Why Have I Been Quiet? Pt 2

The Not So Bastard Gate Arrives

There was a rare dry and slightly sunny day and I took advantage of it, my muscles having *almost* recovered from my last two sunny days when Not So Bastard Gate was assembled in three panels. 

We now look like this from across our driveway:

This is the NSBG. You can see that the warped paling isn't all
that significant where it is, and was a freebie from the landlord
so we're not looking a gift horse in the mouth, plus I'll replace it.

Down to the left you'll see our present package delivery system, and just above the temporary sign will be where the new parcel delivery hatch will be located. That'll be Pt 3 of this series and probably the final one. 

Some Backstory: 
As mentioned in the first part, we had 96% of our yard excised for a new house to be set up, landlord was at that time as wary of us as we of them, not much communication but they did make several exceptional allowances for us and the cats and over the intervening years we've gotten along much better. As a result, some of the pocket sized front yard wasn't quite what either party had envisaged, and a parcel delivery hatch was just never figured in.

It was also the start of the pandemic soon after the new arrangements had begun, and so the incidence of deliveries rose. (Also, we'd been shopping online for most things except food items for years, but I also started gaining an interest in 3D printing and perhaps sharing projects etc online and so I was loath to use cobbled-together parts when I could get a better-looking part INEXPENSIVELY mailed from overseas instead.)

Anyhow - the front fences were all overlapped paling fences and the BG was this heavy shitty monstrosity made with pickets and the bendiest (but heaviest) hardwood I've ever seen, and yeah we always had cats from less conscientious owners running free around the place and yowling-through-the-BG-fights were common, to the point we were locking the cats in with us overnight to keep the noise down for everyone. 

When I asked Mt (the elder landlord, the junior landlord's name also happens to have the initial M so they are Mj in all references) if I might build a new fence and gate he was receptive, and provided a stack of palings for the gate and some old wood offcuts. I had the round poles from CatYard One, the original yard we'd erected to keep our fuzzy little buddies safe from being squished on the highway just outside the front yard. So here we are. 

During trial fitting, one panel fell down and pancaked our old parcel delivery tub, which seemed kind of foreshadowing if you ask me. Because my plan had been to cut a parcel delivery hatch in the front fence, except that the landlord put so much effort into it and I was sure if I modified it without their permission they'd be quite pissed, and also if I'd asked permission I'd probably have been refused.

(No the tub in the picture isn't the original one, we had to replace that and chomp up the old tub so I can recycle it in into useful plastic bits. I'm still looking for some way to either buy a plastic grinder or bits to make one, if you can help see the footer of this or any of my articles.)

Adding to that is that driveway space is limited near the front and the delivery people would have to squeeze between the car and the fence to get to a delivery point there, whereas the rear has (as you can see in the image above) the whole width of the driveway available.

And of course the Not So Bastard Gate is MY project so if I slip in a delivery hatch well that's all good, right? 😸

So On To Today

Had to include that video snippet because it stars the brothers Archie and Pickle, both of whom we saved from going to a cat refuge when the owner of an unspeyed cat dealt with the kittens by offering them up online. We already had two cats, a mother and son we'd rescued years earlier from a similar situation and we're responsible so they'd been neutered/speyed and had all their shots and annual updates in all the intervening years and been kept as indoor / cat-safe yard cats - we had the space for them. 

Sp Pickle and Archie came to live, and got all their shots and were also neutered, (you may notice I stress responsibility & care all the time that's because cats are in a special case for me, I've had them since I was three and the grandparents' cat wanted me so much he jumped out a window to be with me and somehow ended up attached to my head and face leaving scratches and stuff - and the thing that worried 3yo me the most was "I called him - not his fault, not punish!" and to this day I have to say I've always taken care for pets and animals under my guardianship seriously and if a few other people were the same we wouldn't have feral anything issues in Australia.)

In the video, Archie controls my workmanship while Pickle controls EVERYTHING. 

Anyhow - all that to get to this point: The two boys have NEVER been outside a controlled environment all their lives, they have two (albeit small) yards and the full house they can run full tilt from one end to the other of - and do so with gusto - but we're not prepared to let them learn about the Big Bad World Outside on our watch. Gates have locks, locks are used, visitors by arrangement, and parcels delivered contact-free. 

So - Finally A Few More Pictures

The next few pictures are just to show where we were to where we are. The 50mm square "flower wire" mesh are a common garden supply and the whole backyard was made with it, very thin s it didn't obstruct the view, cats can't climb it because it's too thin for them to be able to hang onto it, and 2.1m high and a slight inward wing at the top is good enough to keep them from going over. 

UNLESS there's things (like gas bottles or parcel delivery hatch covers) that they can gain some purchase on. Which isn't the case here, we've left them the run of the yard for half the night (when they do most of their "casing the joint" missions and find the loopholes) and they don't dare jump on the wobbly plastic panel I've laid across the gas bottles, plus anyway even before I did that, the only reason they sat on the bottles was so they could see the stray cats and feel safe in a superior position.

They couldn't get over BG's battlements from there, NSBG is slightly higher and already has an upper wing, and all in all I couldn't be happier with the safety and security of it. 

Marrying up round poles with rectangular timber was a bit of a special case, at first I tried an 82mm hole saw but it proved easier to just mark the circles and use a jigsaw. I'll have pics of that on Pt 3 I guess, along with the designing and making of the parcel hatch. 

You can see in the second picture the gas bottles, landlord said they'll be shifted outside the small yard anytime soon, and it's a job I can do but I'm not sure of the legalities so for now, gas bottle #1 will get disconnected and the pigtail taped to prevent wasps nesting (don't laugh - back in the Wild West days when people could fit their own gas installations in their own castles I helped Dad set up our first and second gas installs and in both cases there was a mud dauber wasp nest in the pigtails before we got to day two...)

So for the moment we'll just use bottle #2 until it's empty and then disconnect it and attach #1 when needed, and I reckon the new gas installation'll happen this summer anyway so probably not such a long way away. 

As for the parcel hatch and weather-and-cat-proof enclosure inside, a sloped metal roof will stop them gaining height, and an access door inside will keep them from exploiting the parcel hatch as an exfiltration point, to use some seriously ops-oriented jargon. 

Heartwarming PS: 

Just to demonstrate the total interactiveness of the fur kids: I just went outside to see if I had a piece of material to photograph for this article (I do but it's still doing duty as a temporary brace) and found one of the fuzzy tinkly ball toys sitting right on a plank that's currently propping BG against the wall to stop it squishing cats and other stuff. 

The NSBG has the Pickle Seal of Approval! 

Pickle has the tinkly balls as 'his' - Archie prefers to nick off with my wife's craft yarn balls, and George likes getting under blankets and rugs, and tunneling. 

George's mum Missy was claimed by the sister-in-law during the lockdowns as a companion and they've become inseparable so that arrangement is now permanent and she has SiL as her favourite ever toy. This latter development has actually been the best thing, Missy was always a bit taken aback by the brothers and she never formed any attachment with either of us as she has with SiL, and SiL has never formed as much of an attachment to a pet as she has with Missy.

So nawww, yeah. 

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Why Have I Been Quiet?

The Backyard Gate Saga

When we moved into this rental five years ago, we were given pretty free rein to make it suitable for us. Being us, and there being a medium busy highway just outside the front door, the first thing it needed was a backyard that kept cats IN. We spent around AUD$3.5k buying wire mesh, posts, cement, and on a handyman to do most of the work, but we ended up with  25m x 15m backyard enclosure and a secured side gate as well. This gate will be referred to as the 'Bastard Gate' from here on.

That served us for four years, but then a new landlord decided to split our block and we had to pull it down and were basically stuffed for recovering the money. (That's one reason I HATE the "real estate" system, it's just bullshit. It's a really crap system and needs to be replaced by something better. We used up our life savings to build that fence and a shed for storage - quite literally all we had in the bank - and yeah this happened.)

So our back yard shrank dramatically, but the landlord was also kind and nice enough that he built paling fences around the new tiny backyard AND our front yard for us. Which is nice because I was able to add cat-climb preventers to those fences, we've been able to let the cats roam from the front to the back yard with cat doors in place, and they really don't need as much space as people think they need if you engage them with play and interactions regularly, which we do. We're a cat's dream as far as food, lodgings, and interactivity go. And life was peachy all around. Until that side gate fell down for the second time . . . 

The Gate Problem

The Bastard Gate was added by the OG owner who was a builder by trade, and "physician heal thyself" applies in spades with them... The Bastard Gate was attached completely plumb level to the laundry outbuilding. And then made to swing outwards onto a steadily rising driveway, which meant that it lifted away from the laundry at the bottom, with a huge 2m leverage. The first time it fell down was when the lawns got done, Russ the mowing guy opened it to take his mower back to his vehicle, closed the Bastard Gate, went to drive off - heard a crash, and looked back to see the Bastard Gate flat on the ground - with a cat venturing out to see what was going on...

Russ immediately scooped the cat (this is why he's more our friend than 'that mower guy' and comes around for the odd coffee between his jobs) and propped the Bastard Gate across the entrance, called me to come see, and we re-fitted it. The next day I made a spacer (Hi Ivan!) block for the bottom so that the Bastard Gate got lifted as it swung, which removed a lot of the torsion effect. This is what should have been done in the first place, a simple 15mm spacer. Builders. Argh. 

But the Bastard Gate fell over again a few months later when the top attachment screws also pulled out due to the constant flexing, and this time I made plans to replace it with a less inappropriate design. Spoke to the nice landlord and asked if I could do it, and even submitted a plan to him. 

Yep just Tinkercad, yep very basic, and yep - Elvis. I think that actually sold it to the landlord, and he went so far as to provide leftover palings and some other bits from his work on his other places. As it turns out enough palings to do the whole side plus a two spares.

Plans Grow

While I was at it I also planned to put a parcel delivery hatch in the gate, a basic double-door design that prevents parcel retrieval from outside. Our current parcel delivery is a 55litre plastic tub in plain sight on the driveway because we can't trust delivery people to shut gates behind them, and we'd rather risk losing a parcel than losing a cat. 

First Things First

The parcel hatch will be easy enough to do once the fence and gate panels are up so making those has taken most of my time. I decided to do a very short panel at the laundry building, and swing the gate INWARD from that so it doesn't have to cope with a sloping driveway. And also so it matches the landlord's front yard gate which has proven very reliable and should make him happy.

The fence palings are 180cm same as the rest of the fences, and I've used 210cm posts so I can run a board across them near the top to keep them steady, that will be high enough to allow almost anything to be brought in and out through. 

The gate is a touch over 90cm wide (because that way I don't have to ripsaw any palings into narrower strips) the laundry side panel is barely 20cm  and the house side panel is 76cm. 

Look - opening that 1.80m  heavy gate uphill - supported on a ridiculous castor wheel to cope with the rising ground - was a job for two grown men and a team of sled dogs, it wobbled and flexed and nails and screws regularly popped out of it. It regularly trapped unsuspecting people's hands and left them with bruised nails and knuckles. It won't be missed by anyone. 

So here are the three panels:

The laundry side panel

The smallest panel has just one wide and two narrow palings. You can see the Bastard Gate to the left, with its wire to keep the cats in, added cord to stop another escape route - oh, and my shed behind it. 

(That's another story. I said the rest of our savings had been spent on a shed, well it was a new kit shed and we paid to have a concrete pad cast and set - all the fruit - and then it too had to be taken down and no recompense for it was ever mentioned. So I jammed it across the driveway behind the laundry, had to completely bastardise it in the process, but you know, I'd HAD IT with the disruptions and destruction of our property by then. Much more cordial now because we've become friendly and have an understanding. So fingers crossed we'll be here for decades and may as well make it comfortable for us.)

The house side panel, and our current parcel delivery crate.

More of the Bastard Gate at the right this time, and our otherwise wide open to theft parcel delivery at the foot of it. You'll notice the left side is missing palings, this is because I'll have to make nicely-hidden attachment points into the house and that'll be easier to do without having to reach around corners.

...and the gate panel, still with bracings attached.

The gate. It still has two boards attached, that held it at the right height for fitting the hinges prior to putting all the parts back together. 

Notes And Gotchas

There's a few things with the design. You can see that the driveway's old concrete. It's hard as steel in places with large aggregate added to make it cheaper. (Builder habits again...) But the bottom rail has to be fixed, and it can't just be a continuous length from side to side because that's a trip hazard and also makes moving things almost impossible. 

But I've left the posts 2.1m tall so that I can run a board across the top to stop wobbles, and that's all set up ready to go and won't get in the way of most uses of the gate.

Then too this area is a low point and rain floods it from the driveway which is, as previously said, higher than the back concreted area. 

The Moved Shed features a covered area out the back, and to save its posts from sitting in water, I cut squares of an ordinary HDPE kitchen cutting board and slipped them under each post as we bolted them down. So I've cut some more, smaller, squares and drilled a hole in them, and will stack two, two stacks under each panel, to raise everything 8mm above the cement and let water just run through. 

And I've drilled holes in the bottom rails near each end, Once the panels go in place I'll mark the spots, use a hammer drill to make shallow holes. When the panels go back, I have some masonry bolts, will whack some epoxy into each hole and hammer the bolts down into them then let it all set, cut the bolt shafts flush on the inside. The theory being that with the two outer ends fixed to solid structures and a few bolts into the gound on the inner edges of the panels, they'll never lift UP out of the holes and so will stay in place. 

Also, it was a hot day, Pickle wanted to make sure I was doing things right, and so I had to make a sun tent for him.

Pickle 'supervising' me.

Here you can see the Bastard Gate
in all its glory.

As a bonus, here you can see the Bastard Gate with the framework of the laundry side, and the new gate temporarily fitted together for a first impression of where it would end up. The Laundry side panel will actually slip to the left and behind the laundry when it's all live, leaving about 60cm on the house side.

Landlord has been promising to move the gas bottles out to the outer wall but for the moment they're far enough away from the new fence/gate to allow me to fit the parcel hatch as well. 

Anyway - that's ONE of the reasons why I've been a bit quiet in recent times. There are more, stay tuned!

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AliExpress - My Quick List

Everyone Has Favourites, Right?

My AliExpress Top 24 Fave Stores

I know I've been absent from the blogs for a week or two - things have been hectic, won't bore you with details but stressful and time-consuming. I've missed pouring my dribblings out to you all. And I'm not out of the woods yet but I'm finding slowly that I have a few moments here and there where I can sit and think again. So I thought I might list my top 24 stores on AliExpress with a short explanation of them and what I look for in a store there. Lots of links!

Announcement: Please go to my News Stand to see all my posts and subscribe to my inbox-friendly once-a-week super-you-beaut newsletter and please share links to this and any other articles you found interesting. It'll really help my blogs get some exposure.

UPDATE: See foot of post, got a 90sec vid up.

What Is AliExpress?

Blowed if I know how to exactly describe AliExpress, but here's my best try: Imagine a website for a single seller - AnyCubic, Creality3D, McMaster Carr. It's nothing like that... Imagine a store like Banggood - and it's nothing like that, either. The closest things I can think of are MadeInChina or Ebay. Similar to them, it's a low oversight Ebay for Asian small stores. 

Sellers can apparently be anyone at all, from someone with a van full of parts that they're hawking on street corners, all the way to BigTreeTech and Creality. All very like Ebay so far, actually. So let's settle on that, it's a Chinese Ebay. By the way, MadeInChina is a more commercial-focused similar site, like AliBaba - which is AliExpress' parent site - so that's as good as I can make my evaluation of the actual site.

I've had my share of bad experiences there, but I also have those on Ebay and Banggood and Amazon, too. (Oh and there's a thing - AliExpress has some of the niceties of Amazon but not quite so much buyer protection...)

Because it's Santa for Makers!

Why Use AliExpress?

If you're like me, money's a bit tight most of the time. I realise that influencers are in a very different situation to me (and probably you as well) in that A) they have a large disposable income, if they're any good, and B) if they're any good, they got to that point by being able to complete projects and evaluations in a timely manner - and that means they'll rarely use these slower and less reliable suppliers.

Me, I've found that the money I've generally saved on items has been huge. I'm talking about avoiding local store margins of 20% - 150% over AE prices. The few times I've been at a loss, the sellers agreed to pay back the base cost of the items and left me bearing only the (usually tiny) shipping costs.

For instance, I ordered a set of PCB drill bits with a common shank size, invaluable if you want to quickly change bits when making PCBs and so, I considered the $5.30 price plus $1.27 shipping to be worth it.

The bits hadn't arrived in eight weeks, well past the expected delivery date, so I raised a dispute and sat back. The seller came back with "Tracking number {number here} is shown has arrive in your country, please contact them on {phone number here} and find out." So I punched the number into the local postal delivery's site and came up blank. Wrote back to them and said that here's the link to the local parcel tracking and nothing is indicated, therefore the bits were still in China, if indeed they'd ever been sent.

I suggested they send another set and if the first set turned up I'd be honest enough to pay for it also, as drill bits are a consumable and I'd be quite happy to have a spare set. (And it's quite true - when our local parcel post misdelivered an $80 shipment from Banggood a few years ago, they kindly resent the order, which arrived in a few weeks - and then the original order also turned up after what had apparently been an around-the-world trip. I contacted Banggood and made arrangements to pay the cancelled order. I rely on their service, they should be able to rely on my honesty.)

So How Do I Tell? 

Anyhow - this seller got back to me and refunded the $5.30 cost price which lets me know they didn't actually HAVE any sets of drill bits and make their money by not sending items and keeping the delivery fees. THAT'S how you tell. Well, one way, anyway. 

Another good way to tell the stores that are dodgy is the feedback. I know some of them get their friends and family to all "order" items, leave glowing feedback, and then silently cancel the transaction. A classic was this store that had 20 product lines they were selling, had only 6 sales across their entire line, but a 99% rating and 30-ish feedbacks. They think we can't do the maths . . .

And that's another thing - sellers with less than 100 product lines are generally those people with the vans and a ton of "friends" or purchased reviews. Against that, balance the 3D printer companies - they sometimes only have 15 lines of printers and 30 lines of spare parts, but they're okay.

Also check how long they've been on AE - sometimes you're lucky and find a seller that's only been there less than a year but is honest and quality and ends up becoming a superstar store. But generally I let other people try them and if they're still there after two years then I'll investigate them for use as a resource.

Lastly. That leaves thousands (literally) of stores that I know nothing about and can't offer advice about. They're on a case-by-case basis, apply the simple rules above, make up your own mind, and buy at your own risk. All I can say is that over the years I've spent hundreds (of my painstakingly scrimped money) at Banggood and AliExpress and only been out of pocket a few tens of dollars. 

A Few More Words Of Wisdom

A few of the stores here sell refurbished and secondhand gear. They're usually very up front about it, and so I got a ~$15 high speed high volume server fan for $4, no postage, and it's in use as a dust extraction system and printer enclosure auxiliary cooling fan. (I'll do a piece on this system in a few months when I get it all finished - it's not a presentable project yet. It allows me to extract solder and plastic welding fumes from the work area, also acts as the extraction route for the printer cabinet, and will also do the CNC machine when I finally get that done.) It's so good (and LOUD! But they do say these are loud fans because of their intended use) that I'm getting two more, one as a spare and the other as another auxiliary extraction system. (The CNC...)

Also there are stepper motors that'll drive a full sized commercial CNC router motion system, spindles, and so forth that are shown as "reconditioned" or "refurbished" and if I ever have the chance to make a real CNC I'll definitely start with something like that before spending tens of thousands on new hardware. That's just a fact of life for me, always mind the pennies to the point of miserly behaviour...

The Stores I Use Most

So here are the first 24 (the only 24, actually) stores in my Favourites list on AliExpress:

1. ZHUHAI Store 
   This store has extrusions, motion system components, stepper motors and driver modules, linear track lead screws ball screws vee slot wheel carriages you name it they have it and the price will make ANY local Maker store cry. They're also quite prompt with delivery and I can't fault the quality. 
   
   
2. maccurat Official Store 
   What Zhuhai don't have, maccurat does. Even more hardware, belts, pulleys, stepper motor mounts ready to install, hot ends and extruders, glass bed clips, filament dry storage - I could spend thousands here and have a van of my own to sell from... And like the above store, always punctual and decent quality. 
   
   
3. ICs Store 
   As the name suggests, chips, also microcontroller boards, voltage converters, - I could list more but you get the idea - I have a heap of voltage converters, level shifters, all working and in use. Also good with delivery times.
   
   
4. ACELEX Official Store 
   ACELEX attracted my attention because they have panel mount PWM motor speed controllers and similar modules, DIY USB cable plugs and sockets, lasers, tools, solder, wire - a cornucopia of Maker parts. Not too shoddy at all... 
   
   
5. YUNSHUO Official Store 
   Optical smooth motion rods, block and pillow bearings, linear bearings, and a whole lot more motion and mechanical parts, aviation connectors, some T-track parts. Delivers in reasonable times.
   
   
6. GlobalPower Co., LT Store 
   18650 batteries, other LiIon LiFePo and other chemistries batteries, holders, connectors, chargers, I've got a lot of batteries from here. 
   
   
7. Holyhah Store 
   Holy Hah, Batman! Main reason for this store is that they sell Niimbot thermal printers and I have one that I use for labelling and guerilla QR code campaigns. They also sell rolls of labels for the printer including the weatherproof ones and cable "tag" labels. The Niimbot D110 printer I have is excellent, Bluetooth to the phone and I can pretty much do on the spot stocktaking / labelling.
   
   
8. Guangyi0016 Store 
   Electromechanical stuff, strain gauges etc. Peltier cooling. Nixie style glow tubes, Tesla coil parts. Wholesome goodness for Makers
   
   
9. NIIMBOT Online Store 
   My printer plus a dozen relatives, label tapes, stocktake scanner / labellers, photo printers. 
   
   
10. HoHou Store 
    More labelling stuff - Niimbot included. For a while, it was hard to get the 30mm waterproof labels so I had a few suppliers.
    
    
11. power2019 Store 
    Batteries supercapacitors coin cells clips for batteries and coin cells - can never have too much power for projects!
    
    
12. SuperModel Store 
    Gears drive trains heatshrink switches food grade silicon tubing small drone motors connectors including aviation connectors - I find things here all the time. 
    
    
13. Aideepen Direct Store 
    More motor controller, thermostat, and various panel mount and open circuit board modules, USB power analyzers, that kind of stuff. 
    
    
14. Cloudray-Motor Store 
    It's a stepper motor central, with a great range of motors and drivers, pulleys, and - everything for stepper motors. They sometimes have good package deals. 
    
    
15. BigTreeTech Official Store
    I got my SKR Mini E3 V3 here and now the companion touch LCD and they have some nice printers and bits. So far I'm liking them, lots.
    
    
16. NEARCAM Store 
    Nearcam's here for the RGBLEDs and lighting stuff in general, I still get a bit gee whizzed by blingy blinky lights. I got a raft of WSsomething addressable LEDs here and they got here fast.
    
    
17. Electrical Kingdom 
    This store has industrial connectors and parts like inductive switches, linear actuators, gas lifts, VFDs, cable management spiral wrap, pumps motor drives and all sorts of fun stuff. They also have sub-D connectors which I bought three of (thinking the price was for a pair) and finished up with 30 pairs. Oops. They were so inexpensive I was sure the price had to be for one, not for ten...
    
    
18. HYONGC Hongbang Motor Store 
    Another stepper motor store but has a load of more specialised CNC parts, motion controllers, pendants, limit switches, a few desktop laser engravers/cutters and so forth. 
    
    
19. CREALITY 3D Printer Global Store 
    They may actually BE Creality3D, they have all the printers and so forth.
    
    
20. Funssor Official Store 
    More Maker hardware like extrusions and frame kits and all the usual stuff you might want for 3D FFF (FDM) printing.
    
    
21. pandahall Official Store 
    Craft supplies. What? I like craft stuff, my wife loves it, and they have CRAFT TOOLS like pliers and snips and so forth. Well worth favouriting.
    
    
22. XXXXXX Store 
    Parts for gaming controllers, PCB mount connectors, a LOT of different types of everything.
    
    
23. satisfyelectronics Store 
    Loads more modules and parts and even laser transfer photo resist for making PCBs. 
    
    
24. Ancufy Store 
    More printer love, loads of parts for your machine, beds, printing surfaces, fans (FANS!!!) and - well, a lot of stock.  
    

(Why 24?) Because that's how many I can list before having to click the "Load more stores" link, and I'm lazy. Also the 24 are constantly changing as my needs change. Some are kept just because I want to be able to find them again in six months or a year. And a lot have been preserved as links in a notepad file. 

That's by no means an exhaustive list, nor is it any kind of special endorsement, nor are any of them solicited reviews. They're all just stores that sell the parts I'm using right now and who've proven that they can supply reliably and consistently. And they may be a good start for you if, like me, you're tired of an automatic "homie tax" of 200% being applied by a local reseller just because they got an even better price than you did (because they buy in bulk) and now have the parts close to hand. 

Yeah. In Australia, we seem to get this a lot. Buy a ton of 50c parts for 30c in bulk, get them shipped over in a combined shipping deal for almost zero cost, put them online for $2 plus P&P, and charge a flat $10 P&P within Australia fee because our internal postal service are a monopoly and not afraid to use that advantage to squeeze more $$$$$$$$$$$$ out of people.    

By comparison: I can get that part in a combined shipping order for $1, the combined shipping percentage will add maybe 50c-$1. That makes a $2 part vs a $12 part here in Aus. 

And I'm still doing most of that purchasing out of my pension, but you can help me make articles like this one and projects like the CNC and the dozen or so 3D models I've uploaded to various sites for free. 

UPDATE: Got a video up of that screaming fan up, showing part 1 of 3 of the (still printing) housing.

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So yes, please share this article and my others like it, go to my News Stand to see all my other posts and share links to the News Stand and any articles you found interesting, and if you can, donate here or here and find out here why it's important. Or subscribe to my once a week newsletter and stay in the loop. Thank you for being here and reading.