Time-lapse video of a spool bolt and nut being printed. Frames were shot 10 seconds apart, so at 25 fps, each second covers 4:10 of build time. It takes about two and a half minutes to cover a 10-hour-plus job.

Added a camera to the printer so I can see what it’s doing when I’m away…useful while it’s still at the office. Since the office lights switch off automatically, there’s a cheap table lamp keeping it lit until I rig it with LED strip lighting. It’ll send low-framerate (5 fps) live video, and it can produce time-lapse video of a printing session.

Something I definitely need to make, though: a tool to focus the lens.

(Right now, it’s printing a filament-spool bolt and nut. With them, filament should pay out more easily. Right now, the spool is spinning around a length of M8 threaded rod.)

My first designed-from-scratch 3D-printed object:

William Shatner pwns Paul Krugman. ?

Tabi would’ve been 38 today. :(

On trail

From today’s drive up to West Wendover.

Killing time waiting for the Whoreman crew to arrive.

I bought a 3D printer and didn’t even know this existed beforehand. Print your own model airplane? Print replacement parts for it when you auger in? There’s not enough time in the day to explore the limits of what you can do with this thing…this beats the hell out of the .049-powered P-51 I had as a kid that only flew in circles at the end of a tether.

Starting to get a grip on reliably getting good results from my printer. This is a reinforcement brace I made today…tried a couple or three times before, but this one’s flawless. It turned out to be a combination of slicer settings (mainly to slow down the printer, especially for the first layer) and print bed preparation (a $3 can of hairspray makes print jobs stick to the bed almost too well).