]]> http://www.obscurereality.org/2010/08/30/574/feed/ 0 http://www.obscurereality.org/2010/08/30/media/ http://www.obscurereality.org/2010/08/30/media/#comments Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:02:59 +0000 fynflood http://www.obscurereality.org/?p=572 Here’s some media from this summer…

Small montage of Trent skating various locations on the East Coast

Make:Philly BBQ – Water Rockets.

Meh. That’s all for now. Trent’s going back to WA on Wed. Do not want.

The gameplay is really simple. You draw 3 dice from the cup, and roll. You get one of 3 sides; Brain, Foot or Shotgun (hence the title, which Trent took to chanting). The goal is to be the first to collect 13 brains. If you get 3 Shotguns, your turn ends and you get no points (one point per brain otherwise). You can keep going, but based on the color of die you draw, determines the likelihood of getting a Brain. Red being the ‘Hardest’, and Green the ‘Easiest’. This actually draws a bit of strategy into the game, which of course can be completely ignored.

As with most simple games, Trent kicks my ass at this game as well. He was able to beat me in 2 turns more than once. Too bad he’s not old enough to take to casino.

SJGames also has Cthulhu Dice, which I will likely purchase as well… cause, well… tentacles.

I’ve been retarded busy in the last two months. A real update follows eventually…. for now, a quick outline:

• I’ve had Trent all summer. It’s been nothing short of awesome.
• Trent and I swam in the ocean for the first time, ever. No Krackens or anything with giant tentacles stopped us.
• Mendel is still printing, but has a new extruder problem. (Too much heat I think)
• I’ve ditched my iPhone (and AT&T) for a DroidX. Verizon rocks.
• I switched jobs. My title has gone from ‘prole’ to ‘Engineer III, Anti-Abuse Department’ – And it’s awesome over 9000.
• Haven’t been taking many photos :/
• Read Makers (effing awesome) and have started re-readinglistening to the Hitchhikers Guide books.
• Have all but stopped driving my car I just dropped 3k on (Yay for jobs in the city!)
• All but neglected Hive76 :\
• Start skateboarding, all be it half-assed and only after drinks in the dark.
• Started paying a little more attention to EVE after the Tyrannis expansion.
• Love the DroidX
• Flew my niece in from OK for 2 weeks. That was fun.
• We all went to Hershey Park.
• Next week we’re going to a Philadelphia Union game (football, not hand-egg)

These comics are awesome:

I got a Flip HD, it’s rad, here’s a video:

Meh. I’m tired.

Chicago!

The store isn’t functional just yet, so don’t get all excited about the super cheap mendel kits ;)

Using a printed ruler, the process is pretty straight forward. There’s some trial and error involved, and it’s probably not 100% accurate just yet, but I’m happy with a percentage in the high 90′s.

Here are the results:

The one on the right was printed extruded Monday night before calibration. It’s all kinds of wrong. Y Z weren’t  moving enough, and X was moving way too much.

The one on the Left was printed last night after calibration. The results are quite obvious.

There’s still some extrusion work to be done. Since I’m not sure what this PLA is exactly (It was an engagement gift from MakerBot, all I know is that it’s ‘Prototype’),  a lot of trial and error going on.

As it is now, once extrusion stops, it wont start extruding again right away. There’s a 30-60 gap between stopping and decent flow. Once it’s going, it goes pretty well. Since Jordan built this extruder, I’m also not sure what diameter the nozzle it is, but I suspect it’s smaller than the 0.5mm I’m used too. Easy enough to figure out once I get a mic. I just need to adjust for that and see if I can produce better results.

My machines.xml entry and some photos are below the cut

I really need to make a div for posting code… until then:

That’s all I have to report.

Some things I’ve run into:

• If the carriage belt clamps are too tight, it restricts the carriage from moving on the X. I suspect a better carriage would fix this (Stronger material for sure)
• Trying to print a square, and get a rectangle. Not sure what that’s about yet. I’m guessing it’s a change in machines.xml and/or skeinforge
• Skeinforge is trying to print down in the negative on Z, causing the extruder to punch holes in the print area. Easily fixed, but strange. I thought skeinforge started from the bottom of the model, that doesn’t seem to be the case always. huh.
• My X drive pulley was loose, causing lots of skipping steps. I wish I had noticed that sooner.
• I’m not sure the PLA I’m using is worth a damn. I can’t get a consistent extrusion at all. Once it starts, it seems to do ok, but that isn’t kicking in until around layer 2. That wont do. I think I’ll get some ‘know to work very well’ PLA.

All that said, I think I’m pretty close to having something that works well.

My buddy Jordan decided he wanted it printing more than I did, and made it happen. That’s pretty awesome. It’s put a spark under my ass to get it going.

Here are his results:

That’s the Printruder II from Thingiverse printing some Black PLA. Looks like I might need to order a new tube, as Jordan reports there’s no way it’s coming unglued from the ABS.