Just for the fun of it I decided to see how different is the residue after evaporating the water coming directly from the well, vs passed through the softener, vs passed through the reverse osmosis filter (iSpring under-the-sink system).
I have filled in 3 glasses, covered them with a napkin and left to evaporate slowly in a secluded corner in the basement.
To my surprise it took a while (about 2-3 months, probably due to high humidity in the basement in the summer).
Here are the results (left-to-right: well, softener, filter). The last row is under microscope (4x magnification):
The filter has (quote) “… Alkaline mineralization filter cartridge with Mineral Stone, Calcite, and Corosex …”. The content inside is of brown/yellow color, so I guess that’s where the brown crystals come from.
The n-vent filament works well for the large items (like boxes). The 3mm blue roll I’ve got from LulzBot printed nicely at 237C hotend and 75C printing bed temperatures. The bed was a glass plate coated with Elmer’s glue. There’s only Slic3r profile for n-vent in https://github.com/dob71/x2sw_profiles
After installing the OneNote 2016 PC client it asks you to sign in to the cloud.
If it decides that you have to use a business account (i.e. you are trying to set it up on a PC that is a part of a domain), but you need to use your personal account it is going to complain. It will either say that your email address’ domain isn’t known, your account does not exist/not found or it doesn’t look like work or school e-mail.
The following registry change will make it accept a personal account. First exit OneNote app, then change the value in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\OneNote\FirstBootStatus key to hexadecimal 2000202.
Every time I have to set up new ESXi and add Ubuntu machine templates I’m getting into the same troubles, now writing it down to remember…
VmWare tools and clipboard are not working in Ubuntu desktop, so for the recent Ubuntu versions (14.xx, 16.xx):
1. In the ESXi host add the last 2 lines to the config and reboot:
[root@esxi1:~] cat /etc/vmware/config
libdir = “/usr/lib/vmware”
authd.proxy.nfc = “vmware-hostd:ha-nfc”
authd.proxy.nfcssl = “vmware-hostd:ha-nfcssl”
authd.proxy.vpxa-nfcssl = “vmware-vpxa:vpxa-nfcssl”
authd.proxy.vpxa-nfc = “vmware-vpxa:vpxa-nfc”
authd.fullpath = “/sbin/authd”
isolation.tools.copy.disable=”FALSE”
isolation.tools.paste.disable=”FALSE”
2. In the Ubuntu guest instead of installing the tools bundled with ESXi:
sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools-desktop
After a long unsuccessful search for something that would work for making available backup storage (WD Elements 4GB USB HDD) from my MS Windows desktop system to ESXi 6.0 server (as a datastore) ended up using old Dell laptop. It runs Linux, auto-mounts the USB HDD at the boot time and exports the mount point over NFS.
In order to avoid running it all the time, ESXi powers it up by sending wake-on-lan Ethernet packet and shuts down the laptop after backup is done. WD Elements powers on/off automatically when USB connection is up/down.
Attached is the ether-wake tool sources (with minor tweak for sendto() to work) and statically compiled binary runnable under ESXi.
The ESXi firewall has to be turned off for it to send the packet:
esxcli network firewall set --enabled false
./ether-wake 00:11:22:33:44:11
esxcli network firewall set --enabled true
Although the main purpose of adding multiple extruder feature to the RepRap machines is to allow printing the dissoluble support material, the new RepRap X2V3 dual carriage design opens a few new interesting possibilities.
The machine supports driving each extruder hotend independently on the X axis (”Dual X Drive”, see video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEW-DNo0GxI). Its predecessor (RepRap X2) had both hotends fixed on the same carriage (similar to Makerbot’s dual extruder machines) and at relatively close distance of about 20mm. If printing simultaneously from both extruders the machine’s build volume on the X axis would be limited to the distance between the extruders (not quite useful). Because of that I’ve decided not to implement the “follow-me” mode while adding multiple extruder support to Marlin firmware.
Unlike it’s predecessor RepRap X2V3 is free to position the hotends at any distance the size of the machine allows. That makes it possible to effectively use all the build space (i.e. the build envelope for simultaneous printing on RepRap X2V3 is about 100×200x130mm). Moreover, independent carriage driving allows simultaneous printing of mirrored copy of the object. That is often required when printing parts for the dual extruding machine or any object that has mirror symmetry. These hardware capabilities have convinced me to add the “follow-me” support to the latest (v1.1.0 X2 Beta 1 as of this writing) version of MarlinX2 firmware. The command for turning it on/off is M322. Its description is available in the README.md file. The video below demonstrates the feature in action:
One of the most annoying problems with the dual extruder printing is the plastic leaking from the idle extruder. It is especially noticeable with PLA that flows easier than ABS. Lowering the temperature of the idle extruder while it is not needed and restore it when it is time to start printing with that extruder again helps to deal with leaking. It is tricky though since leaking has to be prevented during the teperature changes.
The technique being used with the current generation of the RepRap X2 printers (S/N: 020*) is to print a “parking space” besides the actual object. That “parking space” serves two purposes, one is to plug the nozzles while the temperature changes and the other is to “prime” the extruders (i.e. establish the consistent flow of plastic) before printing the actual object after the temperature change.
The video demostrates the RepRap X2 S/N 0203 (find it on eBay) printing a dual color whistle (pictured above) using the described technique during the tune-up procedure. The STL files used for the print with the parking space object are here:
1. The whistle body (”BASE”, for printing with the extruder 0): Whistle X2 body
2. The text (”INSERT”, for printing with the extruder 1): Whistle X2 text
The special Skeinforge profiles for the X2 printer are needed to generate the G-code. They can be deployed using x2Profile app from the from the X2SW software bundle.
The …0.5C-BASE profile has to be used for slicing the body and …0.5C-INSERT for slicing the text STL of the model. The penultimate G-code generated has to be then merged using the “x2Merge” application (a part of the X2SW software bundle).
The “x2Merge” application merges together the G-code generated for the body and the text STLs. It is merged layer-by-layer. The content from the chosen alteration files for extruder switching is inserted in the places where there is a need to change the extruder. The inserted G-code positions the nozzles above the “parking space” object and changes the active extruder while lowering the temperature of the idle and restoring it for the active hotend before letting the printing continue.
The technique works the best for printing a few layers of color, for example a colored text on the top and bottom of the object. It essentially elliminates the discoloration due to the plastic leaking, but because of the time needed to adjust the temperatures it slows down the print substantially when there are a lot of layers requiring extruder switching.
Note: in order to use the technique X2SW software bundle of at least v1.1.0.4 and X2 firmware of at least v1.0.0b2 are required.
Here are a few experiments with Slic3r advanced features.
The pucture shows the calibration cube printed with infill every 2 perimeter layers (perimeter height 0.2mm, infill height 0.4mm) and the same cube printed with infill from the second extruder (natural color ABS).
Slic3r dual infill height and dual extrusion (perimeter+infill)
Recently I’ve had several attempts to print http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:23365
That was a pretty hard print for 0.5mm nozzle especially given that I had to scale the model down to 125mm height. One of the failed attempts produced this:
Akiko print failed
which looks kind of nice, but still funny given thet the expected result was that:
There finally appears to be an affordable product (http://www.emotiv.com/) designed to recognize your mood, simple intentions etc. basing on the analysis of the readings from a futuristic looking device worn on your head and capturing EEG data (14 channels).
However farfetched this sounds, it is potentially possible although it is hard to tell how accurate, fast and practical it will be. I guess the situation now can be compared to the dawn of speech recognition. In the case of the speech recognition there are 6 billons of live proofs that it is doable, but it took quite a while to perfect it to the levels of accuracy when it finally became practical. In the case of EEG recognition, it is just the scientific experiments and no use in the “field” so far.
In any case it is very exciting to see an affordable commercial product like that. My attempt to experiment with EEG pattern recognition a few years back stalled as the only reasonable option I found at that time was http://www.ant-neuro.com/products/asa-lab, which targets research institutions and is priced accordingly. The Emotion product opens new grounds for curious minds…
