New For Workbench + Belated 2nd Anniversary.

Spent just over seven bucks for:

This ATX power supply breakout board and acrylic panel cover. I have a few ATX power supplies, one of which has had the connector cut off and the wires extended via a big terminal strip, to provide power for the workbench and security cameras. Since they're a switchmode, they draw very little extra current of their own. 

I actually bought two boards and one set of covers because
that way I have a spare. The whole lot cost under AUD$10.

That $10 included mostly shipping. But even so, this represents great value for me. The boards are solid and look well made, way better than my terminal strip. But they won't be replacing it.
EDIT: It turns there are two ATX multipole plugs, my supplies all use the smaller one.

Two Supplies.

There's a good reason for that. I mentioned bench low voltage power and security cameras. There are also two short white LED strips involved, so that I can see the state of the bench and power boards from the door even if all other lights are off. (And so the cats can easily see to use their private cat door into the front cast-safe yard. No our cats aren't spoiled, why would you even say that?)

And in the very near future I'll be adding the reticulation system controllers, a remote management panel for workshop lights and power, and an alarm system. Yep we do have an alarm system currently disconnected due to renovation work but which I'll put back online and then I may as well use an existing ATX power supply rather than running yet another wall wart power pack.

Instead, the existing ATX PS will stay mounted out of the way where it currently is, and I'll just remove bench power and 12V lighting from the terminal strip. Because there's been the odd time I've pushed the PS into shutting down, and that meant losing cameras, bench lighting, and emergency lighting. And the two 12V LED strips will get replaced with a pair of battery-backed 5V lights so that if power does go off I'll have 30-60 minutes' worth of light. We do have several power bumps every year and since we rent I can't even get a solar panel and battery system installed.

So the second SMPS will be mounted under the workbench out of the way, and the two long LED strips that provide the bench working and photography lighting will be connected to it, also of course it'll provide 12V and 5V for project building. 

I'm actually pretty flush for power supply now - have two Meanwell style clones 350W apiece 12V and 24V (bought at jumble sales) and will probably keep those for building my CANCNC and other machines. There's always the hope that I'll have a few patrons on Ko-Fi by then and will be able to replace them once they go into machines. 

I also have four spare ATX supplies in case the unthinkable happens. AND a trove of plug pack wall wart power supplies that I hope never to have to use - except to give away to people that bring me in their devices to "can you take a look at this for me? I'ts not working" and quite often it's just those old wall warts giving up the ghost so I hand them a new one and they owe me a favour... 

Anyway - this winter should see a slew of indoor projects I can report on.

Mini plunge router.

The other thing that arrived is this $7 piece of very solid ABS (I think) plastic that turns our clone Dremel into a mini plunge router. It came from Wish so all I can say is look for "11 Pcs/set Rotary Multifunctional Electric Grinder Positioner Combination Set" or something along those lines and you'll find it. 

Plunge adaptor for Dremel style hobby tools,
came with a handful of bits included.

The black ring is the nosepiece that comes with the grinder, and unscrewing it lets you screw the barrel of this plunge collar to the machine. One drawback is that it's hard to tighten the collets on the tool bits, but it's so worth it to get a consistent depth plunge for engraving and routing hobby materials. 

Our grinder is an Ozito clone of the Dremel tool and I can't even remember when it arrived, suffice to say it's over ten years ago and lost to the mists of time. But it's a very useful piece of kit and this has made it even more valuable. I think I might even have a few other bits for milling somewhere in the depths of the shop. 

CAN-CNC 1, 2, 3.

Also, this Dremel clone is one of the spindles I'm planning to make interchangeable holders for to slot into the CAN-CNC. The others are a random powerful looking 24V motor and a Ryobi plunge router that I've owned and used for decades and has a 14/" chuck it's so old. Also looking at FluidNC as an alternative to GRBL or maybe test both. 

Last year I started to design and print plastic parts to use in conjunction with 2020 extrusion and I still haven't progressed far beyond those first two draft iterations of some of the parts, and I have some Arduino based GRBL boards for, also I'll have a Creality 4.2.7 motherboard to experiment with, and no doubt I'll find a few more to muck around with before settling on the best combination.

I'm hoping for a machine that'll handle plywood and MDF and perhaps ali (aluminium) or brass. That way I can use the experience gained (and parts made on V1-V2!) to build CAN-CNC v3.0 - and THEN I can finally make parts and molds for an injection molding press and start the community plastic recycling group here. 

Meanwhile I've started eyeing the model files for the CNC again, finding places to improve stability and rigidity, add some features like attachment points for drag chains, better ways to mount stepper motors and make allowance for stronger ones. 

As I plan to use PLA as much as possible some parts are going to have to either be really chunky, or braced with metal. There may be a use for the old Canon printer hardware salvages after all.

I wonder if CAN-CNC will be the first desktop travelling gantry (fixed bed) CNC designed and modelled all on Tinkercad? Should search for that. (Nope. It appears I'm the only fool that DDG can find. There are a few CNC engravers)

Finally. Forgotten History!

The Arrival.

Seven weeks and two years ago, an Ender3 Pro arrived. It consumed time, filament, and much more time (and filament!) but it made air vents and artwork and control panels and tools and storage solutions and a few mistakes, but it changed life forever. Earbuds case button keeps getting pressed accidentally? Here- take this printed case, it protects the button from accidental presses!

Bathroom cabinet clutter? Here - three compartment trays designed to fit all the bits and pieces! Cats not picking up biscuits properly? Bumpy bottom food bowl gives them the pruchase they need to grab them. And of course things like plant clips, lids to re-seal tomato paste small tins and tubs, tool holders and utensil holders, more artworks for wife to decorate with - the printer definitely made a difference to how we do things around here.

Its name is Brucely. Brucely 3D. I wanted an Aussie name, and for a while there Bruce seemed to be the go-to name for Aussies in the world's view. (Definitely NSFW and contains many many politically incorrect sensitive hot-button issues. It is Monty Python after all.)

But there was another compelling reason for the name. Creality named the printer series, "Ender." The logo for the Ender series is a dragon. That would be because of the Minecraft Ender the dragon I guess. Both Ender the dragon and Ender the 3D printer dragon hark back to a a pun on a movie titled "Enter The Dragon." And who was the star, the legendary martial artist? Bruce Lee. BruceLee. Brucely!

I knew you'd be enthralled, so I'm going to post this same legend of Brucely the Ender3 every year fom now on. Or, hey - you could scroll back up, find the link to chat with me on Mastodon, and talk me out of it. Or Subscribe to the newsletter so you'll know when the Dread Moment arrives each year. And you could even bribe my by supporting me with a one-off (or preferably regular) donation.

I Just Got Flashed!

It was colourful.

A few years ago I'd had it with my laptop. The lid hinges seized and ones side actually broke when I just opened the lid as normal, a piece of plastic that had probaly been flexed over and over finally gave up the fight, and a few more internal bits (by the sound of it) followed suit. A LOT of bits. Couldn't repair that so I taped it in the open position, after which the keyboard started playing up because we live in a dusty environment. 

Also my eyesight has been slowly declining and we held a war meeting. We couldn't and still can't afford top replace a laptop (which was also going slower and slower as Windows got bigger and more resource-intensive) but we could afford a low-end monitor and the HP-24o won that deal by coming on special at Officeworks around that time. 

As you may guess by that link being to a troubleshooting page, yesterday I noticed that every time the imags stayed static on-screen for any length of time, the monitor would bust out this move where it flashed solid screens of colour, red, green, and blue, over and over. Worse, it seemed I'd forgotten how to access the menu. (I hadn't BTW. The plot thickens...) But the Input Select menu could be called up. 

At the same time, AliExpress had a special on 240Gb SSDs and so I (very gingerly!) replaced the SSD and made a mover arm for the monitor I could also set my wireless keyboard and mouse on. It's all a bit of a kludge but it can do the web and crawl through running Arduino IDE and Cura for slicing 3D prints. 

Here's my setup

I've redacted the background - this is our loungeroom after all.

The monitor's on a piece of melamine-covered chipboard which is mounted on a slight angle on a TV-mover type arm which is attached to the table the laptop's on. It dodgy af but it means I can use the system as a (grudging, creaking, slow) dual monitor system as long as I run large fonts. Also the speed hit is noticeable so I rarely use it in DM mode. But back to the weird fault.

Why? Why me? Why my monitor? 

It turns out that HP monitors have a factory-use-only setting and mine had decided it was back in the factory. That took all of a 30 second DDG (DuckDuckGo) to find. Sometimes, updated drivers were (apparently, I'm not so sure they could be) supposedly to blame, sometimes a power bump, sometimes because Murphy's a jerk. 

One of the symptoms is that the menu stops working. So there was that. But sometimes, you could still get the Input menu to come up, which was my case. And I'd spent literally five minutes trying all the usual things with combination button presses. Turned it off and back on.

But the DDG search also turned up this one other bit of advice that I should have had drilled into me from my 20+ years in the trade and then still being everyone's go-to IT person. Turns out that if you switch it off, unplug it, hold the power button down  for fifteen seconds and then plug the power back in while still holding it, that resets it.

If you could have worked that out without prior knowledge, I'll award you a Smartie Badge. I wonder how many HP monitors were tossed out because of that fault, that just needed a HP-Fu reset? 

Oh And There May Have Been A Reason

As we've had two years' worth of demolition and construction across the road, a few power outages, and a lot of vibration, I'm betting when the power plug fell out of the back of the monitor yesterday morning, it could have glitched the monitor mainboard. But it all works fine again, and next time I'll know. If I remember. If it ever happens again...

Hey - if you want to, you can send me a few bucks to (finally) work on getting a replacement for my laptop. It saves me having to be all cliche and setting up a GoFundMe or Patreon.

Or you could scroll back up, find the "donate" side of the banner image, and send me a few bucks there. And maybe subscribe to my once-a-week-only newsletter.