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New ... Stuff ... Learnt.

 Have had a busy few days.

My Arduino CNC V3 board arrived a while ago but just sat idle until ... a handful of A4988 drivers turned up. Yayy!

And THIS is what life's like here. Buy something, plan and plan and plan because - can't afford the next bits just yet this week... Then those bits arrive and you can - plan some more until . . . Well actually, this time I had a couple of  24BYJ48 5V stepper motors salvaged out of an IP camera and an install of LaserGRBL. 

(Thinking of purchasing those items? Please see this note.)

There she is plugged into an Arduino and
populated with driver modules. Go me!

My 24BYJ's came with some tiny little connectors on them which are no use on this setup so I had to take a short diversion into stepper motor configurations and connections, and found out that I have to modify them by cutting a track inside the stepper motor itself. But a quick look at the internals got me realising that leaving the centre taps jumpered together would only result in warmer windings and far less power so for the moment it's been left connected. 

I used spare bits of header connector to make this "modular
lead" approach to the problem - I could test that it worked.

The dinky cables I made with some leftover CAT5 core wires and bits of circuit board header connectors. By putting a disconnect rather than just soldering the leads to length, I have a modular system that's a bit more flexible.

The instructions for making a Uno talk GRBL natively made my brain hurt so here's the simple version: LaserGRBL actually includes an option to upload GRBL onto the board but I wasn't sure if it'd be the latest version so I took a pill and soldiered on. Basically you grab the GRBL firmware code from its home on github, unzip it, and then install the 'grbl' folder as a library to the Arduino IDE, then run the included sketch. 

The sketch is empty except for a library call and apparently you don't mess with anything but just upload it. 

A few seconds more and a COM port appeared in LaserGRBL so I hit connect and kacked myself at the loud beep. But it was working. A bit dodgy moving the steppers because of that aforementioned copper trace connecting the centretaps together - but it worked! 

Since I scored a few good online surveys and panels on Tuesday I had forty bucks burning a hole in my Paypal so I bought a set of three 42-40 stepper motors and hopefully this'll be the start of a CNC two-axis device of some sort and the basis for a simple CNC router, engraver, or cutter of some sort so that I can cut circuit boards for developing the next steps. 

And that's it for now, another experiment on the way to a project, which will now have to be put on hold until a) those steppers arrive (and then some aluminium extrusion for frames) and b) the landlord having electricians come to rewire some old out of code wiring which will take everything off the air for a while. 

I have a favour to ask, please share this link around if you liked it, because after almost 20 years of blogging my advertising revenue has finally risen to the point where I can collect my first ever advertising income! 

If it gives you any ideas for projects, if you want to keep current with my posts here and on my other blogs, I've made several options available now - there's Ted's News Stand where there's a newsfeed to read and also a link to get a newsletter, there's now also a page that explains newsreaders and let you manage your news feed rather than have my newsletters clogging up your inbox, and lastly I've prepared an OPML that lets you add my blogs if you're already a newsletter aficionado.

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Purchasing Note: If you buy any of those items at the beginning of the article, they're using my affiliate links. It won't cost you a cent more but I'll get a few extra points to put towards my next parts. 

Or you can manually append my affiliate code (?4W08184785032014038H or &p=4W08184785032014038H depending if there's already a ? symbol) to the end of the URL, hit refresh and then buy. 

This will also work if you just append the relevant code to something else you're about to put in your Banggood cart, hit refresh, and THEN put it in the cart and buy... Just saying. It will guaranteed not cost you a cent more but it means the world to me.

Partial Photography Parts

 I've been budgeting

In the last two months I've been putting away my mad money and doing without haircuts and instead gone and bought parts and equipment for the start of building things. One of those things was a cheap cheap CHEAP sportscam clone and I wasn't expecting much from it (after the one I ordered years ago was DOA and I ended up in six months of disputes before I got my money back) but to my surprise the picture and video quality is tolerable for How-To videos, and most importantly this one doesn't get red hot and melt. 

(Back when Gopro was a huge thing, I got a clone Gopro looking sportscam and it was - actually GREAT. Clear picture - but no matter how I ran it, it got hot when running, and pretty soon cooked itself.)

Cue Camera History:

No kidding, I've had the worst luck with camera gear. I bought an SLR-shaped cheapo cam that the opp shop had for ten bucks - brand new, still in the sealed plastic bag - and it has actually been the best camera I have, but not easy to put on any mounting because it has some weird-ass tripod thread so it has to be held to any rig with elastic bands, so I'm open to any way anyone knows of enlarging and threading a recalcitrant camera thread.

That was a hassle so I never actually made a video, just heaps of B roll, and most of it is unplanned so . . . pretty much useless for me now. But it motivated me to get a webcam for the 3D printer enclosure. And that didn't go well at all. 

The first webcam was one we had laying around, and guess what? A Microsoft camera doesn't work with Windows 10. Or 8 or 7, so I have no idea what the story is. But MS drivers for that webcam don't work. I still don't have an RPi to try it on but basically I think it's par for Microsoft, i.e. useless.

Then I found one at the opp shop and it worked but the picture quality was awful, the low light response was poor, and it ended up in e-waste. 

I bought one. Online. And it arrived, and I was quite excited because - hey, reasonably high quality web conference cam, yay me! It didn't work. No kidding, another DOA. Money back but no replacement. Meanwhile, I'm running out of years (and the will) to live.

Bought that sportscam I mentioned in the first paragraph which arrived DOA and that I had to dispute for six months.

Then I had a bit of spare cash after a lot of online surveys and focus groups, and ordered another SLR-alike camera that was reasonable quality at a great price. Unfortunately, everyone else saw that sale too and I ended up waiting six months only to be told they couldn't get any more of them and got my money credited back.

Forgot to mention: for my birthday a few years back we splashed out and got me a really great Ricoh point & shoot type but with phenomenal optics and good macro and zoom and all. Loaned it to the SIL and she killed it by accidentally powering it on while still in the bag and stripping the lens extension gears. Cost to repair: more than the camera, and it wasn't cheap.

Pity, because it was the best camera I've ever owned and would have taken great video. Also two security IP cams dead and two on the critical list, hell, even my dashcam lasted barely a year before kacking itself. Are you seeing the pattern here? 

Happier Moment:

Also arrived recently have been odds and ends of hardware for building machines, microswitches, an LCD display, some voltage regulators, a cheap external SSD style drive for backups (honestly, under fifty dollars for a 4Tb splitty,) and a few motor controllers and stepper motor drivers.

This arrived months ago but has only just gained three drivers and a Nano.

This makes me incredibly happy because from here it's not long before I'll be able to assemble a few development machines for RCX. 

3D Print News:

Brucely the Ender3 Pro got an upgrade late last year to a direct drive extruder because it was melting filament higher up and I was suspecting the Bowden extruder, also I'd shortened the Bowden twice because the end of the teflon was experiencing the Ender throat failure. I bought some new teflon tubing but it kept happening and I was stumped.

Then I got that DD extruder and it still got blockages, and this with a whole new hot end assembly. I couldn't even imagine. I pulled the had gantry apart and . . .

Got sick. 

So I spent a few weeks recuperating and by then it was December. And then a specialist mucked up my medication which meant that I was virtually in withdrawal for two weeks before we figured out what was happening, then I had a carpal tunnel operation and recovery and before I knew it, it was February.

Once my right hand had sufficiently recovered for me to do useful work with it, I did the hot end mod on the printer and reassembled it, spent a bit of time recalibrating it, and printed off a model (toothpaste roller I remixed to hang on our bathroom system) and on the second run (we needed two, different colours, to make up a pair of bicoloured rollers) and it blocked. Except it didn't have the standard blockage. 

The filament crumpled is the best way I can explain it. 

Screwdriver pointing to where the extruder hob gear was running.

But it got me thinking. The filament was melting above the hot end, almost in the section of teflon between the extruder and the top of the print head heatsink. And then the second realisation hit me. The printer's had maybe two genuine nozzle blockages in six months, both due to the teflon throat problem. 

Then all of a sudden it became endemic. What changed? I finished the enclosure cabinet, and summer, were what. And I had previously noticed that the enclosure got beautifully warm inside - but that was in our winter. To top it off, I almost got a burn off the extruder motor when I stopped and cleared the print head and pulled out that filament. 

Now - I do have plans to fit an extractor fan and duct to the outside. And to monitor the enclosure temperature and control that fan. But it hasn't been able to be done yet, because I put the money towards the RCX parts. 

And so now I have to either operate with the cover open and a second 40mm cooling fan between the two components, or else go back to the Bowden system. I also need some decent PTFE Capricom tubing because that much heat kills the cheaper teflons. 

Oh and did I mention? With regard to this problem. That cabinet must get to at least 50C inside, it's unpleasantly warm when I open it. PLA has a Tg of 60C - 65C and one of the problems you can sometimes get is that the bed temperature can make the bottom layer of your PLA model slip and come loose - at 60C.

The PLA above the heat-generating hot and cold ends, plus the cabinet heat, seems to be making the damn filament melt and buckle right after the extruder hob, and then it's like trying to shove well-cooked spaghetti through. . .  

But for now I just have to keep the enclosure door open and put up with the considerable noise Brucely makes when printing. Eh? What's that you say? You'll have to speak up, I'm going deafer by the day.

3D Model News:

One of the other "have to" models I needed to print was a new mount for my articulated magnifier lamp. The old model is fine for light cameras (see Camera Extra next section) but the PLA version can't stand up to the weight of the maggilamp at full extension. With a cat hanging from it. Long story. Anyway - I needed a new holder. 

And so I went back to Tinkercad and used my huge (at least eight months man!) experience (and the handy Tinkercad command cheat sheet) to remix my original design.

 

The new (L) and the old (R)

As you can see, my skillz did improve in the time since the first one. 😃 The new one has a lot more meat around the spike of the articulated arm and so far it's held up to me and the cat, so that's a relief because this thing takes almost five hours to print with a lot of walls and quite dense infill. 

Here's the Tinkercad link for people to download, plus I'll post the .STL files and then it'll be on the web shop and on Grumpy's shop soon. Check back on this article and when the above has links in it you'll be able to go grab a copy.

Camera Extra:

One last thing I learned was how to turn laptop webcams (the one in the lid) into USB cameras. I've had several old laptops I've been lugging around for years waiting to turn the screens into monitor panels but never bought the required driver boards because - well, cost. But they also  have a camera in most of them.

So I opened the lid of one lappie, extracted the camera and put the rest back together, and performed the magic rituals and incantations, and soon had a camera running. For a few moments before the smoke leaked out. *sigh*

Turns out some laptops have true USB webcams that run on 5V supplies, others have a USB output but with 3.3V supply. Yep, that particular one was the latter, and had I known that little trap I'd just have put two diodes in series in the positive lead which would have dropped the voltage enough to avoid smoke but not so low as to make the output too low to send reliably over the USB data connection. 

But there was one more lappie cam that has worked reliably and has quite good video, and a second one that's not too bad. And they can be put on the end of a desklamp articulated base and stuck into one of my lamp mounts. So that's a good thing, I FINALLY got some monitoring cameras for the printer. 

All in all a happy post. Stay safe, stay well, stay tuned.