Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Crosswires. It's James here. Now, first of all, do have to apologize. We have no J this time around. Jay's had to sort of COVID a bit of a shift at the bead store. So don't worry, you're in safe hands. In fact, not only do you have one Janes, you've got two.
James Smith.
Oh, yeah. How you doing?
[00:00:31] Speaker A: I'm all right, mate. You?
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm really good. I am actually really good now. This is the second time we've sat down to record this episode.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: And so much has changed since.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: Total, I think.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, might be.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: Actually, we did one on Mastodon.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: We did. Well, this particular 3D printing.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Episode is a. Yes, but no, this will be your second.
Second actual appearance that goes live. Now, James is. I mean, obviously got to know James because, well, he's the moderator, one of the moderators of admin. Sorry.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: No, no, no, It's. I'm not. Not precious about it.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: I just find the build not at all. Right.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: I'm sort of a conduit for the build to go through, that's all.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: So James is one of the admins, or is the admin, I guess, of Mastodon.me.uk which is the instance. Actually, both Jay and I are on because they very kindly let the American in, which was lovely often, you know, and obviously go back and listen to our introduction to Buffetti Verse. And then we also had just on the whole Mastodon thing, of course, we had Hugo from Masto host come and join as well to talk all about that service. So we got. We got a fair amount of Mastodon content going on, but that's not what we are here to talk about.
Now, before we go much further, just a very practical thing. It is absolutely roasting in the UK right now.
So James and I will be drinking water. I apologize sincerely. If you hear gulping or any. Anything else, it is only water. And you will see that in hopefully the video version.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: I don't think you can hear me sweat, but, you know, if it gets. If it gets too bad.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: I don't know. I nearly had to change T shirts. Like. No, no, it's fine. No one can see. No one can see the area of it sweating. Okay, that'll do for me.
All right, so we're here to talk 3D printing. Now, James, let's start with kind of, I guess, first of all, tell people a little bit for those who haven't heard a previous episode. Give. Give your little pitch of who you are. And then we'll, we'll talk printing.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Okay, I can do. I'm James Smith, I'm software guy. Been building things on computers and on the Internet for.
Well, as long as I've been able to. Really done lots and lots of stuff on the web over the last decade and a half through various tech for good type things, public sector and all sorts of stuff like that.
And currently I'm building a self hosted tool for 3D printing people called Manifold.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: So is it. We got it Manifold or manifold? Manifold.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: It's got a bit of both. You just sort of average it out and go down the middle.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I like it and it's good. Look, it's gonna be something we absolutely talk about because it, I will admit it's something I've struggled with. Is okay, what do I do with all my models? No, you know, because. Well, we'll talk about it, but let's, let's start with the basics. So 3D printing. Now when I think of printers, I think of nightmarish situations and the famous, famous scene from Office Space PC, low letter. What does that mean?
Now these are not, I say these are not as problematic, but they really can be.
But. Oh yeah, yeah.
So what is, I mean a very high level because I guess my mindset on 3D printing is. And it's probably because it's the type I've got now, filament 3D printing. But that's what is. Can you give us a bit of a. What is 3D printing? What does it encompass?
[00:04:20] Speaker A: So 3D printing in general is any one of a set of technologies, any number of different devices that let you build up an object from, from nothing.
So, well, from a, you know, whatever input the machine has. So generally otherwise known as additive manufacturing. So rather than having a lump of metal and milling it away, you're only adding the bits that you need, which is a different way of making things than we've been able to do. And it means that you can do interesting things like print objects that have joins in them that would be impossible to make if you were assembling it from parts or doing it in a, in another way.
So it's, it's that kind of anything that's sort of building it up in that additive way. There's a lot of different technologies. It's, I mean it's been very well used in industry and commercial things for years and years and years.
You know, some of the stuff they can do now is extremely fancy, but it's also very accessible at a Consumer level now with a couple of quite accessible types of technology, one of which, of course, you've just taken your first steps with. So, yes, that's all good fun, like you said. Yeah. You've got a filament printer which basically extrudes plastic in the right shape from a reel of plastic filament and built it up like that, basically like drawing, you know, all These sort of 2D shapes in a big stack. One of the other common types that you can do at home uses a resin rather than filament. So you have a liquid resin and that's normally cured by ultraviolet light. So what you have is a printer where you've got a little plate and that dips into a small vat of resin. And under the vat is a LCD display which is exposing it to ultraviolet light. So as it lifts it up, it's curing it layer by layer. And nothing sort of lifts out of the.
Of this pool of resin in a very.
In a very sci fi kind of way.
And the two different technologies are good for different things. But so FDM fused deposition something. The filament versions are very good for larger objects. You can get a much bigger area.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: Or doing things around home or things like that. Big things that don't need too much in the way of detail.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: I think you can get. You can get detail off STM printers, but it's harder.
[00:07:08] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: And then resin ones are very good for small details, small sort of batches of things. It gets used a lot for things like miniatures.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: I was, I was going to ask. Yeah.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: Small pointy spears and things like that work really well in. In resin.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: Would be very hard in fdm.
[00:07:27] Speaker B: Yes. As. I mean, like. I mean, sure.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: Benchy.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: We've got a Benchy. We've got a Benchy. So. So this is the bench. So this is a.
Now, I now believe it's open sourced. We've actually open sourced this. And this is designed to test your filament printer.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: And this one, I mean, I'm actually very.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: You're gonna have to describe what it is because it's not gonna work in audio.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: It's not gonna work in audio. You're right. I'll put a link to the. Thanks, James.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: It's a little boat. It's a little boat as a. As a test piece.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: Yes. And it's got. Think it's got different challenges for.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Your printer. So things like overhangs and holes and text on the bottom. So for a video people, you can see this. I'll put a link to a Benchy and you can see. I'll try and put a photo. But yeah, as you say, the resin ones are always going to be able to do that more detail. And I know people who do a lot of tabletop gaming and I would imagine they're probably using a resin printer rather than. Rather than filament, so. Oh, there we go.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: I showed you my own Benchy that's just been. Just been passed to me by my assistant.
[00:08:36] Speaker B: Ah. In multicolor as well, which is something I did.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: I mean, that's cheating because this was painted.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: That was painted. Okay. So fine, we're going to come to that because it is a question I have. So obviously resin is going to get messy. I assume that it needs ventilation more than say.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's a bit messier.
It involves, you know, unpleasant chemicals and cleaning up unpleasant chemicals and things like that. I've managed to, over the years because I've got a resin printer as well. That one's in the garage because of the ventilation.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: The filament printer is here. I've managed to give myself a contact allergy to the resin on my fingers. So now if I go near it without really being paranoid about gloves, my. My fingers just break out in.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: In painful things. It's. Yeah. And you don't notice it at the time. It builds up.
And so, yeah, if anyone thinks you're getting a resin printer and you. And you sort of. You have a go and you think, sorry, that didn't bother me. I don't really need to bother with gloves all the time.
Just wear gloves.
It builds up without you noticing it.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Yeah. So there are obviously the.
And this is something I've learned now, which is really cool, that actually, what, six months or maybe a bit more, we can have a. More informal. Because I remember being in absolute. Like, I knew nothing the first time we talked. And it is a shame we don't have Jay, because Jay was going to be our. What on earth are you two talking about?
[00:10:10] Speaker A: The audience proxy.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: The audience proxy. So, okay, let's start then. Because with the filament printers, obviously, it is just. It is. I mean, I would. No, I can't easily get one. I've got. I. I mean, literally got 10 boxes of kilogram filament, but I. Prime day sale. Yeah, there you go.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: All right.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I got. Well, not through Amazon, but through Creality themselves. I got like 10 kilograms of different material for about 80 quid.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, that's decent.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: So. And I guess that brings Us into the first question on filament stuff and in terms of mod printers and cost. Now filament itself, obviously, I guess, depending on the quality. Yeah, it's basically on a spool. I mean, I've, you know, I've seen typically 15 to 20 quid for a decent reel.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that'll be all right if you, if you're spending that for a kilo. Yeah, that's reasonable.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: And a kilo might not sound like a lot, but it does go.
That's the thing that surprised me. It goes. Really. It lasts a long time.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: Well, that's the thing. If you're building it up in an additive way, you're not printing or doing any parts that aren't part of the thing. Right.
Within reason.
If you've got overhangs or things like that, you sometimes need supports.
But yeah, you know, I've got a little steam deck stand there which is.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: Oh, I like that. That's nice. Yeah, that's. That's actually really cool.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: It's great.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: But yeah, you know, that's only.
I mean, what's that weighs? 30 grams or something, maybe probably less.
And so, yeah, you could, you could do a lot of those. It. It expands out to a much bigger.
You can fill your house with junk quite quickly.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: Oh, yes, No, I mean, I. So I mean, well, we say junk, obviously. Depends what you're printing. There are a lot of very useful designs and look, I. We're going to talk about the design aspect and everything like that. So obviously filament and I said about 15, 20 pounds, but there's different type of material for that filament. Now the stuff that I've been using so far is all pla, which we just off. Off like taking a quick break. Like what on earth is plaque? Pla. It's kind of like your bog standard filament. Right.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
It's the best place to start. It's the easiest one to print with.
It doesn't need any particular.
It's very accessible to use. It's easy to get started with. That'll be the first thing that you print with. Yeah, I think it's the same stuff that things like disposable water bottles tend to get made of, I think.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: Pink is PI.
No, sorry, no, that's pet. That's pet, which is a different one.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: That's a different.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: You can printed pet. PET is what water bottles are made of.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: And it's a little bit less.
It's not as permeable.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: Otherwise it'd be terrible for making water bottles with. Yep. So like pla. If you printed a cup out of pla, it would leak through the plastic. It's because.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: Yeah, because you. Yeah, it's. There's. There are gaps in the layers here.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: It's not so much that it's actually just the plastic itself is permeable.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: It's permeable. Okay, gotcha. Right.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: Whereas pla. Sorry, PET isn't. Do you remember in. The only PET I've. I've printed with was back in Covid, when nobody had any ppe?
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: And a whole bunch of people around the country or around the world were printing out designs of. Of face shields.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: So I did a bunch of them for a. A local scout group that was doing a load. So my printer was running Chinese face shields and they were done in pet because they had to be in. They couldn't be permeable because, you know, bacterial growth.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: That's all we had.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So it had to be that kind of plastic.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: There are other kinds as well. You can print in abs, which is what your Lego bricks are made of.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:26] Speaker A: That needs a hotter temperature.
Some. Most I not so sure these days, but a lot of entry level printers won't quite go hot enough for that. And also you tend to need a heated environment as well.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: To keep it in. But that you can print in that if you've got the right.
The right upgrades. You can also there's another one called tpu, which is flexible. I was going to say flexible filament. That doesn't make any sense. All the filaments are flexible.
Flexible. When printed, though, it's. It's sort of squishy.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: So you can make like. I mean, I think I've seen people. That's a good, good one to make maybe a phone case because you can fit it around.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Yeah. So it's got some. Got some give in it. Fairly easy to print with, but depending on the type of extruder you've got on your printer, obviously because it's stretchy if you're pushing. So some printers have the extruder mounted, the sort of. The thing that pushes the filament out, mounted further back and it pushes quite a long tube of filament down to the thing that doesn't work if your filament is compressible.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: Ah.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: So for tpu, you need what's called a direct drive system where it's got the extruder right there on the head.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Which again are more common now in, in.
[00:15:45] Speaker B: Yeah, and we'll come to. Yeah, we'll come to both because that is the first thing I absolutely noticed between the model my dad purchased, which actually was based on the recommendation from the first time we recorded this.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: Oh really?
[00:16:00] Speaker B: Yeah, no, no, yeah, absolutely. It was on offer and I'm like, yeah. He's like, I want to do it, I want to do it. So because he asked me about it, he said, oh, you know, and it was just before we recorded the first time. So those are really cool materials. Now the printers themselves now they used to cost a lot and I was pleasantly surprised when we first talked about how little you can have to spend to get a pretty decent printer.
Let's talk entry level because I guess and, and things have changed since we first recorded because what we were going to wreck what we, I think we recommended on the first recording is a company that we might not recommend anymore.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: I can't remember what we said, but from what you say, I think I know what we said.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: So. Okay, so. So we talked about as a value printer and like a good all rounder the bamboo A1 mini.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: But there's. Okay, I want to loop back to why we're not going to recommend that because that's a whole different discussion.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll, we'll go off on a tangent with that one.
[00:17:00] Speaker B: We'll go hard for now part that for now what determines kind of like the quality and the cost of a filament based printer.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: It's surprising really now how much you can get on an entry level printer. And by entry level I'm talking like sub pound 200.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: Which is what mine was when I first got it. What yours was. I think that it was that you've currently got.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: And is perfectly fine for most things.
I always think back to like the equivalent cost of like what the spectrum was when it broke out into the, into the mainstream.
That was when computing became accessible to anyone. Right. It was that equivalent cost. You know, it's well under that like it's much less than that was. So it's, it's a good entry level printer, is quite accessible and the entry level ones now come with a lot of features that I've done to miners upgrades over the years.
So like you're saying the extruder was yours. Has it got it on the head? Is that right? Is it direct?
[00:18:08] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. So the, so the one I've got is. And look we'll, we'll is. So I've got the Creality ender Hang on, let's get this right. Ender 3V3S E and it was under 200 was A. So I think the actual printer was about 1 70.
And then I got two. I got a bundle with two kilogram bits of.
Kilogram bits. Kilo. Two, two kilogram. Wow.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: Two kilograms of filament.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: Two.
Two reels of filament. Yes.
Black and a white. I think you could actually choose. You could actually choose the colors you wanted.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Nice. I mean those two are always handy to have as your basics.
[00:18:51] Speaker B: Absolutely. And it's, you know, it's a good printer, as you say, because. So the one that I, we bought my dad was just the original Ender 3 by Creality. And the difference in features and speed is staggering. So.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: I mean you talked about. Ok, so if someone is starting out today, I made one. Okay. I want to give this a try.
Do you have a few recommendations for sub 200 printers?
[00:19:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean you can't go far wrong with the crealities. I think they're pretty good. I've got a original Ender 3 Pro down here. You've got the modern one. It sounds like all of the fixtures that are on yours are about what. I've managed to bring mine up to parity over the years. Right. So the bed level sensor, the direct drive extruder which I only fitted onto it like six months ago.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: The quiet stepper motor board, things like that are all just standard now. All upgrades that I've done to that. It's.
Yeah, it's a bit ship of Theseus type thing. I've got a box of printer bits.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: Which I think I could very nearly build another printer out of.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: Oh wow. Okay.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: But they're very upgradable and hackable. That's the nice thing about them. So unlike you talked about, you talked about paper printers, right? Yes. There is no open hardware paper printer out there because inkjet stuff.
What's the word? Nozzles. Inkjet nozzles. Incredibly hard to make really.
They're tiny, tiny things.
So there's no, there's no sort of open printer. I would very much like to be wrong, by the way, if anybody knows of one.
I would desperately love to have an open hardware paper printer. But a lot of the ecosystem around 3D printing is based on.
I think originally it was the Prusa and Reprap type systems which were open hardware. And so the sort of the things that have come out of them have remained quite hackable and unopened. So for instance, yours will Be running.
Imagine it's running Marlin, which is an open source firmware.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: Completely open source.
[00:21:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Mine is running another open source firmware called Klipper, which is.
Does the same sort of job, does it in a slightly different way. Is in theory better at going faster.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: Though I haven't actually spent the time to tune it properly. So there's a lot of open stuff out there and historically it's been quite an open ecosystem.
So upgrades, replacing bits and pieces. It's all user serviceable, right? To a pretty large extent, yeah.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: I mean, for example, you can obviously, you can obviously replace with nozzles, but you know, you can upgrade the extruders. You can, you can. I mean, I think one of the funniest things to me is something you would posted the other day on Mastodon is something that looked like a Tardis interior. He said, no, no, that's a part for my printer. And of course, the ultimate brilliant thing varies. You can print parts for your printer.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: That's the first thing you do with the printer after you. After you've done the Benchy. Yeah, well, you do the thing it comes with, which used to be a cat. I don't know what they. They come with a default model on them these days.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: Well, mine came with a spade.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Okay, that's. Yeah, that. Okay. Yeah, fine. So you print, you print that, you probably try Benchy and then you start printing parts for your printer. That's just the way it goes. I haven't stopped. You can.
I mean, the great thing is that the thing that I was, that you pointed out that I was printing was actually a new lid for the electronics case.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: Because I've moved it around, I've just installed.
I needed a new lid for the electronics case that I could get a bigger fan in and things like that. And there wasn't one that worked exactly how I wanted. So an hour in Tinkercad and I made one and printed it and it fitted and it works. And that's brilliant. That's great. Yeah.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: Now first thing, I need to print something for mine, which is the way obviously, with this being direct drive, the filament just goes straight into the extruder.
But obviously you've got a filament spool holder on the top. Well, realistically what I probably need to do is print a little filament guide to sit just ahead of that so that it's not as messy.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I, Yeah. Filament guides, cable chains, that's always a nice popular thing. I don't know if yours has got cable guide stuff on it or whether a little bit flying around.
I remember seeing someone.
I remember seeing someone print something they'd managed to. Can't remember exactly what it was, but it was some kind of object with a, with a hole in the middle that they were printing and then managed to actually print it with the cable through the object.
So it's like. I don't know how they did it, it is just.
But it's like, right, yeah, I'm gonna print some cable guides to keep it all out the way.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: Yeah, no, there's a lot of little things, but.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, loads. Little, little anti vibration damping feet. They're fun.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: Oh, good idea.
That's a very good idea.
[00:24:51] Speaker A: So many upgrades out there on the.
[00:24:53] Speaker B: Internet and, and, and that's, and that's the case with. Would it be fair to say the majority of good printers out there right now that you can work on? I mean, there's, there's whole DIY printers. It were higher. You know, I say higher end, but there's a lot of just build it yourself completely from scratch printers. And, and we'll talk about firmware. So can't go wrong with the enders per. What's Perusa like these days? Were they much more on the high end?
[00:25:22] Speaker A: Prusa? No, I mean, they still have entry level stuff. I've never had a Prusa, but they're still very successful, very popular. They keep coming out with cool stuff. I saw a very nice one when I was at fostm. They had one with multiple extruders that. It went and knit the thing. Went and picked up the extruder that had the right filament in it and then went and did the.
You were talking about multicolor, Right?
[00:25:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: Actually just picking up different extruders and.
[00:25:51] Speaker B: Going, oh, so it's not an ams. It's just basically. Yeah. Wow.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: Oh, wow. It's just like, let's have TED extruders and we'll just.
And obviously, you know, you're saying about entry level versus more expensive. I think it's speed, it's, it's features like that. It's all sorts of. There's, there's probably all sorts of stuff, but I've never felt the need to, to go sort of beyond what is still currently an entry level.
[00:26:17] Speaker B: And what, what about the size of things you can build? Because obviously each printer will have what it, what it can support as a build volume. Now mine is 220x220 millimeters, so that's 22 centimeters by 25 centimeters. That's the highest.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:37] Speaker B: I mean there are obviously smaller ones, but I guess do you start. If you start needing more build volume, do you start ending up going into more high end?
[00:26:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, yeah. That's the other thing that will. That will scale into more expensive printers is the bigger they are the.
You know, you'll end up with things like if it's. If it's bigger, you'll need support and extruders. Certain not extruders like stepper motors for the vertical on both sides, for instance. Otherwise it'll start going a bit wobbly. Wonky. Yeah, exactly. So as. As things go up and get heavier and whatever. Yes. But yeah, I mean like you say an entry level one will do a, you know, 20 by 20 by 25.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Centimeter volume quite nicely, which is still pretty decent.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: It's.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: It's more than I've ever needed. So I think there's maybe been like one thing that I couldn't get on the plate.
[00:27:31] Speaker B: I've had that already.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: Most models will be cut for.
They'll have options that are cut for printers of that sort of size because it's pretty standard. So.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, I'm trying to at the moment. So I want to mount on the back of a TV in my lounge.
I want to mount my Apple TV and my network switch. A little Ubiquiti Unifi Flex Mini.
The problem is. So I found. I thought I was on top of things. I found a Visa 100 mount and basically could well in Tinkercadom will come to Tinkercad could kind of manage to combine the models in a way that they could fit together.
Problem is I went to go measure the Visa mount on the back of a TV. It ain't Visa 100, it's Visa 200.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: Oh yeah. Okay.
[00:28:22] Speaker B: Which is not.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: It's going to be stretching it a little so.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: Well, I be what I thought. Okay, you know what I'm gonna do because they mount. One of them only mounts to half of a visa 100. So I'm just gonna chop a model in half and print half each. And that works, you know.
Well, it would have done.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: Bit of ingenuity. You can do a lot.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: Absolutely. And I'm gonna come to why it didn't work because that's gonna be.
We'll talk about some of the joys of printing.
So going back to Creality, I mean, look, honestly, I cannot. I think the original Ender 3v3. Sorry, the Ender 3 is still a really good price, but it doesn't have bed level auto bed leveling. It doesn't have a direct extruder.
Personally, I say get the V3SE because it's.
Would it be fair to say bed leveling is something that you need fairly decent eyesight for?
Or maybe it's just my eyes. I don't know.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: No. Getting the.
So there's a bunch of things. When you get into 3D printing, you'll have to learn about how to calibrate the thing. Right. It's not trivial to. It's not like a paper printer where you just plug it in and turn it on and print something. There are. I mean, it's probably better now, but there. Especially with things like the automatic bed probes. But yeah, like you've put it all together out of this box. So how does it know exactly how high the nozzle is off the bed? And that has to be quite precise to get a good stick to the bed and things like that.
So things like the probe which you've got on there standard and I think most current ones will have that now just make that automatic. It. It's.
It goes click. All right, there it is.
And that does mean that you can do some.
Some other things as well. Like you can actually probe the shape of the bed because again, I don't know what they're like now. It's probably better, but certainly in the. In the earlier days. And mine. Mine has a bit of a. A sort of a.
A wonky.
Wonky bed that's vastly exaggerated obviously, but it has a bit of a curve in it so it sticks. It's different heights across the bed and using probe, you can measure that right for it. So that's very good. But yeah, I think, you know, it used to be that you would calibrate exactly the height of the nozzle above the bed with a. With a bit of paper and stepping it up and down in the. In the interface and things like that and just.
Okay, that's about right. I don't think you have to do that now. It's got a lot easier. Which is. Which is great that those convenience features are making it into the sort of the entry level stuff. Yeah, that's great.
[00:31:14] Speaker B: No, it has been a lot easier for me again, particularly my eyesight. I mean the assembly of this. Honestly, this took me about 20 minutes.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: Me and my dad trying to build an Ender 3, about an hour and a half. So genuinely can recommend this thing.
I want to quickly touch on because I assume this is a good point to talk about this. So Bamboo, because you talked about openness and you said, oh, mine's running this firmware now. I assume that's not the firmware it came with. Right? That's.
[00:31:46] Speaker A: Mine is. No, mine's running Klipper, which I installed. Yeah, it did come with Marlin, which is. Which is open source firmware.
I suspect yours is as well. I don't know that they're still doing that, but it'll be Marlin or probably some derivative of that. Or it might be Clipper. I don't know.
[00:32:02] Speaker B: Okay, do you know what? I don't. I don't even know how to find out. I'll have a look at the specs for it and see. But, but the point is, when you've got openness like that, you can say, okay, as you've done, put Clipper on, which just means, look, it might be better tuned for what you're doing. It might be an interface you're more familiar with and it might support additional features because there's a lot of stuff you can do.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, lots.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: You know, and I want to talk about some about. But what happens. And we know what happens when we start getting into. And look, I'm a huge Apple fan, but I think it's probably fair to say Bamboo might have become the Apple of 3D printing.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: I think that's maybe a fair comparison.
They're possibly perhaps a little unfair on Apple, which is not something you're like. So the thing. Yeah, so what, what Bamboo seem to be doing is they seem to be wanting to make sure that you are sort of starting to enclose a little bit, right. It's starting to build the walls around the walled garden to say, right, we want you to be downloading models from our site. We want you to be slicing them in our slicer, we want you to be printing them on our printer and that and sort of keeping that all in their ecosystem. Right. So they're trying to sort of do that and we, we should all be used to this by now, right? Companies attempting to capture an ecosystem of things.
And that's. I don't really see why it's necessary for a start.
But, you know, because they might have, they made some great little printers. The hardware is really good. This happens every now and again. People go, oh, no, for security, we need to make sure that it's sliced with our slicer and, and then the files are properly encrypted so that we can get them up to the printer and it's like, well, what security.
What security are you worried about exactly. That that is going to help with.
So it's not a good look in what is fundamentally a very open ecosystem to start doing that kind of thing. And I understand why, because companies are companies and companies need to retain customers and they need to keep you in their ecosystem. Right. And so that's what they're trying to do. And they're not the only ones. Right. This has happened with some of the SLA printers. A while back there was definitely a thing because my. Mine is running some old firmware before the upgrade that added the encrypted file format. I think it's just a natural corporate tendency to try and capture, I think a little bit.
But you get some weird things like. So Bamboo have their own printers.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:34:51] Speaker A: Right. There's a few interesting things apart from the printer. Things you will need are a tool called a slicer, which is a thing that.
A bit of software that takes a 3D model which is made up of point clouds and triangles and things like that, and it literally slices it and turns it into a tool path for the printer. So it turns it into a stack of, if it's a resin printer, actually a stack of exposure shots for the, for the thing, if it's a filament one. Literally like, okay, go this much that way, that much that way, extrude here, whatever, and draw that line around.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: Right, okay. Yeah.
[00:35:33] Speaker A: So that's what the slicer does.
There are lots and lots of slicers, lots of slicer software out there. Most of the printer manufacturers have their own.
Quite a few of them are actually all based on the same bit of open source software, but they've just sort of stuck their own labels on it and added in support for their special file formats and things like that. So there's.
They sort of try and differentiate themselves. There's. Or try and get you to use theirs by default there. But then also you've got the model hosting sites you have.
Most of them are, most of them are owned by printer manufacturers.
[00:36:15] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:36:16] Speaker A: So Thingiverse is the one that's been around longest. That's run by Ultimaker.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:36:25] Speaker A: Printables is run by Prusa and Makerworld is run by Bamboo.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: Right now it's fun little things like from. If you want to use the Bamboo slicer because of some bit of, you know, something they have in there, you can open models in the Bamboo slicer from Makerworld really easily, but not from other websites because they have a little bit in the code that says just make sure it's from MakerWorld and Print and Prusa do it too. With PrusaSlicer, it will only load from printables. If you download the file and bring the file in, you can do that from anywhere. But the, the kind of click on. If you're on printable, click on the theme. If you're going to Prusa Slicer, that sort of easy workflow, sort of a little bit artificially sort of restricted to keep you in the ecosystem.
And so there's this tendency, I think, that I think a lot of them do and there are good reasons for it. I should think that people can make. I don't really know what they are, but then I'm a, you know, radical open advocate. So, you know, I'm not going to get it.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: Hippie. Yeah, sorry.
[00:37:41] Speaker A: Open source Anarchist.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Oh my gosh.
Don't let a certain orange president hear you say, say that. Right.
[00:37:49] Speaker A: I will say it as loud as possible so that.
[00:37:52] Speaker B: Good man, good man. All right.
So, yeah, because look, I've used printables. I have used, I mean, Thingiverse has been my go to.
[00:38:01] Speaker A: It's still a default. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is.
[00:38:04] Speaker B: You know, I mean the quality models obviously does vary.
[00:38:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:08] Speaker B: I will say this by voice. Someone please, someone get me a good model of a Apple MagSafe, the latest generation Apple MagSafe.
But I can actually then plush properly, like push fit. Because I'm trying to make a vertical mounted MagSafe charger for my phone which will then sit, you know, but every time I print one, it's either too small, too big or it just falls out. And I'm really trying to learn.
So the slices. So a lot of stuff is. So obviously, I mean, I am using automaker Cura at the moment, but you mentioned, mentioned an open source one. And is that slice free?
Is that right now?
[00:38:49] Speaker A: Yes, yes. So it's slicer with a three.
[00:38:55] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:38:56] Speaker A: It's the sort of the root of this open source family of slices.
And I say family because it's just gone bonkers. The great, the great thing about open source is you can fork things, right?
[00:39:10] Speaker B: Of course, yeah.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: In some cases.
Why? Why keep forking? Why? Why keep forking more things? Slicer was. PrusaSlicer is based on Slicer. Yeah, Right. Then somebody came along and went, right, but I want an open version of that or more open. I mean, it's still open source, but I want to have some of the things that Prusa have put in theirs, but I want it in the, in the other one. So they forked Prusaslicer to make Super Slicer.
[00:39:41] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:39:42] Speaker A: Bamboo have done the same thing. I'm not sure which one they forked.
Might have been Super Slicer. They forked to make Bamboo Studio.
[00:39:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: And then they put a bunch of things in that.
And then that's been forked to make orcaslicer, which is an open one, which is the one I use. But I'm like, oh my God, could we not just put things in the original bloody project?
[00:40:06] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:40:07] Speaker A: It drives me mad that there's all these. I mean, there's five of them now that are all based off of this original open source project, but interestingly keeps happening because printer manufacturers take a fork and add in their own features and they're not pushing back up. So, yeah, it's that same kind of. Again, I can see why that's the approach you would take, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.
[00:40:36] Speaker B: No, look, if you're a commercial business, you want to have unique features in your software for your printer, you know, and it might be, you know, something as simple as the printer profile. Oh, we, we can guarantee compatibility with exactly our printers. Yeah.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. And that's what they want, right? They want you to have a seamless journey from downloading model from the Internet to slicing it to success on your printer. And I totally get that. Absolutely.
[00:41:00] Speaker B: But there's a better way to do it, right?
[00:41:03] Speaker A: Yeah, there's, you know, just because that's the.
You don't necessarily have to take the easy route to making it.
You need to do the hard work to make it easy for everybody sort of thing, especially in an, in an open ecosystem like this.
So. Yeah. Which is incidentally why I say I don't know whether yours is running Marlin because it's entirely possible.
I doubt Creality have, because I don't think Creality, although they did, they've launched their own printer site now called Creality Cloud, on which you can buy models.
[00:41:39] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:41:39] Speaker A: But you don't buy them with money.
You buy them with points that you buy with money. Like it's a God damn microtransaction game.
[00:41:50] Speaker B: Oh, no, no, it's like, oh yeah.
[00:41:53] Speaker A: Buy 10,000 points for this 99 pound loot crate. No, no. So they've gone. Yeah, they've gone down that route. I'm like, why, why are you doing this? You know, we learned this with Xbox points back in the day as well. You know, it's like drives you around the bend. So.
[00:42:10] Speaker B: But.
[00:42:10] Speaker A: But they're all trying to keep you in their system anyway. I was like, I can't guarantee that nobody has forced Marlin and is using it on their printers now.
[00:42:19] Speaker B: Well, it's interesting because mine does my. This brief V3SE has no wifi. This is not a network connected printer.
It's got USB C and interestingly, full size sd.
Oh yeah, yeah. So it's not micro full size. Yeah.
[00:42:36] Speaker A: Trying to remember what my original board was. Yeah, there you go.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: There you go. Full size SD random card, I think is 8.
[00:42:43] Speaker A: You're holding up what I think is a micro SD card adapter.
[00:42:47] Speaker B: It generally is a nice. So for those who watch.
Yeah, no, it's genuinely an eight. That's an eight gig card.
Because as James pointed out, and what surprised me is the 3D models themselves can be quite big files, depending on my model.
[00:43:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:04] Speaker B: But the G code, which I think is the common standard.
[00:43:09] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:43:09] Speaker B: As you said, is realistically is just a text file which says go here, go here, go here, go here, do this, do that. It's a set of instructions. So it's not.
So you can actually fit quite a lot of sliced models.
[00:43:22] Speaker A: But for a complex model that can also go really big.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[00:43:26] Speaker A: So it's.
Yeah, of course the more there is, I mean literally the more you're printing, like the more layers or the bigger the object, the bigger that file will be.
[00:43:36] Speaker B: That is very true.
[00:43:37] Speaker A: So it's. Yeah, it's kind of. It's an interesting one.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: So I mean obviously want to talk about. So obviously slicer is. Once you've got your 3D model, it gets sliced into the layers or obviously if you're doing a resin, it gets sliced into exposures. What. So we talked about finger verse printables, but what if you want to design something yourself? Like you an absolute idiot like me and came up with the idea to design.
In fact, you can just about see it behind me.
A holder for an original NES cartridge that is very specific and says not Nintendo but J Tendo. Because that is J. And I'll put a photo J's copy of the Legends of Zelda. And you want to make your own 3D models.
[00:44:26] Speaker A: Now, surprisingly, someone hasn't already done that.
Who'd have thought?
[00:44:33] Speaker B: Yeah, okay.
You can't just go into Microsoft Paint.
[00:44:38] Speaker A: No, sadly, no, no.
[00:44:40] Speaker B: Or Photoshop.
[00:44:41] Speaker A: There are lots and lots of ways of doing, of building these things. So for a start, there is a huge amount of stuff out there.
[00:44:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:48] Speaker A: There is so much stuff out there available for Free or for a small amount of money that you know you will. If you're looking for parts of your printer, almost certainly somebody's done this already and published it.
But if there's a specific thing that you need, like, I've got a few particular parts around here that are, you know, a particular hanger for my headphones that hooks into the. Like the pegboard you've got behind you, for instance.
Quite the right thing. So there's so much pegboard stuff out there. You'll love it.
[00:45:20] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
No, I've got to say, credit to the person who put on Thingiverse, the model for different layouts of scadis pegs that you can then just incorporate into your model to make your model.
[00:45:37] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:45:38] Speaker B: Thank you very much.
[00:45:40] Speaker A: That's very good.
[00:45:41] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:45:42] Speaker A: There's lots and lots of stuff out there, and depending on what you're making, you'll use different tools. If you're doing some complicated thing like miniatures or whatever, you'll have to be a very artistic. Much more so than me, and be using things like Blender or Zbrush or things like that. Or if you're an engineer like me, and you just need to put some shapes together to make the thing that you want. There's a fantastic free tool online called tinkercad, which is an Autodesk thing. It just runs in your browser.
And you literally just put like, a cube of this size over here and another one over there and turn that one into a hole and punch it out of that thing. It's very.
It's very easy.
[00:46:30] Speaker B: Oh, it is.
[00:46:30] Speaker A: And to be honest, it's where I do Most of the 3D design that I've done. I think I've tried a couple of things in Blender once.
[00:46:38] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:46:38] Speaker A: And rapidly got lost.
[00:46:41] Speaker B: But I haven't touched blender in years.
[00:46:45] Speaker A: And you don't need to for most things. Right. It's.
If you're just sort of putting stuff together like I said. I did that sort of electronics box roof. So it's literally just a sort of flat plane to go on top of the box.
[00:46:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:58] Speaker A: It's got some holes punched in it for airflow, and it's got a few little bumps with holes for the. For the cables to come out of.
[00:47:06] Speaker B: Okay, Gotcha.
[00:47:07] Speaker A: And then it's got a little fan riser in there, the right size for the fan to fit into so that I can get a big one.
And that's just boxes and carving out shapes into a thing. All done in Tinkercad. So I Would. Yeah, highly recommend that.
[00:47:24] Speaker B: And it is free, surprisingly, for Multodesk. It is free. Yeah.
[00:47:27] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
[00:47:28] Speaker B: Because Fusion360, which is the Pro CAD.
[00:47:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:33] Speaker B: Because of course you can use Pro Cat tools.
Yeah, Cat Pro. You can get like a trial. I think it's like an educated. It's not, it's.
And I haven't. I don't necessarily have V. I'm not an engineer, my father is.
But he hasn't touched 3D CAD. Everything he did was 2D obviously, back in the day. So.
But no, highly agree with James. Highly recommend tinkercad. It is.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: And there's some. There's some other great things out there. Like free CAD as well. Is a.
[00:48:04] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:48:04] Speaker A: Is a. Is a good open source tool. There's a thing called OpenSCAD which is literally like writing code for CSG. Constructive, solid geometry, type per type stuff like literally. Okay. Bit of code that is a cylinder that long and then things like that. Which, which is nice, but actually it's easier to just drag things around in Tinkercad.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, but.
[00:48:27] Speaker A: But if you've ever seen on Thingiverse, they've got a thing called Customizer and that works with OpenSCAD files. And if you put in variables into your file, then Thingiverse will expose them and say, oh, okay, you can make this one this much and make your own object. So, you know, there's a lot of fun things you can do. And because 3D file formats are generally very open, they're either just been around forever and are so ubiquitous that nobody really cares or can remember who might even think about owning it, like STL.
Or there are actually standards, modern standards like 3 MF.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: Right.
[00:49:12] Speaker A: Which are. Which are open standards, generally speaking. You can build whatever you want in whatever tool you like and you'll be able to then take it into a slice. Yeah, into your. Into your slicer.
For now. Until they enclose that as well.
[00:49:28] Speaker B: Yeah, well, yes.
The cool thing I found, of course, is obviously I'm a Mac user on Mac and I think on iPhone, but I've only tried it. Mac Preview on my Mac can give you a rendering of your STL files, which is really quite nice.
[00:49:42] Speaker A: It is, it is. And for a long time I managed with that, but then, then I stopped managing with that and that's a different story. Which we can get to.
[00:49:53] Speaker B: No, absolutely. So we got the tools to make it. We've got the slicer, obviously the printer does all the work. What about all those 3D models that you've Accumulated. Remember things you've designed and you know, maybe things you've downloaded and you don't want to have to keep going back to thingiverse to get the files or, or you've customized that file and it's your own version of that file or.
[00:50:16] Speaker A: It'S disappeared off the Internet, which happens on a regular basis.
Yeah, so yeah, this is the, the data hoarder problem. Right. So as soon as you've. I don't know if this is a universal tendency, but as soon as you have a printer, you start keeping things that you might want to print on it. Yes, right.
[00:50:37] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:50:37] Speaker A: And, and you end up with a massive folder of stuff that you've just got no idea what's in it anymore. You can't find anything.
You can look at what they might be in preview, but you know, he's got time to find exactly which thing it was that you were. Yeah, yeah. So if you're, if you've got your own stuff, you can publish that on any one of the hosting sites that are out there. But yeah, it's very easy to end up with a big old archive of stuff which I had.
And so I, being a man for whom all problems are, hey, I can do something about this. In an evening of hacking. I started hacking around and started making something team.
I had a few technologies at my fingertips of like, oh well, I've got three JS for rendering the thing that can load these models and display them in the browser. Cool. Okay. Well then I could make a little website that actually exposes my models onto a web app and then lets me browse through them.
So I built that and that's then what I've been doing now full time for the last year and a half or so.
But the project itself is about 4 years old now and that is manifold.
It started as a way of managing your own archive of stuff, as a sort of asset management type thing to be able to add metadata, tag it, search it, organize, categorize, you know. The other thing I think a lot of people will be familiar with is the cataloging and organizing instinct that comes along with, not with physical things as this corner of my office can attest, but virtual things. Cataloging virtual things. I got very, very obsessive about the metadata on my music for a while before I just gave up and subscribed to Apple Music. But for a while it was, oh were scripts, it was downloading genres off Wikipedia, it was massively over engineered because I never actually used any of it.
But yeah, so the idea of Having something to look after that archive and organize it and make sure the files are in a sensible place and findable was where Manifold started.
And then it's grown from there to be able to do things like detect problems with things. So like, oh, that file is gone, that one's zero length. That's not right. Or if you get into more detailed analysis. Actually one of the things is it'll detect inefficient formats.
So there are so many old 3D formats around and some of them are really bad. Like you can have, you can have STLs, but you can have them in ASCII or binary encoding. Oh, ASCII encoding. It's massive binary encoding. Much smaller still quite big, but much smaller. So it'd be nice to be able to see which are the ASCII STLs and I might be able to save some disk space. Right.
Obj, the wavefront OBJ format is the same. It's an ASCII format for. For 3D content, which is just vastly inefficient.
So there's a few. It amazes me there are some creators that publish their stuff in those formats. Wow, this is 2025. This was a. Yeah, this was a crappy format in the year 2000.
We're still using it.
So it would be nice to be able to find those in my collection and convert them to 3 MF for instance, which is compressed and binary encoded and you know, built for the job, things like that.
But then also as it's grown, it's developed multi user capabilities so that you can have sites that are.
Have not just for me, but I can let somebody else have a login. My daughter for instance, can log into the thing and she's got her own models.
[00:54:55] Speaker B: Shared. Have you got the sharing of collection type?
[00:54:58] Speaker A: Yeah, so it's.
You can now do.
You can publish models publicly on it.
[00:55:07] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:55:08] Speaker A: So if you take your Manifold instance and you expose it to the Internet. The thing I didn't mention, Ashley, is the whole point of Manifold is it's a self hosted tool.
[00:55:15] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:55:16] Speaker A: So you run it like you might run a PLEX server or something like that. That is in my case sitting in the corner of the office on a Raspberry PI.
[00:55:27] Speaker B: Makes sense. Yeah.
[00:55:28] Speaker A: Serving up those, that thing. But if you expose that to the Internet then you can actually publish your models publicly. So now I don't publish my models on thingiverse. I publish them on my Manifold instance, which is there for anybody to go and look at.
And it has the public models. So if you Go and look at it. You'll see the public models there. But if I go and look at it and log in, it's also my private archive there. So it's both. It's like having my own thingiverse for my own.
For my own set of models. But also I can publish.
Publish my own. And we've been building that up and building up the capabilities of that over the last little while to include things like Federation.
So when I talked to you the first time, I was talking about Fediverse, about Mastodon, about decentralized systems and the way that they can avoid things like these walled garden problems.
Manifold is now able to do that for 3D models. So I have a manifold instance. If you are on a different manifold instance, you can still subscribe to the models that are on mine. You can follow those.
If you're on Mastodon, you can follow the models on my Manifold instance.
[00:56:49] Speaker B: Oh well. So when you publish a new model.
[00:56:52] Speaker A: You will note in your feed. Yeah, I like that because all done with Activity Pub.
[00:56:56] Speaker B: Right. Which we talked about on my first episode, which is really, really cool. So just.
[00:57:01] Speaker A: And in some systems you will get an actual 3D preview.
[00:57:05] Speaker B: Oh cool.
[00:57:06] Speaker A: Mastodon doesn't do it yet.
[00:57:07] Speaker B: Right. Okay.
[00:57:08] Speaker A: But some will do it.
[00:57:11] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:57:12] Speaker A: You'll actually get the object right there, which is incredibly cool.
So yeah, you can subscribe to creators on other servers and things like that. So it's developed into now this sort of decentralized federated hosting ecosystem which I hope can give us a way to get away from those sort of centralized printer manufacturer owned platforms.
Not because they're terrible and evil now.
[00:57:46] Speaker B: No.
[00:57:47] Speaker A: But because we know where this goes.
[00:57:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:49] Speaker A: It's. It's not like it hasn't happened multiple times.
[00:57:54] Speaker B: Battlestar. All this has happened before and it'll happen again.
[00:57:57] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly.
Exactly. Right.
[00:58:02] Speaker B: So so then this is. And that's amazing because it means like. Okay, so you could be for example a craft, a maker, have your own instance, follow others, but make your models available as you said.
[00:58:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:58:20] Speaker B: Now in terms. So obviously you can host this locally on your own network. You don't have to expose it to anyone.
[00:58:25] Speaker A: Yeah. And it can just be single user. The defaults are single user thing, private network.
[00:58:31] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah.
But when you've got something either like and. And 2 techno 2 services I use to put. And I've just mentioned. But obviously you know, you could run it on your localized repairman. You use something like Tailscale Funnel or Cloudflare. And how is it tunnels to then expose Yeah, I think it's Cloudflare, but both of those work really well. And Tailscale Funnels does HTTPs automatically.
The other option of course, is that you can host it on something like Hetzner. Now we're. I'm a huge fan of Hetzner because for me the reason I'm nerding out Hetzner offer first of all, EU hosted servers, but not just EU hosted servers, ARM based EU hosted servers.
So actual ampere. The technology behind it is all the Ampere arm, which are incredible chips. If you curious about those, go and check out Jeff Greeling's videos. He's done some great stuff. Yes, we are, we are hoping to get Jeff on the show at some point. He's just so busy.
[00:59:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:59:36] Speaker B: Mr. Raspberry by himself.
[00:59:38] Speaker A: Yeah. I, I, I'm obsessively watching all of his experiments with tiny NAS devices because I'm determined to have some kind of RAID array in, in my little bot.
[00:59:50] Speaker B: But now that makes no, no, I'm so close to. I, I have a nas. It's a true nas. I need to move it from core to scale, but it's spinning rust. It's in a, you know.
[01:00:02] Speaker A: No, interestingly so. One of the things with the way Manfold is distributed is it's as a Docker container. So it will run on a whole bunch of these NAS systems. We know that it runs on. I think it's in the unraid.
It's probably not called an app store, but let's call it an app store.
[01:00:22] Speaker B: Package. Yeah, package store, whatever.
[01:00:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's in.
Oh God, I've forgotten Proxmox.
There's another one Proxmox at the moment.
[01:00:32] Speaker B: No, true, no.
[01:00:34] Speaker A: Truenas is on my list.
[01:00:35] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:00:36] Speaker A: But it was when I looked at it before they didn't do manage Docker container stuff, but now they do.
So I think people are doing it. People are running it on Truenas devices. Okay.
But yeah, it's yeah, I mean Sonology, that's the one.
[01:00:56] Speaker B: Oh, Synology.
Who, who are themselves being a bit locky in at the moment with some of a newer hardware.
[01:01:05] Speaker A: Like what are you gonna do?
[01:01:07] Speaker B: It's like a hard drive's a hard drive, guys. Come on. It's a hard drive. Just right. Yeah. Anyway, but no, and Docker, I, I mean James, I've got to give credit to James. James helped me. James, like oh yeah, you can solve that problem. Just run it behind Caddy.
It's like okay.
[01:01:25] Speaker A: It always reminds me how many things I have helped you with and forgotten about.
Just, just on like obscure little, little posts and. Oh yeah, don't just do that thing.
[01:01:38] Speaker B: That's brilliant. This is why I love Mastodon Mastodon. Genuinely, folks, if you're still suffering through hell site, come and join a Mastodon instance. It's lovely.
[01:01:50] Speaker A: But what have you got any AI Nazis?
[01:01:54] Speaker B: No, none.
Also, I'm genuinely impressed. Our instance. We, we. I don't get Spam.
You guys are on it.
[01:02:05] Speaker A: I mean, we get surprisingly little, actually.
[01:02:07] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:02:08] Speaker A: But we also do have a great mod team. I mean, I, I don't know quite what I did. Right. But we've got, we've got a fantastic community, a great little mod team and it's a lovely place to be. So.
[01:02:22] Speaker B: Yeah, no, very impressive. Of course, former guest of the show, I assume now she docked or professor now.
[01:02:30] Speaker A: Yes, Professor. Professor Flick.
[01:02:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Professor Kathryn Flick is one of.
[01:02:34] Speaker A: One of our mods.
[01:02:35] Speaker B: Yes. And a very lovely person and we've talked all sorts about AI with Professor Flick.
I'm just gonna. I, I can't ever just call a Catherine. It seems disingenuous to just call a Catherine.
I'm sure she killed me through. I should just, you know. Anyway, so Manifold Docker. We will do an episode on Docker at some point. Go find an expert on Docker. I mean, James is probably gonna tell me. Oh, yeah, I'll do that one.
[01:03:06] Speaker A: I'm not an expert, but I'll do anything.
[01:03:09] Speaker B: But we'll do anything.
[01:03:12] Speaker A: 3D models.
[01:03:15] Speaker B: Oh, gosh, James.
All right, so look, you mentioned Raspberry PI because there's something I want to talk about as well. Because obviously expandability, openness.
Tell me about Octoprint.
[01:03:30] Speaker A: Oh, Octoprint Ultra Print's very cool project.
It's very cool.
So, yeah, this is.
I was going to mention this earlier, actually. One of the things you say your printer doesn't have WI fi. Right.
[01:03:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:03:46] Speaker A: One of the things you may want to do with it is attach a Raspberry PI.
[01:03:50] Speaker B: Oh.
[01:03:51] Speaker A: To it.
[01:03:51] Speaker B: I have one.
[01:03:52] Speaker A: Because it has a USB socket on the back.
[01:03:55] Speaker B: It does.
[01:03:56] Speaker A: And you can print directly from other machines. Right. So what Octoprint is, is a hosted. It's a. Run your own. Same kind of thing. Run your own web server that will talk to the board in your.
In your printer.
[01:04:21] Speaker B: Right.
[01:04:21] Speaker A: Upload the files to it as appropriate from a web interface.
[01:04:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay.
[01:04:26] Speaker A: And then tell it to start printing and all the rest of it. So it basically gives it that web based interface onto the printer and including things like cameras and, and all sorts of things like that. So then you can wander off and you know, check on the print on your phone and things like that. So yeah, it's a great uh, it's a great thing. It's a great project.
I'm a huge fan. I ran it right up until I switched over to Klipper at which point I'm. I'm running.
There's sort of a clipper ecosystem of, of different bits like this.
I think mainsail is the, is the web UI okay for that? Which is a very similar kind of thing. I've actually just installed. So the new electronics box. Because I've moved the Raspberry PI from the back of the printer to the top with a touchscreen.
[01:05:20] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[01:05:21] Speaker A: And now I've got Klipper screen running on there as well. So it is cool. Beautiful.
[01:05:26] Speaker B: So what. So that takes the place of. Hold on, let's my printers unplug so I can do this.
[01:05:31] Speaker A: So yeah, at the moment you're to print something on your machine. You're sticking the SD card in, you're putting the file, you're slicing it on there, you're putting the file on the, on the, the SD card and then you're going. Plugging that into the printer and then yeah, off it goes.
[01:05:48] Speaker B: I was about to take off the controller so when we realized, oh, there's a cable attached to it. Don't do that.
[01:05:53] Speaker A: It is attached. Don't you, Dan?
[01:05:54] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I can actually take the controller off very easily. Oh no, but really it's. No. Oh yeah. I mean I'd show you.
[01:06:01] Speaker A: That's definitely new then.
[01:06:02] Speaker B: Yeah, no, no, it, it, it literally. Well, it comes separate so you, it's okay. And it just, you know like you like the wall plug mounts, you know, like the little screw.
[01:06:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it's sort of docks in.
[01:06:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:06:16] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:06:16] Speaker B: It's really nice.
[01:06:18] Speaker A: I got rid of the. With the screen now I got rid of the built in screen on my.
[01:06:21] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, I guess if you can do that.
[01:06:24] Speaker A: Yeah, but yeah, so Octoprint will do that. Basically you can then just do it all from a web browser on your machine.
[01:06:32] Speaker B: Oh wow. Okay.
[01:06:33] Speaker A: Without even looking or going near the printer, which is surprisingly handy. It's got lots and lots of plugins for lots of things. It's a huge amount of development behind it.
And yeah, definitely a good, definitely a good upgrade to look at one of the.
Adding that PI, which doesn't just have to be doing that. It can do other things as well. But it does need to be physically plugged in.
One of the things, the differences with Klipper is that Clipper actually does the processing on the Raspberry PI.
[01:07:11] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[01:07:12] Speaker A: So it uses the PI's bigger, bigger processor, right?
[01:07:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:07:19] Speaker A: Do more, which is how it can go faster. It does more complex calculations about moving the heads and things.
Handles acceleration curves and stuff like that.
And it does that on the PI. So that's the sort of main difference in the firmware. Klipper is sort of needs an extra device to do it. But if you're plugging in that extra device to run something out. Print.
Yeah, all good.
So, yeah, again, you know, open source steps in to fill the gaps in these things and give you a, you know, lovely web interface to your thing. And most slicers will actually automatically print, send sliced files to Octoprint directly. So you just go. So in orcaslicer, for instance, right. I finish the slice and as long as the printer's turned on, I just go upload and print and off the go. Sweet.
[01:08:16] Speaker B: So then, quick question, quick question mark, Ben, because you know, we obviously talked about firmware and so this is running. I think. Well, I find out for certain. Think it's running Marlin. Well, you think I don't. I. I will find out.
But say for example, auto bed leveling.
Can octoprint take handle hardware features that say creality, you've put in?
[01:08:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So again, because most of those features will be part of the open firmware.
[01:08:43] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:08:43] Speaker A: So octoprint will know what to do with those.
It just talks G code to the device. So again, because there's sort of these fundamentally open things at various important interfaces of these systems, it sort of forces them to remain open a little bit and provide some inertia away from being closed. You know, if you're plugging in your. If you're plugging the thing in, it's not talking some proprietary language to the printer, it's talking G code.
[01:09:19] Speaker B: Right.
[01:09:21] Speaker A: Which is old standard that was repurposed for 3D printing. It was originally for 2D cnc control.
[01:09:32] Speaker B: I was going to ask, I was going to say about that because obviously very much I've seen people who have modified their 3D printers to put a laser cutter on it or you know.
Yeah, if I know someone who's done that, like, yeah, like that you might.
[01:09:49] Speaker A: That creality do a laser upgrade.
But there you will definitely want some fume extraction.
[01:09:54] Speaker B: Yes, I was going to say. But yeah, but that's not going to happen in this space.
So then I guess this is awesome. By the way, I'm really enjoying this chat and obviously learning a lot.
I wanna. We haven't really touched on resin, but I think ultimately, I mean, if you're starting out, you like me, you're probably gonna be on filament. But I want to talk a little bit, Ben.
We talked about all the software, talked about different firmware. Obviously you mentioned the cameras. I assume with octoprint you can do those really cool time lapses.
[01:10:26] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:10:28] Speaker B: Okay.
So I do have a PI. 3B plus.
[01:10:33] Speaker A: That's what I'm. That's what I've got running mine. It's plenty enough.
[01:10:37] Speaker B: Don't. Yeah, people don't. Don't discard old pies. I mean, I think honestly 3B plus.
[01:10:42] Speaker A: And above anything that's 64 bit is. Is fine. I've still got a.
No. Oh, no. I did have something running on A two.
[01:10:52] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:10:53] Speaker A: Until fairly recently. But it was the variant of the two before they went 64 bit. There was. There was sort of a, a, a, a change to a 64 bit processor in like the 1.2 or something like I did.
[01:11:05] Speaker B: I didn't even realize that.
[01:11:07] Speaker A: I can't remember. Anyways.
[01:11:08] Speaker B: Yeah, that's fine.
[01:11:10] Speaker A: But yeah. And so 64 bit. Yeah.
[01:11:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Which is kind of cool because I.
[01:11:15] Speaker A: Don'T think that thing's stocked full of three Bs pretty much.
[01:11:19] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Okay, nice.
So, but then I want to talk then about things that can go wrong with a print. But welcome to the world of Z Offset.
[01:11:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:11:35] Speaker B: And Bed Edition.
[01:11:36] Speaker A: And Bed Edition is probably the big one, especially with the Z offset. Should be okay with your probe. That'll be all right. Most people shouldn't have to worry about that too much now.
But it's. The bed adhesion is.
[01:11:53] Speaker B: So let me, Let me describe. I mean, look, let me find. I don't think I've got any failed models. I probably do some.
[01:12:01] Speaker A: Oh, that's pretty good.
[01:12:02] Speaker B: Well, okay.
[01:12:03] Speaker A: You've had it for more than a week. Surely there's some.
[01:12:06] Speaker B: There are definitely. Well, I've had. Hang on, I've got to try and find. I've got string and so. So here's the problem. Obviously this thing is printed, so the nozzle on the extruder is spitting out plastic. Yeah. About 200 degrees Celsius.
The bed is heated now, I think 60 degrees typically.
[01:12:25] Speaker A: 60 normally for PLA. Yeah. Helps it stick.
[01:12:28] Speaker B: Helps it stick. Now, I assume the higher. Obviously other things will need a higher Temperature to help it stick, but.
Or lower.
[01:12:36] Speaker A: Varies. Depends on the plastic. Depends on plastic and depends on the bed.
[01:12:39] Speaker B: Right.
[01:12:41] Speaker A: But, yeah, I'm trying to think. I think ABS is probably higher.
[01:12:45] Speaker B: Right. That would make sense.
[01:12:46] Speaker A: I think pet.
I think pet might be lower.
[01:12:50] Speaker B: Right.
[01:12:50] Speaker A: Because I seem to remember having some problems with that.
[01:12:54] Speaker B: But, yeah, so. But the thing is. And I've just actually done this and I shouldn't have done it. You saw me do it. I touched the print bed with my fingers.
[01:13:04] Speaker A: Little greasy little mitts.
[01:13:06] Speaker B: Greasy little mitts. Now, that means, obviously there's stuff on the surface.
[01:13:10] Speaker A: And.
[01:13:12] Speaker B: What I didn't really realize, because my dad's. My dad had this problem now. His was partly Z offsets, which needed to be realigned. I don't really have that problem. I thought I did. Turns out it was literally the case of gunk on the bed. And from. Now, where did I put this? And I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't have used this site, given who he is, but it's so hard not to use Amazon. I'm sorry.
A liter of isopropyl. Isopropyl alcohol.
[01:13:42] Speaker A: It's an IPA with a spray on the top.
[01:13:44] Speaker B: It is indeed.
[01:13:45] Speaker A: Sir, is that your spray or do you buy it?
[01:13:48] Speaker B: No, I bought it with a spray.
[01:13:49] Speaker A: Amazing.
That's exactly what you need. So 9.99. That's. That's great. I. I've got quite a lot of weird solvents in my garage through all the various printing experiments that I've done. But, yeah, but I. I have a little.
A little spray bottle of ipa.
And every time I go to start print, just squirt, squirt, give it a wipe. And that's. And that's enough.
[01:14:16] Speaker B: So that was going to be my question.
[01:14:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:14:18] Speaker B: Realistically, it's better just to do it every time. Right? I mean, because you'll get. Yeah, that's when you get dust.
[01:14:25] Speaker A: Even, you know, even if you're not touching it with your hands, there'll be dust on it. And you think about, you know, when you see it do that first layer. It's doing these tiny, tiny, tiny little bits of plastic.
[01:14:36] Speaker B: Oh, yes.
[01:14:36] Speaker A: And they need to stay in the same place.
[01:14:39] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[01:14:40] Speaker A: So anything that will get in the way is.
Yeah, but all it needs is. Is a. Is a wipe.
A wipe with some IPA before you.
[01:14:49] Speaker B: The number of times I've started to print and I've. Obviously, I've learned the fine art of. Okay, when do you need a raft?
Because slices can help with adhesion. I think there's three lots of options in a slicer.
[01:15:03] Speaker A: So many.
[01:15:04] Speaker B: So the ones I know about are a raft, which is effectively this, where it prints a whole couple of layers.
[01:15:10] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:15:11] Speaker B: Now that's obviously gonna use more material.
[01:15:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:15:15] Speaker B: It will do. A brim, which is like. I don't quite understand how the brim helps.
[01:15:21] Speaker A: So I. Raft. I think.
I say. I think because I haven't used one in years. I think a raft actually lifts the entire print.
[01:15:30] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:15:31] Speaker A: The bed.
[01:15:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:15:32] Speaker A: So it does. Right. So the whole.
So the thing you printed would be. Was on top of that.
[01:15:37] Speaker B: Yes, that's exactly right. In fact it was. Do you remember I showed you. In fact. I'll show it to the camera.
It was in fact. So this is one of the things I printed.
Yeah.
[01:15:47] Speaker A: Right.
[01:15:47] Speaker B: This thing. So game. Game cartridge holder for us watching the video. There you go. By the way. Just want to show people.
James talked about details. Okay. I want to show this because I think this is. I'm going to put a clip of this photo.
[01:16:00] Speaker A: Very nice.
[01:16:01] Speaker B: That's not bad, is it? Look, we've actually created a label. A man on the back.
We've done this quite nice little mesh.
[01:16:09] Speaker A: Very nice.
[01:16:09] Speaker B: It's not bad. Whoever. I'll put a link to this on thingiverse because honestly, it's worth printing anyway.
[01:16:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. There's so many sort of quality and options. So a brim will imagine that thing flat on the bed. So not raised up off the bed, but then just with a little sort of outline. It sort of extended out a little bit.
[01:16:33] Speaker B: Right.
[01:16:34] Speaker A: For something like that, probably not so useful, but where you've got like really small parts, like with small areas of bed contact, it just helps to give it a bit more room to stick. And then you just cut them off at the end.
[01:16:47] Speaker B: I see.
[01:16:48] Speaker A: But you've got. I mean, there's so many options for adhesion, things like tuning, retraction and things like that. Because you. If you don't.
Whenever it has to stop printing, it has to pull the filament back slightly, otherwise it oozes.
[01:17:03] Speaker B: Gotcha.
[01:17:04] Speaker A: And you get what's called stringing.
[01:17:06] Speaker B: Yep.
[01:17:08] Speaker A: So how much do you retract?
All these things are.
They take. They take a bit of learning and tuning, but it's part of the fun.
[01:17:19] Speaker B: Yep.
[01:17:20] Speaker A: And yeah, the amount of cooling that's provided and things like that. There are a lot of things you can tune and I think you don't have to understand all that to get started.
[01:17:31] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:17:32] Speaker A: You can.
[01:17:32] Speaker B: That's good.
[01:17:33] Speaker A: You can increase the quality as you Go. I mean, there's. I mean, there's some really great things like if you look in your slicer and see if there's an ironing option.
[01:17:42] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:17:43] Speaker A: On that thing that you showed. Yeah, the. The bottom of it was very smooth.
[01:17:49] Speaker B: Yes, it was, yes.
[01:17:50] Speaker A: And on the top of it you can see the extrusion path slightly.
[01:17:55] Speaker B: Yes, you can.
[01:17:55] Speaker A: Absolutely not much.
[01:17:58] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah.
[01:17:59] Speaker A: So what an ironing pass will do is it will actually take the head, it will extrude a small amount of filament and it runs it back over the top surface and it literally smooths it out and fills in those little gaps, remelts it and smooths it out and.
Yeah, that's.
You know, there's so many little things you can.
You can tweak and do and learn and so on. Even just learning how to effectively support things and stuff like that.
[01:18:31] Speaker B: Oh, gosh. Yeah. So support. Obviously we. Okay, I. I was saying to James before the show, but obviously again, I'll put a photo of this for those of you on audio now. This obviously.
Well, most of that's hollow, so you're not going to be able to print this top bit without any internal supports.
I don't think think.
[01:18:53] Speaker A: No, I would have printed it on its end.
[01:18:56] Speaker B: Oh, really?
[01:19:00] Speaker A: See stuff like that. Which way up do you put the.
[01:19:02] Speaker B: Oh, what? Oh, my gosh, you're right. Because that actually then wouldn't have needed.
[01:19:07] Speaker A: It might have been okay with the. With the bridging at the top. I don't know. But yeah, there's so many. There's a lot of stuff to learn.
[01:19:16] Speaker B: Oh, you're right.
[01:19:18] Speaker A: But then the detail down the side might have.
You've got the sort of ridges down the side and then would they have worked?
[01:19:26] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. I don't know.
[01:19:28] Speaker A: But yeah, it's a trade off like between that type of support or probably a different type or a different amount elsewhere.
[01:19:35] Speaker B: Absolutely. So, I mean, yeah. For example, again, for video, this is from that print. This is what a. Supports could be fun, obviously, for, you know, just like stuff. But they can be fun to break off.
[01:19:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Because just don't break off too much easily.
[01:19:54] Speaker B: Well, so our pro tip, if you're printing IKEA Skadis stuff, be very careful because you can easily break off the actual scadis clip. James has got something to show us. Here we go.
[01:20:07] Speaker A: So what I've got here is there's. There are different. So one of the things, the differences between different slices is, is a lot of it is kind of in the way that generate supports.
[01:20:16] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:20:17] Speaker A: So there's a thing called a tree support.
[01:20:20] Speaker B: Ah, yes.
[01:20:21] Speaker A: And so rather than the sort of rectilinear type thing you've got there, this does a.
Trying to describe it in audio. It's like a little thin plastic column that branches like a tree to support just where it's needed. And so you don't have quite so much wastage, but it works really well for.
For some things with lots of detail.
[01:20:46] Speaker B: Right.
[01:20:47] Speaker A: That if you'd done that cartridge on its side, perhaps tree support up the side would have been quite a. Oh, okay. Would have been.
Would have been enough. So there's. There's always so many ways you can do it and so much, so much to learn. There's a lot of videos out there on the Internet.
[01:21:05] Speaker B: Oh, a massive thing. Right. The really cool thing is there's a lot of creators in this space.
[01:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:21:11] Speaker B: Reviews on printers, reviews on. Now, final thing I want to touch on because I'm very conscious of time.
[01:21:18] Speaker A: I mean, what time is it?
[01:21:20] Speaker B: Okay. It's only 20. It's only. It's only. Yeah, it's fine. Well, we're having a good conversation. This will be easy to tell a bit.
All right. We talked about. Now you said when you showed your benchy, you said I cheated. I painted this because obviously. And you could just paint these.
[01:21:39] Speaker A: My daughter decided to paint it, so.
[01:21:41] Speaker B: Okay. Right, fair enough. Nice, Nice. Very nice.
Now obviously you can get different color filament and you can get some.
To save it. You can get some amazing colors and. And textures in fil. Oh, James is going for what we got.
[01:21:57] Speaker A: I'm never far away from an example.
Here we have a. A little flexi dragon printed in a.
A color change which is just changes on its length. But you can get some sort of iridescent things and all sorts of stuff. There's some amazing filaments out there.
[01:22:16] Speaker B: My dad printed for my nephew. For my oldest nephew printed a dice like roller thing. That was a skull.
[01:22:24] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[01:22:27] Speaker B: Dice tower. And you have.
Excuse me. Because of course when you're printing these things, you're printing multi parts. You can create like. What really impressed me is it can create screw threads.
[01:22:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[01:22:41] Speaker B: It's precise.
Great.
[01:22:43] Speaker A: But there's a printed.
Printed thing holding the telescope on to the.
To the stand.
[01:22:51] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[01:22:51] Speaker A: She got a printed knob on the bottom because the original broken.
[01:22:55] Speaker B: That's really cool.
[01:22:56] Speaker A: That's.
[01:22:58] Speaker B: But so obviously you get all these. But what about, say, for example, if I from my. On my printer wanted to replicate what your daughter had painted there.
How? Because I think there's two ways to do it. Right.
[01:23:11] Speaker A: Two ways to do it. So one is you have a, A more advanced printer that can handle multiple film, which makes it easy.
Like I say, there's you know, very fancy Prusa ones that will go and pick up like 10 different heads with different filaments in. There are various different ways of doing multi filament stuff.
There are even some pretty low end printers that have like two.
That can handle like two filaments. Now a bit out of the loop, but it's becoming more doable.
Yeah, but there's a very lo fi approach.
[01:23:48] Speaker B: Go on.
[01:23:48] Speaker A: Which is change filament halfway through your print.
[01:23:51] Speaker B: Oh.
[01:23:52] Speaker A: So you can.
If you're. If the color change you want is a particular layer.
So I did a.
Various things, but I. One demo I did was a, A little key ring.
[01:24:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:24:07] Speaker A: With my daughter's name on it. So the bottom was black.
And then I think the, the raised up sort of embossed letters. Not embossed, the opposite of embossed.
[01:24:19] Speaker B: Extruded.
[01:24:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:24:23] Speaker B: Whatever it is. Raised, raised up.
[01:24:26] Speaker A: The letters were in a different color because. But I just got the.
And there'll be an option in the slicer to do this is to pause at that level.
[01:24:33] Speaker B: Oh.
[01:24:33] Speaker A: Trigger a filament change and then just carry on.
So there are, there are ways of doing it and that's, that's surprisingly easy.
[01:24:42] Speaker B: Okay. So. Okay.
[01:24:44] Speaker A: Purge it and things like that. So, so.
[01:24:46] Speaker B: And is that something again the slicer can do to purge? To say. Okay, purge. Yep.
[01:24:50] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:24:51] Speaker B: Or do you need to.
[01:24:52] Speaker A: Yeah, probably.
I think I've just done it by hand.
[01:24:55] Speaker B: But okay.
[01:24:56] Speaker A: Like literally just squeeze filament in until it stops coming out a different color.
[01:25:01] Speaker B: Right.
[01:25:02] Speaker A: But no, it will all be. The slicer will be.
I mean my slicer can do so much more than I understand. There's so much in there.
[01:25:11] Speaker B: So, so that's for very. As you say, the lot. But yeah, I mean like the, the as much as we, you know, bamboo software, that's the thing. But hardware is great. As we said earlier.
[01:25:21] Speaker A: Hardware, it's one of theirs. That's. That's multi filament, isn't it? That's.
[01:25:25] Speaker B: Well, the A1 Mini, you can get an AMS for automatic material system.
[01:25:30] Speaker A: Nice.
And do look good.
[01:25:32] Speaker B: But there is no. Here's a question, man. So obviously with mine, obviously if you're going to go for an ams, an automatic material system, you're not going to be able to direct feed refillament. You'll have to use some sort of tube to then go in.
[01:25:48] Speaker A: Yeah, so you've.
Yeah, so the way yours is, is it's just got a.
The filament just goes straight off the reel into a hole, through free space, into the. Into the hole on top of the extruder.
[01:26:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:26:03] Speaker A: So I've.
Yeah, you can run it through a tube, which probably the things with the ams will do, so that they can actually, you know, feed it in automatically all the way through the thing. Yeah, I've.
I do that here. Right. Mainly because I had some tube left over, but also I've done a little dry box on the wall so that the filament actually sits in a sealed container with the tube going all the way to the extruder. So it's.
[01:26:32] Speaker B: Oh, that's nice.
[01:26:32] Speaker A: Yeah. I lost a.
A reel of filament to humidity one summer and I was like, no, never again.
[01:26:38] Speaker B: Ah, okay.
[01:26:39] Speaker A: So that pla does absorb moisture. You need to keep it dry.
[01:26:44] Speaker B: Yes. So, yeah, so be. I guess, keep it. I mean, in my case, for our little. There's.
It's come with what. What do we call it? A D. Decontent. No, not desiccant.
Yeah, desiccant.
Obviously, if you've got dehumidifier, which, by the way, dehumidifier is brilliant way to dry clothes if you don't want to go to the laundry.
I put.
I've got a dehumidifier. Put it in my bathroom. Put the laundry in my bathroom.
Not as, not as. Yeah, not as, not as nice as a tumble dryer.
Not as, you know, that lovely warm feeling. But it does work.
I probably need to make sure I store this new. I've got like, literally, as I said, I think I've got 10. 10 kilo. Well, no, technically I've got maybe like 11 and a bit kilos because I've got the two original ones.
[01:27:32] Speaker A: Pla.
[01:27:33] Speaker B: A pla.
[01:27:33] Speaker A: I thought you were going to say of, of water extracted from your drum.
[01:27:37] Speaker B: No, no, no, I'm not. I'm a big guy, Jason.
My clothes aren't that huge. I'm not. I'm not like wearing, you know, Crusty McLean tens.
[01:27:47] Speaker A: I empty our tumble dry condenser and it's like this is all this distilled water. I'm sure this is useful, but pour it down the dry.
[01:27:54] Speaker B: Yes. Anyway, so, anyway, so, yeah, so get a.
[01:27:59] Speaker A: Get a sealed, like a big sealed kitchen box to keep it in.
[01:28:04] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:28:05] Speaker A: There is one particular one that fits the reels really well. Which I would recommend.
So, yeah, I'll find out what it is.
[01:28:13] Speaker B: Find out. Send me the link and we'll put it in my. Yeah, we'll put that in my show notes.
[01:28:18] Speaker A: Yeah, but that. And then a whole bunch of silica gel packets that you've rescued from all of the things that have been ordered for a long time. I managed just with that.
[01:28:29] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:28:30] Speaker A: And then. Then I decided they probably all expired and bought a load of loose silica gel beads and some bags on.
On the website, which all of us wish we didn't use so much, that site.
[01:28:43] Speaker B: Yes, indeed.
[01:28:44] Speaker A: And it's reusable. So shove it in that massive bag of silica gel, shove it in there. When it goes green, change it round, pop it in the oven. Scrape.
[01:28:55] Speaker B: Oh, pop it in the oven. What, to alter what, dry it out again?
[01:28:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So you can reuse it.
[01:29:01] Speaker B: Okay, that's, you know, now. Now here's the thing. I'm now going to think it's very advanced, except my love of 3D printing and my love of having an air fryer might end up being combined.
[01:29:16] Speaker A: Air fry your.
Yeah, Filament.
[01:29:19] Speaker B: The silicon beats. Just to be clear, I do not recommend putting your PLA. Filament in an air fryer. That would be a very bad idea.
[01:29:29] Speaker A: I have. I have considered. I mean, the amount of. I've. I've still got every bit of waste PLA I've ever used.
[01:29:36] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[01:29:36] Speaker A: A couple of boxes now. And I've considered putting it in the oven and just sort of letting it gently melt down. But then I kind of want to use the oven afterwards, so I haven't done that yet.
[01:29:49] Speaker B: I think your wife might kill you.
[01:29:51] Speaker A: I'm waiting for some nice easy way of recycling it because I just get two boxes of pla. There you go.
[01:29:57] Speaker B: Wouldn't it be. Yeah, it'd be great if you could do it. I mean. Yeah, because that is actually a point. It's certainly. And maybe this is odd because we're. Obviously, we all care about the environment on this show. 3D printing is certainly it. Obviously it does use plastic, but I guess because it's additive manufacturing, you aren't just carving out of a lump. Power consumption is. Is at least on my print, is surprisingly low.
[01:30:21] Speaker A: It's very low. Yeah.
[01:30:23] Speaker B: You know, now I've got Home Assistant tied into my.
[01:30:27] Speaker A: Compared to the embodied energy of anything coming to you from anywhere else, it'll be so much less.
[01:30:34] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. Now I've got Home Assistant linked up to my Octopus Home Mini.
[01:30:39] Speaker A: Nice.
[01:30:40] Speaker B: Yeah, that's awesome. It's brilliant. I'm really, really loving Home assistant at the moment. Learn it again.
[01:30:46] Speaker A: I got obsessed with home assistant for a while. Mine currently isn't running because I've.
Well it sort of broke one day and then the.
Yeah, the OS expired and sort of got it back up and running.
[01:31:03] Speaker B: Fair enough.
[01:31:04] Speaker A: It turned out that I had very sensibly just got all smart devices that also you could use by hand.
[01:31:12] Speaker B: That is probably a good idea but it's probably a good idea.
[01:31:15] Speaker A: Very good idea.
[01:31:17] Speaker B: Absolutely. So look we've buttons.
[01:31:19] Speaker A: Oh yes.
[01:31:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
Well like Jay's family they had a power outage and all of the devices because the power outage had been out gone for so long.
Yeah.
So we're putting back up anyway listen James, this has been absolutely fascinating. Now obviously can final thing first. Can we recommend some good resources? I mean obviously YouTube is always going to be mixed or maybe peer tube for people who don't want to support Google.
[01:31:53] Speaker A: Maybe. Yeah there's probably some good stuff on Mecha Tube.
[01:31:58] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:31:59] Speaker A: Which is a peertube instance that I have an account on it.
[01:32:02] Speaker B: Oh okay.
[01:32:03] Speaker A: I'm waiting for more, more video to come on peertube. It's gonna, we're gonna get there.
[01:32:08] Speaker B: I can tell critical thing. Yeah, well I can tell you we do have a Til vids account.
[01:32:16] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:32:16] Speaker B: But purely because obviously it is not barefold. They obviously can only offer so much storage.
So I am genuinely considering when we have a bit more income and well I'll talk about by the end of the show doing our own. That'd be nice, you know, be really good for what we're doing.
[01:32:33] Speaker A: That's the.
I've. I mean I know I'm very much drinking the self hosted Kool Aid these days because.
But there was a thing, you know Pocket shut down.
[01:32:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[01:32:46] Speaker A: I saw a news article today saying.
Announcing what it was called. It wasn't called Flock. Maybe it was called Flock but it's like a direct replacement for Pocket and it's like okay, it'd be easy to just go over there. It'll work the same way.
And I was reading it, I was thinking yeah but I've still got the same problem that that stuff is still somewhere else that I'm not in control of and that will go away at some point. It's like you know, all of the Google things went away.
It keeps happening and I'm just, I now look at things by default from a sort of self hosting point of view of going yeah, but do I. Yeah, I Won't be able to.
I'm just kicking the can down the road if I come and use your service, right?
[01:33:41] Speaker B: Oh gosh, yeah.
I'm 100% look. So it's really interesting because the Bead store is heavily in Microsoft 365 and like. Okay, well, you know, at some point we're going to get forced to use new Outlook. But then I look at what we're doing for Crosswires, which at the moment we're actually migrating our self hosted nextcloud to a Hetzner hosted Managed NEXT cloud.
[01:34:04] Speaker A: Oh, nice. I do that.
[01:34:05] Speaker B: Five something euros a month for a terabyte of managed NextCloud storage and you can have your own domain on it. It's really good.
[01:34:15] Speaker A: I have had some storage now for my backup stuff. I moved it from Backblaze or Wasabi or something because it was in the U.S. i was like, no, I need to get everything out of the US So I've moved it to Hetzner, which is much nicer.
[01:34:30] Speaker B: Oh, is that one of his. So is that. It's not one of his Storage.
[01:34:33] Speaker A: Object.
[01:34:34] Speaker B: Object storage, yeah. Oh, okay.
[01:34:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, Interesting.
[01:34:41] Speaker B: I mean, I trust Backblaze to an extent because I use my own encryption key.
[01:34:46] Speaker A: Yeah. I just. It was.
It's as much of a instability than.
[01:34:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:34:56] Speaker A: Than things being given access to.
No, no, I, I getting into the stuff. I'm not bothered. Yeah. I'm not worried about them breaking into it. It's just. I'm worried the country might collapse.
[01:35:09] Speaker B: Well, that and.
[01:35:11] Speaker A: Yeah, right. So it's not a.
I did a.
It's another tangent for you years and years and years ago.
You know HTTP Right.
[01:35:25] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:35:25] Speaker A: Error codes. You've got the various ranges. You've got the 1/ hundreds for success, not successes. Forget what the 1/ hundreds are. 2 hundreds are success codes.
And then you've got 400 client errors. 500 is server errors.
[01:35:39] Speaker B: Server errors. Yeah.
[01:35:42] Speaker A: Somebody did a 700 range of, of proposed ones for programmer errors.
Sort of a humorous list of things which inspired me to do an 800 range of civilizational error codes, which is the one I remember off the top of my head is 814 data center underwater.
But there's plenty of them. And one of them is, you know, this is my.
I'm going to get back an 814 at some point if I leave it over there. Right.
Well, these are risks.
[01:36:23] Speaker B: Well, do you know what I'm just saying?
[01:36:24] Speaker A: The nice thing is server errors are.
They say that is temporary or permanent. And some of the 800 ones are very, very permanent.
[01:36:34] Speaker B: Yes.
I was going to say there should be a 700 range dedicated to Boeing. Errors. So 7 7.
[01:36:45] Speaker A: 74 7. Front fell off.
[01:36:48] Speaker B: But yeah, what was it? Which, which aircraft was it that the door fell off? Was that the seven?
[01:36:54] Speaker A: That was a triple seven.
[01:36:56] Speaker B: Triple seven, yeah. 777 door missing.
[01:36:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:37:01] Speaker B: Oh, jeez.
Was it 787 Flight control software has fatal floor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know.
[01:37:10] Speaker A: Yes. Anyway, something, something.
Yeah, something about whistleblowers falling off balconies.
[01:37:20] Speaker B: Anyway, anyway, James, this has been a gen. Unless there's. I mean, look, is there anything else you want to give people tips on? Like any quick fire tips you want to give for people starting off in printing?
[01:37:34] Speaker A: Oh, have a go. Be prepared to learn. It's fun.
You will have success, you will have failure. You will print the same thing 10 times and it will keep falling off the bed and you will stick glue on things you didn't think needed gluing. It's just. But it's fun. It's a lot of fun and yeah, it's very accessible.
And the other thing I meant to mention, we were talking about Manifold earlier on and I mentioned the whole federated thing. We do now have a public instance that anyone can sign up to.
[01:38:11] Speaker B: Oh, cool.
[01:38:12] Speaker A: And host their own models called 3D Print Social.
So that is now a fully 100% open source, openly supported by the community service that anyone can sign up to and host your models and federated and all the rest.
[01:38:36] Speaker B: Oh, that's really awesome.
You see, myself, that was the end.
[01:38:40] Speaker A: Of the bit we were talking about earlier.
I just forgot.
[01:38:44] Speaker B: That's just this whole episode. We've moved on to some.
Honestly, folks, at this point. We'll start a whole new episode before we go. Too long.
Gosh. So where, James, for work. My gosh. Where can people find you? And where can people find Manifold?
[01:39:03] Speaker A: So you can find me on the Fediverse@floppyasterdon.me.uk you can find manifold on the Fediverse manifold3DP chat.
You can sign up for an account on a manifold instance at 3D print social and you can look at the.
All the other information about the software and what it does and how it works is at Manifold app.
[01:39:35] Speaker B: Nice.
[01:39:36] Speaker A: I think that's everything.
[01:39:37] Speaker B: I think that that's awesome, by the way. I do. I do think you have one duty, by the way, if you haven't already done it. Well, many, many things given your. Given your handle. You do need to 3D print the save icon.
[01:39:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[01:39:52] Speaker B: But I still love that was someone who saw. Yeah teen who saw the floppy, a 3 1/2 inch floppy said oh cool, you 3D printed the same. I can like.
[01:40:03] Speaker A: No, no, yeah, yeah, I still got a few around.
[01:40:08] Speaker B: Oh I have someone somewhere. Do you know there'll be a load of them. I'll tell you. I don't, I don't even have a floppy drive. But I'll tell you what I do have and folks, I'm going to work on this project at some point.
I do have an Amiga 500 sat in a case in Gotek. It's got a Gotek in it so needs a lot of work. I want to, want to do it. But anyway, listen folks, thank you very much for listening as always.
The website is back up so all the links should work.
We haven't moved to a federated web provider. We are with Webflow now. But we do have a self hosted link shortener. So the cwires. So cwir ES domain is entirely hosted on a thing called Shlinx which.
[01:41:00] Speaker A: Yeah, so link shortener, nice.
[01:41:02] Speaker B: Yep. Not only self hosted, fully docker.
[01:41:06] Speaker A: Lovely.
[01:41:08] Speaker B: Even better with that.
So we've got it set up so that the front end for a bit that shortens URL. Your URLs is all exposed through, you know, standard HTTPs ports but they put the web, the web GUI run it as a separate docker container that is completely master behind our tailnet. So you lot cannot get in to create links. Not you personally obviously, but yeah, no, I'll.
Yeah, you personally go, yeah, just keep James out of everything. Anyway, so look, please do give us a review in itunes. We've mentioned that and obviously look, Jay and I are trying to, you know, really build up things. If you want some tech help or want some IT support, drop us a line. Hello. @Crosswise.net we, we do think we do cool things with Unifi. We can, you know, look after customer support for you. I'm really excited and I think I can announce this.
We're starting off small but I am now working with the Tripsy developers. I'm providing some customer support for Tripsy on a contract basis. It is awesome. I am loving, by the way, that was absolutely a Fedi hired gig.
Yes. So there we go. All right folks, thank you very much. We'll roll the outro.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Crosswires. We hope you've enjoyed our discussion and we'd love to hear your thoughts. So please drop us a Note over to podcastrosswires.net why not come and join our Discord community over@crosswires.net Discord we've got lots of text channels, we've even got voice channels, and we've got forum posts for every episode that we put out there. If you are Mastodon, you can also also follow us either by heading over to Wires Social or just follow Crossed Wires Social.
[01:42:59] Speaker A: If you'd like to check out more of our content, head on over to CrossedWires.net YouTube for all our videos and keep an eye on our twitch channel@crossedwires.net live for our upcoming streams.
[01:43:11] Speaker B: If you like what you heard, please do drop a review in your podcast directory of choice. It really does help spread the word about the show.
[01:43:18] Speaker A: And of course, if you can spare even the smallest amount of financial support, we'd be incredibly grateful. You can Support us at ko fi.comCrossedWires I.e. K-O-F I.comCrossedWires until next time, thanks for listening.
[01:43:46] Speaker B: SA.
