawless for years. Starting every damn time! I had the routine down cold. Full choke, on the third pull it’ll try to start. Go to half choke, on the second pull it’ll fire right up. That was happening with perfect regularity, but if I forgot to set the choke or something it would get flooded and I’d be fucked.

I know all the tricks to start a recalcitrant saw, but for some reason my MS361 just won’t listen to reason. 99% of the time it cuts wood like an ape on crack… 1% of the time it’s on strike like a New York City unionized garbageman. No middle ground!

I’d messed it up! I panicked! I tried to turn the screw back the exact 1/4 turn and undo what I’d done. I left it overnight and gave it a shot at a cold start. Nope! The saw had gone on strike.

That’s when I did the wisest thing I’ve done in a while; I put down the saw and stepped away from it. I was starting great. Whatever I’d done didn’t “undo” right away. Time to pay someone smarter than me to fix it.

She’s in the shop right now. It’s probably for the best. It’s roasting hot out and I should be resting today. I have to constantly guard against my own tendency to overwork myself and it’s like the saw decided I needed a break. 🙂

What’s the point of all this? There is no point. Only that I like my saw and Sithl in general but it’s super sensitive to the damn carb screw. It hasn’t been “tweaked” in like a decade so I can’t complain… but I guess I am.

If it’s cooler tomorrow I might go back to the little battery saw and flog it mercilessly. We’ll find out if the batteries overheat before I do (which I doubt, I’m still weak). Or maybe I’ll listen to the wisdom of my chainsaw as it spends the weekend at the saw spa, and take a few days off.

I know that Ron Swanson is a fictional character, but I like this little story. It reminds me of yesterday’s post.

Jackie’s message is one we’ve heard a thousand times, yet maybe we need to re-hear it from time to time. I got real sick this spring. I was trying to muddle through, balancing job and time and everything. Doctors kept kicking the can down the road. There was a lot of “you have to wait 2 weeks for the results to come in and then another week before I read the results. Then I’ll schedule a follow up… how does six weeks from next October sound to you?”

One day I was thinking “this ain’t getting better”, and then the darker thoughts intruded; “how many ‘six week delays’ do I have in me?” Back at work it was the same old shit but it was piling up and my heart hasn’t been in it. I saw how they acted during COVID (especially HR) and I can never feel the same again. It simply is what it is.

I did something I’m still kinda’ shocked about. I changed everything.

I don’t want to spew personal stuff so I won’t offer details. Suffice to say I did the one thing most people don’t do. I dedicated 100% of my efforts to getting healthy.

I went at it with hammer and tongs. The first part was to overcome foot dragging. Every doctor’s office that said “I’ll get back to you in 3 weeks” got a steady barrage of calls. “If you’re too busy, who isn’t? Give me a referral to someone who can attend to this now.” I pestered schedulers and labs. “If you can’t do that lab test for a month, who can? Where are they?”

The second part was geographic blinders. I think most patients will only go to the most convenient medical location, I made it clear that I would go anywhere anytime and do so gladly. I wanted quality treatment and I wanted it now. No half assing and no excess delays. “Location X is booked up for months? What about location Y? Can you schedule me there? I don’t care how far it is. I have a truck and I’m still healthy enough to drive it.”

The third part was financial. Money is only good for the things you can buy with it. Also, I live like a pauper even when well employed… so I had emergency savings. One must remember what savings are for. Also, I have good insurance for which I pay mightily but, of course, they’re not the final say. The incentive of insurance is to draw things out as long as possible. I wasn’t putting up with it. People treat insurance like “daddy” instead of “a thing for which I paid”. I hassled whomever needed hassling. “You haven’t gotten insurance pre-approval? You expect that to take a couple weeks or more? Let me call insurance. I’ll get an answer or *die trying.” (*Possibly literally). Many times I asked “how much does it cost without insurance?” (Usually the answer is terrifying, but not always.) And I indeed burned cash like I didn’t care; “The co-pay is how much? You don’t really know if it’s necessary? Fuck it, I’ll pay.”

For a few meds that got held up I just plain bought them with real American dollar bills. This baffled the pharmacist but I was a bulldog. “Med X isn’t covered? Oh, you’re waiting to have insurance approve? It’ll take how long to hear back? That’s bullshit, how much does it cost with real money?” Here’s a shocker. We always hear about lifesaving medicine A or B that costs thousands of dollars a month and that’s tragic, but it doesn’t go that way all the time. I had a few medicines that insurance held up that were “old”. There’s one (I’m not saying which one) that was something like a $10 co-pay but insurance was being a bitch about it. The dr. had changed my dosage and insurance was like “you too recently refilled at the old dosage so you will just have to wait”. Turns out it was $10 co-pay or something like $13 if I paid cash. I handed the pharmacist a $20 bill. She looked at me like I was the biggest drug dealer in the county, but I got my meds. I’ve also driven dozens or hundreds of miles from Pharmacy A (which is sold out) to Pharmacy B (which isn’t). This is apparently something nobody else does.

Did it work? Yeah, kinda’. I was in very bad shape. Now I’m “shaky but recovering”. Well worth it!

Everything else? Ignored. No boat. No squirrels. No camping. The lawn looks like shit. My vehicles need an oil change. Not much motorcycle riding. I cancelled an important family trip. I chose to empty my cup and do just the thing that needs doing. No regrets.

Could I have done it all while juggling the old job and keeping politely to the insurance and medical monopoly timeline? No. I’m not sure if I’d have died. Maybe? Probably not. Unquestionably, the ensuing months would’ve been torture. I certainly wouldn’t be doing as well as I am in the time it took to get here.

We all say “health is everything” but our actions don’t show that. We treat health like it’s one of a dozen equally important things. I’m just sayin’.

There’s a second part to this story.

When I was a kid, my mom was captain of the volunteer emergency squad. She had a pager back when such things were rare and cell phones didn’t exist. She and several other (EMTs?) arranged schedules such that there would always be a crew of people “on call”. They’d be at home or in town but near their pager and near the firehouse (where the ambulance was parked). During “on call” hours if the pager went off shit got real. Mom would stampede for the car (often practically running over her clueless son).

As far as I know, she never got paid a penny. I don’t know how many lives she saved. I don’t know how many times the ambulance arrived too late. I only know that pager went off and I’d dive for cover. And I’d be proud of my mom.

Some calls were short. Some dipshit fell in a ditch and broke a leg; transport to the hospital and be back at home before dinner is too cold. Other calls were longer… much sadder. Farm implement accidents, car collisions, housefires, etc… Mom would come home worn out. She’d have either succeeded or not at what was surely one hell of a experience. She didn’t share the details with me, but of course I heard various stories. Ambulance crews see shit that horror movies wouldn’t show.

The thing I learned is that all things are relative. My mom, God bless her, was calibrated according to a baseline I can’t quite imagine. I’d come to her with a skinned knee and she’d be like “That’s not so bad, last Tuesday old man Wilson had his leg ripped in half. Here’s a band aid.”

She wasn’t wrong. Eventually I just figured out where the bandaids were and took care of things myself. Is that not part of growing up? It just was a thing; one does not come to mom with skinned knees and paper cuts when she recently witnessed some dude wrapped around an unshielded PTO.

So too with my illness. It was fuckin’ serious to me. Terrifying, painful, possibly final… and a thing that made me drop all other plans and activities. Yet it don’t mean shit to anyone else. And I get that. The people at a hospitals I went to have seen things. For that matter, so have millions of others. We (all of us) are surrounded by people that faced worse. My situation was not a heart attack. I didn’t get lung cancer. No appendages got ripped off. I expect to be my regular self (full recovery!) though it’ll take as long as it takes.

“That’s nothing. Here’s a band aid.”

It makes me laugh. God trained me at age nine for what’s hitting me now. I humbly know that my little tempest in a teapot is nothing. I browbeat some doctors and labs until it was figured out, then I scampered off and fully dedicated myself to recovery. Easy peasy.

For everyone, and especially the many of you are dealing with shit far more serious than this particular blogger, I wish you well.

A.C.

P.S. And put a shield on the fucking PTO!

You’re wondering when the Cyberbrick gadgetry ties in with 3d printing? That starts now! After I was done sorting and stashing “stuff” from the Cyberbrick kit (a dual kit!), I wandered over to MakerWorld and picked the project I’d build.

I started simple. I would make a remote controlled toy forklift and the remote itself. This is one of the basic, pushed by Bambulab, models. I figured it was plenty complex enough for yours truly.

It was super simple to download the “project” for the forklift. The “project” has several “plates”. I fired the first “plate” through Bambu Studio “slicer” and the printer without any effort at all.

I did nothing but pick out the filament color. In this case PLA Black. (PLA is the simplest and easiest and cheapest of plastics but it’s still plenty good for what is basically a toy.) BTW: There’s no reason why you need print only one part at a time. You can see that about a dozen parts all came out on a single plate.

Voila!

I did almost no “post processing”. I just popped the parts off the plate and tossed them in a box (lest a few parts vanish).

Then shit got real! PLA is so simple a monkey can do it. I’ve also “leveled up” to PETG, a plastic with superior traits that’s only mildly more finicky. But the design I wanted had “tank treads”. That requires flexible prints.

The most common filament that can flex is called TPU. All filaments are affected by relative humidity but some more than others. PLA can be managed with desiccant and luck. PETG needs a little more attention but not much. TPU requires drying. (At least that’s what they recommend.)

Lucky me, I bought a filament dryer months ago. I hadn’t used it much but it was there taking up desk space. Turns out it’s simple and easy to use. I took a deep breath, opened a fresh spool of TPU, and ran it through the dryer. My dryer is a Creality Space PI Filament Dehydrator for two spools. The dryer’s name is stupid but Creality is an established 3D printer company.

There are many dryers and I suspect they all work about the same. I like what I got but you can get by much cheaper (for example, my dryer can handle two spools at once but you can squeeze the price down by choosing a single spool model). Many innovators try experiments with toaster ovens and whatnot. But I’m hooked on 3d printing and was happy to just have the “wet filament” issue “solved”. I dropped just over $80. As always YMMV.

Oh you think I’m done? Nope! The thing about making actual existing things in the real world is that the real world has hidden complexity. I had to learn new techniques to print  TPU. First of all I have a Bambulab A1 Combo. The “combo” part of the equation is a device that allows me to run up to 4 filaments at a time through a handler called AMS Lite.

TPU is “squishy”. The AMS Lite can’t push a noodle. Don’t fret, there’s no single printer that’s perfect for all uses and there’s always (usually) a solution.

It’s stupidly easy to “bypass” the AMS Lite and feed the flexy TPU directly into the printer. (I’ll admit I watched a few YouTube videos to figure out the process. It takes like 30 seconds once you grok the situation.)

Here’s a photo of me running TPU from a cereal box.

Watch out when I say “cereal box”! This is not just any cereal box! It’s a super awesome spool holding box!

<At this point I went off on a tangent about my “fleet” of spool holding boxes and why they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. I cut that out of this post and put it in the next. Forgive me in advance, I love my cereal box conversions.>

So now that I’m feeding dried filament straight from my special dry box straight to the printer (bypassing the AMS Lite), I’m ready for TPU right? Wrong!

For reasons I’m not entirely sure about, the nozzle that comes with the Bambulab A1 Combo is not good for TPU. I had to buy a different variant of what’s called a “hot end”. <Insert joke here.> Happily “hot ends” are cheap! <Insert raunchier joke here.>

Hot ends come in different diameters. The OEM hot end is 0.04. A couple months ago I’d bought hot ends in 0.02 (for fine slow work) and 0.06 (for thicker faster work).

Hot ends also come in “regular” and “hardened”. <Good grief, the jokes write themselves!> Apparently TPU is coarse or something and needs “hardened”. A few months ago, in anticipation of the TPU learning curve, I bought a 0.04 Hardened hot end. (They’re cheap… something like $7 I think.)

When in doubt, I always make a cool toolbox. I printed up a “hot end” holder so I wouldn’t lose anything. (I didn’t make this design, I just downloaded it.)

Since I had the parts there was no excuse not to swap the “hot end”. This is what the print head looks like with the cover on.

You can pop off the cover without tools.

You can swap the hot end without tools too. I was freaked out that I’d damage something but it’s actually no big deal.

So did the TPU work?

YES!

Flexible tracks! It’s amazing what a 3d printer can do.

There’s more cool stuff I’ve printed for the project but I’ve written too long about the TPU*. I’ll post more later.

A.C.

*When I bought the printer I was already looking forward to TPU. TPU can be printed as gaskets, Crocs, fishing lures, sheaths, etc… I’m super glad I’ve approached that part of the learning curve.

Cyberbrick is a (mild) challenge right at the start. It’s just a box, not even a big one. Crammed in that box are several dozen bits of “stuff”. The “stuff” is in plastic bags that only partially explain what they hell they are. There’s minimal documentation and all the “handholding” details are on-line. (There’s plenty on line!) Thus, the challenge begins as soon as you open the box and try to make sense of the ensuing mixed up pile of “stuff“.

It’s just a box of “stuff“. 

The “stuff” is a kit with sufficient parts to make one “thing“. You can buy a larger kit that has parts to make two “things“. Here’s where 3d printers are weird. You’re asking “what thing”? The answer is “whatever damn thing you choose”.

I bought the “double kit” because why not? I recommend that for anyone. Yeah it costs more but then you’re not screwed if you lose some bit or widget.

I realized immediately that everything is tiny and therefore must stay corralled. Given the slightest chance, various bits will fall off your table and disappear into an alternate dimension. Make yourself a workspace or you’ll lose half your shit before you even get started!

Trust me on this, if you can avoid losing shit you’re already halfway to complete success. Dump this complexity on the kitchen table and your cat will eat half of it before you’re done picking out the filament colors for your 3D prints!

In my case, I setup a magnifying glass with light to see the “stuff”. I have owned it for several years and used it for various other projects. You might not need that. Ya’ whippersnapper!

I also ordered a “kit” of tiny screwdrivers… which made me happier than a set of screwdrivers ought. They’re all the same and they all come from who knows where in China. I selected a “58 in 1 Cordless Eectric* Precision Screwdriver with 50 Magnetic Bits“. (*It is not I but them that misspelled “electric”!)

This kit is massive overkill for a single Cyberbrick project but just look at it… it’s shiny and colorful… it’s practically a trout lure for humans! How can you resist? I only used a few bits (and I didn’t need the electronic driver at all) but I have no regrets. Also, if you’re a normal human with a normal collection of normal tools you do not have the tiny hex and Philips bits you’ll need.

After that, get some smallish boxes. As a 3d printing nerd I have plenty of them lying around. (3d filament comes in boxes of just the right size!)

Put the stuff in the boxes and work from there. You’ll thank me.

Then, because nothing makes a nerd happier than procrastinating, I printed a super elaborate box to hold my “double kit”. There’s several of these lurking on MakerWorld and I picked one of the more elaborate ones. It has little nesting containers for every little bit and bauble. Some of the compartments I never quite figured out, others are obvious.

Just look at it! Is that not the most groovy “parts kit” you ever saw? (This is what it looks like after I used half of the kit.)

The kit came with some decals. I slapped one on the top of my little parts box.

Incidentally, the “parts kit box” (which is not necessary at all and merely me being a huge dweeb) requires six dowel pins for the hinges. It only needs six dowels and they’re cheap. Unfortunately, buying from MakerWorld requires shipping and I break out in hives paying shipping that costs as much as some cheap little hardware. So I bought 80(!) dowel pins from Amazon (it cost $6.99 for a box of 80 pins). I reasoned that I’d probably like to make more hinges in the future so why not? Here’s the link: M2 X 30mm Stainless Steel Dowel Pin. (This is entirely unrelated to the Cyberbrick project itself, the pins are just for the box.)

Have I dithered enough? I think so! Remember, this is for fun, it ain’t a job! Take your time y’all!

Plus, I’ll actually make progress in the next post.

A.C.

P.S. If you click an Amazon link and buy anything, I get a small kickback. Thanks. It’s not limited to things I pointed out (like obscure stainless steel dowel pins). If you had an enormous and expensive purchase in mind, start with my link and I’ll get beer money. Don’t fret that I’m selling you out to corporate overlords to make a buck. I’m only including links because it’s my way of “paying it forward”. I like when I see some guy doing a cool thing and he specifies he used part/tool XYZ and I can just click on the link and say “yeah, I’ll take one of them”. It’s not a big money thing. I cleared something like $4 last month. 🙂

[I’ve been ill. It sucked but I’m getting better. For a while I lost mental capacity. I’m not saying I was brain dead (though it’s been said). It’s just that I couldn’t do much creative writing, or concentrate on a good book, or even just… “think”. Pain will do that to ya’. I wonder if the lack of mental reflection that vexed me so is the normal state for a lot of otherwise healthy (perhaps NPC-ish) humans? Anyway, just as the first thing to go was mental so too is its welcome return. I’m dying to get out there and tramp around the forest but the body heals slower than the mind… at least in this case. I fret at the rapidly expended summertime. I fume at my lack of camping and motorcycles and sailing. But, it is what it is. Rather than curse the darkness, I lit a candle. I’ve found some solace in mental activities. That’s where today’s post got its start.]

Y’all know I’ve only owned a 3D printer for 6 months. I’m pretty much a total n00b. On the other hand I’ve been working that fun little gadget like a rented mule and learning as fast as I can. There was a brief hiatus when I was well and truly out of commission, but recently I dusted off the ignored nerd-tech and thought “what now”?

Indeed, a machine that can do anything is a bit of a cypher. Since it can do anything, it’s up to you to define it’s purpose in your. I suppose the same could be said of many things; a metal lathe, a nice set of chisels, etc…

I’m old enough to remember when the first computers priced within consumer levels came on the scene. Their use was obvious in factories and accountant’s offices, but what do you do with one in your living room.

I miss those days. Back before computers became human control devices and the masses became marionettes on a social media string. But I digress.

For my 3D printer I decided my new personal stretch (?) goal would be to make 3d prints that work with electronics. Make an object that does stuff.

I’m not the first to think of such a thing. But I’m not a fan of soldering irons and circuit boards, so where to go from there? Bambulab, one of many sellers of 3D printers (and the one that has me firmly in it’s laser sights) practically read my mind.

They’d set the intellectual trap before I even wandered down the path. They called it Cyberbrick and the only reason I didn’t already have “it” was that they sold out immediately. Well played Bambulab!

“Cyberbrick” is Bambulab’s pre-packaged array of electronic bits; mini-boards with various features (including Bluetooth connectivity), solderless connectors, motors, gears, the electronic innards of controls, tiny LED lights, switches, rechargeable batteries, tiny little levers, etc… Highly refined crack to addict my nerd mind!

As part of their pre-launch efforts, Bambulab invited their willing cadre of mad-scientists (some sponsored and some not) to take this package of “stuff” and 3d print for it housings and mountings and so forth. Thus, people smarter than I turned “pile of parts” into “thing of interest”. Sweet!

Bambulab and their mad-scientist fanboys began posting “projects”. Free downloadable files guiding the creation of the 3d printed portion of the equation; often coupled with excellent documentation (sometimes you-tube videos too).

I wanted in on the fun!

There could be no more attractive lure to troll in front of a Curmudgeon. And the timing was (is?) perfect. There I was, gradually getting my feet under myself and looking for a 3d based intellectual distraction. Bambulab didn’t just set the hook, they harpooned my psyche and reeled me in!

I present to you: Cyberbrick. (It’s nestled into Babmulab’s “MakerWorld” environment. I don’t think you need a login to see it, but I’m not sure of that.)

Go ahead and click it. You know you want to.

One last note, Cyberbrick itself is nothing more than a pile of parts. You could (if you’re a friggin’ genius or very experienced) do the same thing with “off the shelf” bits. Lots of clever folks could do the same thing with a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino; design 3d components, mount tiny electronic bits, go nuts with a soldering iron, etc… I’m nowhere near that level; there are folks with enough inventive gumption to make Tony Stark look like a wimp and I salute them!

The way to think of Cyberbrick is as a beginner’s start. It’s the free hit of dopamine that will slowly ease you from a guy 3d printing model trains or decorative cupholders onto the path of full blown electronic wizardry. (None of this is mandatory. Some folks can enjoy the edges of the ocean without diving in… and go right back to printing toys and tchotchkes. That’s OK, it’s a free world.) As for me, I started with pencil boxes and little boxes but I’m well aware the rabbit hole goes deeper. Cyberbrick let me go down the rabbit hole (a little bit) without requiring a big dramatic swan dive!

Some notes:

• You don’t need a Bambulab 3d printer, you need any 3d printer.
• Cyberbrick totally eliminates soldering.
• Cyberbrick has pre-programmed software for your gadget. (Or you can program for yourself in a Python variant.)
• Much of what you put into a project can later be taken back out. You can use the bits in a different project. (Though that didn’t work out for me. Once I built my first gadget I fell in love with it and won’t tear it down now.)
• Don’t like the projects Bambulab is pushing? Choose any of the many that associated creatives have posted. They’re all free (as far as I know). Or design your own.
• One possible “ultimate level up” in this “game” is to design some 3d “object” that’s so damn cool that people want it, and then post it on MakerWorld. (MakerWorld has some sort of kickback mechanism to encourage such things.)

More will be coming. Please be patient I’m not really up to posting daily for a while.

A.C.

P.S. In case you’re wondering, I don’t get jack squat from Bambulab (or from MakerWorld). In case you’re with Bambulab or MakerWorld, shoot me some samples please!

Civilization is not spread evenly. The Sistine Chapel is a masterpiece. Yet it was built in a world where much of humanity lived in mud huts. Don’t get cocky; some people still live in mud huts.

Nor is civilization evenly distributed across time. A lot of people assume everything inevitably “progresses” forward; upward and better. This is an incorrect assumption made by folks who have seen nothing else. Anyone who’s experienced mud huts in real-time is not so dismissive of modern comforts and will happily struggle to keep the lights on.

Civilization ebbs and flows. It mirrors the society which fosters or erodes it. Society reflects the character of its people. None of this implies things must get better or can’t get worse. Nor are you limited to the level of the society in which you’re stuck. A life lived well can and should be independent of the masses.

Chuck Mangione died this week. He produced this song in 1979. I remember hearing it on the radio. I lived in a world where this song was popular, commercially successful, and performed (or broadcast) to willing audiences.

Cardi B is still among us. She produced this in 2020. I remember hearing it on the radio. I live in a world where this song was popular, commercially successful, and performed (or broadcast) to willing audiences. S0 do you.

I apologize for exposing y’all to Cardi B. I wanted to make a point that 41 years forward in time doesn’t guarantee (or even imply) 41 years forward in civilization. The songs I picked are just an example. It’s not a perfect representation. If I wanted to play devil’s advocate I could’ve picked the best of 2025 and compare it to the worst of 1979… but I know damn well it would be a harder search.

When I first heard WAP on the radio I was shocked. Here’s the funny part, I wasn’t shocked by a woman in heat chanting about her vagina; good lord there’s no indecency left unexplored (not necessarily just in rap, pretty much anything on any media is awash in perversion). The thing that hit me was that people listened to that crap voluntarily.

To me, it’s almost painfully bad. It’s objectively… crap. I don’t like exposing myself to it. I wouldn’t rub dogshit on my face, why listen to Cardi B?

Anyway, when someone (often tied to politics) is telling you “progress” must go forward they’re fools. It’s a two way street and always has been.

The good news is that society can go in the tank or fly to the stars and that has nothing to do with you. You may improve or you may degrade… it’s a journey you take alone. The collective’s failings and strengths will reflect in the state of civilization at that particular time and place but if it all goes to shit you can (and should) choose to disengage.

The trick is knowing when you’re in the Sistine Chapel and when you’re rubbing dog shit on your face. Once you figure that out, you can shake it off and walk toward the light.

Good luck y’all.

I’ve been happily distracting myself with my 3d printer. One thing about additive printing is that the top layer of the object* can have funky textures as an artifact of printing. (i.e. The object was printed in a zillion little lines, the lines can make the very top layer of the object’s “layer cake” creation took weird.) This isn’t usually a structural issue, just a cosmetic one.

I was making a print that I wanted to look “pretty”. It had a big flat top so here’s what I did to “spiff it up”:

I delved into “top layer ironing”. The Bambu Studio slicer software (and most of the equivalent slicers I could use) has “ironing” settings. These tell the slicer to perform differently on the top layers. It slows things down, but only on the top layers (you might have as few as one or two top layers so it’s potentially worth it).

In the Bambu Studio software load your objects. Then go into “Quality”. Scroll down to “Ironing”, select “Top surfaces” for ironing type and then you’re stuck choosing details about 5 possible parameters. I selected “rectilinear” as the “Ironing pattern” but after that I was out of knowledge.

I needed to indicate “Ironing speed” (obviously this is the speed of the print head but only during the very top surface) and “Ironing flow” (again the flow for the top layer only). I had no idea what to do.

So I downloaded a “test object”. (I found it here.) Someone who’s more experienced than me created a 5 x 5 grid of little flat surfaces (about 1/2″ square). For each square the designer specified a % flow and mm speed. It’s setup with 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 % and the same increments for mm. Thus, a complete sample of all possible options. I would call this an “orthogonal” sample but I’m not sure if that’s the right vocabulary anymore.

The difference between the little 1/2″ squares is very small. More a matter of feel than vision. I selected 30% and 40 mm (it’s circled in marker in the image). The object I made with these settings came out very nice. YMMV.

All in all it was a nice little “science experiment”. I wound up learning how to calibrate my own printer with whatever filament I’ve loaded under whatever conditions I was printing. That’s what I like about 3d printing. It felt good to use real world experimentation rather than just assuming some authority has determined the perfect setting in all situations.

Here’s what my “test” looks like:

A.C.

*The very bottom layer of your object will have a texture determined mostly by the plate upon which you extruded the object. Mine look awesome (at least to my untrained eye). You can buy a zillion plates with a zillion textures (and other features). So far my default OEM plate has served me very well and I haven’t needed or tried other plates.