Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

As per my protocol anytime a repair is made the victim gets it's turn on the torture rack. I consider a battery change a "repair".

Let it cook for several hours.


 

Except of course it isn't and you're wasting hours of its valuable life subjecting it to unnecessary torture. 

[med6753]

Too bad. I'm a hard driving bastard and if my equipment can't make the cut then they get booted to the TE closet branded forever as a "fail". 

[Cerebus]

Very useful, by using it highlighted that we should be good for around 125 days

63 days here. Which tallies quite well with my own estimate of a 24 pack lasting us 3 months, and it's a month since we last bought some.

[mnementh]

      

This pleases me...

Family (and TEA family on the Discord ) finally let me get away long enough to finish installing Fusion360 & Cura; this is the first actual print off the machine.

I'm using the Alfawise U30 profile built into Cura 4.5; I've done precisely ZERO tweaking of the model except to select fine .1mm LH. Really hard to get better than that stock out of the box; some "Elephant foot" distortion of the bottom few layers is responsible for the difference in the Z-axis. I'm printing another one sliced with bed at 50°C instead of the profile default 60°C; also releveled "a hair looser". What I can see has no such distortion; if it completes successfully, I'll start a benchy with the same settings before I toddle off to ded.

BTW... the TouchScreen UI is just... sweet. Everything you need to USE the thing, laid out in an intuitive fashion. Of course no command-line UI; if you want to tweak the Marlin FW you'll have to do it the hard way via serial. 

mnem
 

This tolerance really seems to be good.   

At least if I DIY'ed a cubic like that myself from a piece of plastic with a file it would be incomparably worse.     

Another thing catches my eye: Are you metric, mnem? Have you always been or is Canada metric?   

It gets considerably better with minimal effort: Also: Working as a mechanic, then as a engineer, then as a mechanic again... I've been thinking in metric for decades, all except for temp and travel distance. The change with moving to Canada is incremental at best.

            

2nd XYZ Cubey after relevel & dropping bed temp to 50°C. Some X-axis banding indicates I need to tighten up the belt on the printhead a bit. That recurring blem on the top surface as the printhead leaves the finished print is something I should be able to fix in Cura; it appears on 3DBenchy too. Honestly, quite decent prints as-is, tho. 

Time to move onto the SS Benchy. AFTER Pokemon time widda boi. 

Lots more closeup pics here: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/3d-printer-yet/msg2976864/#msg2976864

mnem
"That'll do, Digg. That'll do."

[mnementh]

Too bad. I'm a hard driving bastard and if my equipment can't make the cut then they get booted to the TE closet branded forever as a "fail". 

Or worse... forever branded with the scars of a Papa Smurf Booty Fab... 

mnem
*hard-moseying bastard*

[Saskia]

Too bad. I'm a hard driving bastard and if my equipment can't make the cut then they get booted to the TE closet branded forever as a "fail". 

Or worse... forever branded with the scars of a Papa Smurf Booty Fab... 

mnem
*hard-moseying bastard*

There is no problem that cannot be resolved by careful application of 50 grams of Ceefour.

[BU508A]

@mnem: Is this the recommended method to check the accuracy (and precision) of a 3D printer by printing out a 20mm (or something) cube? Is this usually specified somwhere in the manual or is this your experience?
Sorry for the dumb question, I have not fiddled around yet with a 3D printer.

[Saskia]

printing this elephant foot is one of the common methods to verify the correct operation of your 3d gizmo and its settings.

[Specmaster]

You could try the very careful application of 50grams of C4

[Saskia]

Adapt, improvise, overcome: TP, 2nd take

https://www.gunboard.de/uploads/monthly_2020_03/VID-20200322-WA0000.mp4.23086f741fb9c16ea65508a551670083.mp4

[xrunner]

Quite helpful, especially the "advanced" settings group.   We are good for 45 days here, based on our usual supply levels.   

I would never post a toilet paper calculator link to this group if it didn't have advanced options. 

[Cerebus]

Quite helpful, especially the "advanced" settings group.   We are good for 45 days here, based on our usual supply levels.   

I would never post a toilet paper calculator link to this group if it didn't have advanced options. 

Yeah, but to keep some people's interest it would have to be an RPN TP calculator, and have a few old caps that needed a precautionary replace.

[factory]

I'd pay good money to see you try and get it in an MGF 

You might have to wait a few months, Ikea (UK) are only doing home delivery at the moment.

David

[BU508A]

A visualisation of the spreading of the COVID-19 by the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/22/world/coronavirus-spread.html

[tautech]

Let's keep this TEA thread as a sanctuary of things TEA and loosely related.

If we need to examine the depressing worldwide situation I suggest it be better done here:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/covid-19-virus/

[Cerebus]

A visualisation of the spreading of the COVID-19 by the New York Times:

I think you mean "A visualisation by the New York Times of the spreading of COVID-19". The New York Times might be at fault for a lot of things, but actively spreading Covid-19 isn't one of them. 

[mnementh]

Too bad. I'm a hard driving bastard and if my equipment can't make the cut then they get booted to the TE closet branded forever as a "fail". 

Or worse... forever branded with the scars of a Papa Smurf Booty Fab... 

mnem
*hard-moseying bastard*

There is no problem that cannot be resolved by careful application of 50 grams of Ceefour.

Not enough to cure Papa Smurf... He'd eat that and burp blueberries at you. 

mnem
*currently sorting Benchy pix*

[Saskia]

actually I got some new TE over the week end- The amazon driver dropped of an alcoholmeter, to be a bit more specific, 3 of those, covering 0 - 100% (or 99 for that matter).

[beanflying]

@mnem: Is this the recommended method to check the accuracy (and precision) of a 3D printer by printing out a 20mm (or something) cube? Is this usually specified somwhere in the manual or is this your experience?
Sorry for the dumb question, I have not fiddled around yet with a 3D printer.

I have never bothered printing a calibration cube I just check a measurement against a known design from time to time. Square sided tests eliminate some of the reality of 3D printing more general shapes.

Recently I did some Dogs for my woodworking bench with a 20mm nominal DIAMETER design to get them to 19.9xmm I had to tweak the design to 19.7 some of this is down to the process using STL files which rather than being a true arc are a series of triangles and a chunk I am putting down to the Slicers interpertation of that STL. The remaining small bit is the mechanics.

The Benchy design however if you use the known measurements for it and look at the features clinically is however a much better test print as it encompasses Square, Round, Overhangs, Bridges and a bunch of other potential hiccups.

[mnementh]

@mnem: Is this the recommended method to check the accuracy (and precision) of a 3D printer by printing out a 20mm (or something) cube? Is this usually specified somewhere in the manual or is this your experience?   Sorry for the dumb question, I have not fiddled around yet with a 3D printer.

printing this elephant foot is one of the common methods to verify the correct operation of your 3d gizmo and its settings.

While the cube may be functionally useless (aside from use as cribbing or to occupy little fingers) the term "elephant foot" refers to distortion of the print where it flares out at the bottom in all directions as the first cube did. Second cube did not do this.

Yes, it is one of the "benchmark" prints you do to confirm that your printer indeed prints what is designed to the dimensions designed, not whatever the eff it feels like. If it is not printing to the correct dimensions, it will tell you which axis is at fault, whereupon you can conform and resolve why. 

There are others calibration & benchmark prints that help you dial in best print temp for your particular filament, extrusion rates, maximum safe X-Y axis speeds, and oodles of other stuff. Search "benchmark" or "calibration" on thingiverse.com and you'll get oodles of hits. I just do the cube first because it's quick to print and uses very little filament even at high resolution, and it confirms core functionality is at least in the right ballpark.

mnem
Everybody needs something to believe in... I believe I'm going to take a nap.

[Saskia]

chores for today are done.
PC build finalized, system packed up. Camera for daughter ready to go.
ah yes, the Rigol I could not help grabbing was a 1054Z.

[mnementh]

The Benchy design however if you use the known measurements for it and look at the features clinically is however a much better test print as it encompasses Square, Round, Overhangs, Bridges and a bunch of other potential hiccups.

SS Benchy is designed as a "torture test" to provide difficult-to-print negative spaces and surfaces with text, compound curves, & unsupported overhangs. Also to test linearity of holes and ability to print overhangs, bridges, & odd angles all of which which requires the printer to move in both X & Y axes at the same time. It deliberately does not have any square surfaces; the closest it has is the open rectangular box behind the wheelhouse.

It's not really a good test for dimensional accuracy because of its nonlinear form, which does not directly indicate which axis may be at fault if not accurate.

mnem
It also takes a effing long time to print for a test print. 

[mansaxel]

Also: Working as a mechanic, then as a engineer, then as a mechanic again... I've been thinking in metric for decades, all except for temp and travel distance. The change with moving to Canada is incremental at best.

Funny. Am I to assume that the Youtube mechanics club, ie. Fenner, Booth, Rucker et al. are, say, on the traditional side of the bell curve, because they constantly speak in inches (and thousands, which of course is one large defeat for the "fractions are better" club..) and you seem to give the impression that it would be normal for someone who's been mechanic, then (as a) engineer, then (as a) mechanic again to live metricly even in Texas?

/M, kept tolerances around the 39 thou level in todays project. (yes, watching youtube machinists has gotten me to think more freely in inches, but I'm as metric as they come..)

[xrunner]

Toast anyone?

A lovely little PS that was powering a shelf LED lighting setup in my living room. Having had high hopes of a long life - this was not to be we now realize. Upon opening we were greeted by a familiar smell that somewhere in my brain is recognized as the first greeting of an un-working electronic item. Where do they store the smell in there?

The eyes see the nicely-browned or toasted PCB, the color, at least, reminds one of an otherwise nice breakfast of toast, eggs, and bacon. A gently-curved capacitor top is another sight indicating the bad malice which happened over time inside this little habitat of parts (even on another one still hanging on it's roots). And, a well-shorted MOSFET too is part of the confusing path the electrons are greeted with now, or were yesterday. This causing them to choose a way which was not the intended "yellow brick road" the designers had in mind. Not leading them to the Emerald City, but rather to the wicked witches lair - not a happy ending for all involved.

It's OK Dorothy - you are going back to Kansas - the wicked witch is dead.

[bd139]

You do have to wonder how many houses burn down due to shitty SMPS units.