New Tools For New Creations

Tradition is all very well

. . . but if we stuck to tradition we'd still be using knapped flint knives to scrape skins for clothing. What made me think of that? This video at around the ten minute mark where it becomes apparent that Johnny is copping some flak about using his CNC router so much, the implication being that he's atrophying his traditional woodworking skills.

Of course (spoiler alert) the use of manual tools is still crafstmanlike and extremely satisfying to watch. Perhaps the person that mentioned it was missing the ASMR of watching hand-crafting. Me, I got my enjoyment from seeing a new tool being used to create innovative new designs. 

And just imagine an ancient Persian atisan doing that inlay with an iron chisel that needed sharpening every hour, a fine saw to cut (what would undoubtedly have been) ivory for the inlay, and so forth, it would have taken a week just to get that done let alone the rest. 

This is me totally using my pic editing
skillz to chop this bit out of the video. In
the old days I'd have had to paint it . . .

Okay - the caption of the image isn't precise. I'd have had to scratch it into a hand flattish rock with another rock, but I wanted illustrate (see what I did there, geddit?) the difference in technology just in publishing, in the last 30 - 50 years. You get the idea. 

Hyperbole Aside

Exaggeration aside, there's no such things a "losing traditional skills." Tradition - it . . . evolves. Not too many people remember a lariat rope knot (or horseback cutting, roping, and tying) but not so long ago it was a valued tradition for cowboys and stockmen. Now they're flying helicopters and driving muster buggies. You get the idea.

My own father was a good home wood and metal worker but his knowledge of plastics and resins pretty much ended at epoxy two part mix and PVA wood glue. He taught me with a handsaw, chisels, and grinders and arc and oxy-acetylene welding. When I got a circular saw and plunge router he was dubious only until he used them himself, and so his Christmas presents for that year were easy . . . 

If I'd had kids, I'd be passing along CNC and 3D printing skills along with use of dremel tools and 3D CAD design, in addition to my secondhand manual and powered woodworking and metalworking skills, but in a form that used the tools I have at my disposal, and those theoretical kids would consider those to be "tradtional."

So Whither Future?

I'd also be teaching them the skills I'm still struggling with like programming Unos and Pis and Jetsons and making them part of a build. And my father would not like those much nor understand them because they'd address none of the build targets he'd have had. 

But when someone comes up with 'wood fusing ceramic coating' or nanotech machining, I won't grumble too much about the "problem of losing the old ways" but just make sure future generations, and my readers, will know how to use either, as appropriate. 

Each advance in tech will come with naysayers and what I call 'epoch puritans' as one kind of process gives way to a new process, equipment, or even an entirely new craft. I see those as distinct epochs, and FFF (3D additive printing) was one such that I've been lucky enough to be involved in from early mass adoption. I've so far not had the opportunity to get hands-on with resin printing, sintered and melted metal, laser cutting, or CNC processing but that's only because I can't afford to, and as soon as I can, I will. 

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Renting? Still Want to 3D Print?

I Rent, But I Want To Do Stuff!

First, hi Michael (Teaching Tech) here's a thing I started for my little workbench/workshop and I hope it'll give you (and of course all of you, my readers) a few ideas for setting up non-destructively / non-invasively if you're renting but still want to have a decent 3D printing experience. 

This is going to be a quick article, as I'm posting it as a response to Michael's new makerspace video from a few days ago. In it he mentioned not having a cat door yet to let ventilation / extraction air out. If  my setup were near the sliding door, I'd use this commercially available cat door insert, replace the upper glass panel with MDF, and print some vent outlets for myself:

Commercially Available
Cat Door Section

As I'm in one half of a small bedroom (with my wife sharing the space for her craft and textiles work) however, I get one of the smallish windows and chose to go the following way: 

I printed a few things to help, and used some MDF to completely block the window opening.

As you can see there's an MDF panel that fills the entire window space (we have two windows so it's no loss of airflow and also - see next) and roughly spray painted it, and installed another cat port so our pampered cats can tear through and disturb us entirely at their leisure. The front yard is fully enclosed cat-proof so this is their exercise area. You'll see a desk port for cables, I run an extension cord outside there, a CAT5 for a security camera, and an audio cable to a set of decent computer speakers outside so we can play music when we're out there. 

And yes, there's also a plastic recycling workbench out there on the veranda in the enclosed section, where I hope one day I'll have the wherewithal to buy a plastic shredder and maybe an extruder/injector to make recycled plastics filaments and all sorts of useful items. If you want to help me reach my dream, go to the footer and see what you can do to get involved.

I printed a mount for a 120mm computer fan to draw air into the room (with a panel that can be rotated to cover the opening to keep drafts out in the winter) and a second adaptor on the half-height grille to attach some of that flexible pool hose that you get with every cheap pool with those toy filter pumps. This pool hose goes to a fitting for a 40mm 24V fan (not pictured, will take pic another day) that draws air out of the printer cabinet to put fumes outside.

You can see the grilles I bought at Bunnings (Aussie hardware store chain) at the top of the exterior shot. Future plans include running the fume extractor hose through a separate housing/diverter that includes an activated charcoal filter element and then one side will extract air from the printer, the other will take air from my workbench in the form of a printed vent that will draw away solder fumes and run them over the charcoal too. 

I can't stress this enough, as a person with COPD - there's no real safe exposure to plastic fumes and VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) and I also work with recycling plastics, and the only way for smaller operations to safely clean those fumes out of the air is activated charcoal filtering. Luckily there are panels of all sizes used as sub-micron, gas, and even HEPA filters for vacuum cleaners so find a replacement filter that's easy to get and design housings etc around it, then you can change it easily in future. 

All my fan controls are manual for the moment but if I get my head around Pi Picos I may build a small environment controller for the room.

And that's it - enjoy, hope it gives you ideas to use as starting points.

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In addition to writing these articles I'm also experimenting with ways of recycling waste that can be done at the cottage industry or community hub levels, not so much because it'll magically convert 100% of local waste into recycled useful articles, but because people who are doing these sorts of activities are likely to talk about them to people in their community, and so raise even more awareness of the issues and dangers.

So please - take a look at my News Stand where you'll see live updated links to everything I publish; And take some time and share the links to the News Stand and this article with your friends and readers. 

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All donations are put towards keeping these websites online, and for developing devices, machines, and techniques to easily and safely recycle materials on a tiny scale.

 

Keep Your Plastic Dry

The Drying Solutions

Nylon (PA 6) is a difficult filament for FFF printing. It's a useful engineering plastic due to its toughness, but its love of absorbing moisture out of the air is legendary. One of the major struggles faced by 3D printer owners is keeping filaments dry once the bag is opened. (Oh and because these are vacuum sealed, the slightest p[inhole lets in air - and the humidity it contains. In fact, because of possible air ingress at the time pf packing, your PA6 nylon filament may arrive already having absorbed moisture.)

The problem with hygroscopic - aka 'water-absorbing' - engineering plastics for printing is that the water starts to boil out of the plastics as it leaves the print nozzle and the expanding water / steam blows little holes in the model, or excess stringing occurs, or even a collapse of the model. 

Other Plastic Operations

Filament printing is just one operation we can perform on plastics that depends on dry - really dry - plastic material. In an injection molding die, steam and water in the plastic can leave voids, blow out through steam pressure, and generally ends in failure.

If you're pressing plastic into plate form, the water will leave all manner of deformities and imperfections in the plate. (And that's even true of the sandwich press plaste BTW. Hard experience talking here.) In fact, moisture absorption by plastics during manufacture is a Bad Thing.

(The exception (which is actually not an exception as it occurs AFTER the manufacturing processes) is that strimmer and weed trimmer lines made of nylon should be allowed to absorb moisture to make it more resistant to fracturing in use.)

Are There Solutions? 

Thankfully, there are solutions for FFF processes in particular, and some general advice for other processes. Here's a short article detailing some solutions.

Your TL;DR is that there are different processes depending on your needs. There are solutions for drying out filament that's become waterlogged, and involve taking a spool of filament to a temperature below the melting point of the filament (AND the melting point of the spools the filament is on! Also true story) but as high as possible to evaporate off the water.

There's a solution for keeping dry filament dry in cabinets, and in smaller dry keepers that feed directly into your printer. No one solution seems able to do all of it. (The article is advertising for a claimed all-in-one solution but you also need to keep sane costs in mind - especially like myself, on a pension.)

Some Home Grown Solutions

 

 
TL:The credenza, with door closed. TR:The filament section open.         
LL: The back of the dehumidifier    LR: Overview of the printer cabinet

The good news is that for the lower temperature rated plastics there are a few inexpensive solutions.

Many people convert an inexpensive circular food dehydrator with thermostat into a filament dryer. These barely manage to reach 60C and generally run even cooler than that, but they CAN dry filaments slowly IF you also keep some fresh silica gel in it where it can absorb the moisture as it's released, and change it frequently.

Silica gel is also good in any air sealed tub you want to keep your filament in once it's dried, but it has a definite use life and once it's absorbed water you either throw it out, or waste even more energy drying it out for (one or two cycles of) re-use. 

I wanted to store 10 - 25 spools of filament (mainly PLA and some PETG) so I made a solution with an old desk credenza thing (one shallow drawer and one file drawer) that I actually also mounted the printer cabinet atop, and it's adequate for most things.

The way it keeps things from moisture is that it has a small electric dehumidifier inside, the kind that distills the humidity out of the air and fills a water drawer. Because it runs with about 45W it also keeps the inside of the cabinet at 25C - 35C and below 32% RH, and there's ALSO a tub of silica gel in there that gets changed when it looks like it's absorbed enough.

I just took all the drawers out and turned the fronts into a hinged door, sealed it, and made a shelf for the dehumidifier.

The front of the dehumidifier, and the Ender3 Pro known as "Brucely."

 
(Messy) top of cabinet with filament entry, and the sophisticated

"climate monitoring" inside the filament cabinet aka "Fillie Stash".

The dehumidifier is for a small room, and in our 75% - 85% average RH here it fills the tank every six weeks or so. The distilled water doesn't get chucked out - we use it to top off lead acid batteries, fill irons, put on soldering iron sponges, wash things, and give some away to the local ironing people, cleaners, and anyone else that needs demineralised distilled water.

There's still a shelf to go in the Fillie Stash but so far it's kept a decent temperature and humidity for over a year now and only added about 6-8 dollars to the electric bill for the year. It probably won't be useful for nylon (PA 6) and other engineering plastics but it's kept the PLA and PETG fairly stable. There's usually a small tub of dessicant in there as well, I've changed that twice in over a year, so they last 6-8mths if you don't leave the door open all the time. 

Not shown in the pictures is an IKEA Förnuftig air purifier with the additional charcoal filter to absorb plastic fumes, it's generally run at lowest speed to clear the air of passing particles such as, you know, COVID if we have unvetted visitors, and dust from the road outside. When I'm working it gets cranked up to 3 and pulls fumes out of the air. (Activated charcoal filtering works wonders against the volatile organic compound fumes from plastic and you really should consider one of two purifiers especially in view of the still very much a pandemic level of COVID.)

And that's it for this article. Hope it inspires you to make a DIY solution for your filament storage.

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Please - take a look at my News Stand where you'll see live updated links to everything I publish; or take a subscription to my weekly newsletter where you'll receive the same information in your inbox for free; Or contact me via the webform or directly email me if you'd like to help; or donate either directly or at my Ko-Fi page for the price of a coffee, or even make a regular monthly donation there.. It all helps me to build projects like this one, keep the servers and domain names paid for, and lets me take subscriptions for research.