rwillett

Easy fix with a 3d printer and epoxy resin 😊

I've just calculated how much faster the Prusa MK4 using Input Shaping is over a Mk4 without Input Shaping and also against a Prusa MK3S+. I've used six pieces and sliced them each using different printer profiles. All other settings are identical. So if I printed all six pieces on a single Prusa Mk3S+ it would take 88 hours. The same work on a Prusa Mk4 without Input Shaping is much the same, 84 hours. If we throw Input Shaping into the mix, the time take drops to 33.5 hours (ish). Thats a 2.5x speed up which is insane. The Mk4 without Input Shaping and with Input Shaping is the same printer with the same hardware, just driven differently. The quality seems to be identical. If I had a Prusa print farm where time is money, I'd get a lot of Prusa Mk4's. I currently have 2 x MK3S+, one of which is supposed to go for free to local school (but if they don't move their 4r5es, that offer may get pulled). I thought I'd easily use three printers, but the Mk4 is so fast, I'm doing everything on it now. I may even decide not to keep the second MK3S+ at the moment. Rob

Though the amount of alcohol I drank when younger should have preserved the brain in a peak state...

Longer than my addled brains though...

A lot of plastic died for this project...

Got a few last things to do. 1. Sort out pickguard mounting holes. Not quite as simple as it sounds. The new design makes it difficult but I have some thoughts. The original design was clunky and required you to take strings off or really loosen them to remove it. Bad design. 2. Work out the height of the bridge and top of neck. This is getting it right by about 0.5 or so mm. It makes setting up easier. 3. Work out how to put strap mounting on. The thinner design makes it a little tricky. Again, have thoughts, but need to test (again). 4. Print drill guides and make notes as to what happens where. There's a lot of tapped pickup mounting holes at M2.5 and a lot of untapped M3 holes. Some are holes to allow longer screws to fit. I have to get every single one right 😩 5. Work out what pickups to use and what electrics to use. The current headless has Wilkinson pickups and Amazon's cheapest control panel as it was Weds before the NW Bass bash and I ran out of time. I love the idea of variety in the sound but is it really going to be much different, I note that @ossyrocks uses a single pickup precision and it seems to work well enough. Mmmm.... And other stuff I haven't thought of. Rob

I live in the Yorkshire Dales. There's very little near me apart from sheep and grass. No machine shops at all. I do have a decent pillar drill but it would be nice to just program all the drilling and tapping in and leave it. Around here it's all farms and delicate work is anything less than an m12 nut or smaller than a club hammer. It's just a case of printing the two drill guides up, getting it all ready in the garage and following my notes to make it quick. Nothing difficult just long

Where exactly is your garden? Asking for a friend....😊

Finally broke the back of V3 of the headless bass. I know it looks very similar to the last one but every single piece has been purposefully redesigned. Changes are: 1. Everything hangs off a T-shaped backbone. This simplifies the top and bottom body. It's also a lot stronger. It's also a lot quicker to make, suspect I can print and make this in 50-60% of the time of the last one. 2. The body is no longer a Telecaster slab, but is contoured and rounded. This took a long time to design. It sounds simple but probably took five to six weeks just to get the curves right and then a new printer to work out how to print it. I probably went through ten rolls of filament to try and get it right. I can also print at 5% infill with no fears of bending. This makes it thinner and lighter, so it's 38mm rather than 45mm. I might also be able to get another 3mm off it as well. This should reduce pressure on the forearm. The only supports are around the edge for the bottom curve and thats it. As it's thinner and lighter, its quicker to print. 3. The Ventori are significantly larger. The strength is still there, I can't bend it, but it's quicker to print and looks nice (at least to me). The pictures below are the same size (ish), just different zoom settings. 4. The internal construction has changed to make it easier to print. I can now print it and leave it to print for 24 hours as opposed to having to do things to it. I use plastic dowels to ensure things line up now. This should make glueing things not quite the exciting venture into the unknown as it used to be. 5. The accuracy and quality is massively better with the new printer (which is still a pain in parts). I'm now printing down at 0.1mm which is 3x thinner than before. I don't actually need to sand anything now 6. A lot of prints were printed to test. This is all of the same sodding piece to test various wrong ideas out, there's a lot more of these as well. Now to order some more aluminium for the backbone. I really could do with a CNC pillar drill, but am not doing that. Need to finalise the electrics. @neepheid and @JohnH89 I might be picking your brains if thats OK? Good progress though Rob

Don't start the book late at night else you'll get no sleep

I started with "Consider Phlebas". I'm not sure there is a particular order as most seem to standalone. Some are quite odd 😊 but still good Iain Banks also did "Espedair Street" which is seriously funny and about a rock band Frozen Gold.

Never use one word when you can use 57 and the client is paying.

Rather than "cheated" I would argue that you used "Directed research utilising previous knowledge work through guided, specialist and dedicated tools to optimise the search path, there by reducing false positives, ensuring audited and critical analysis, to deliver the goal oriented conclusion that met the stated target objectives". Who would have guessed I used to work in management consulting?

I loved the Culture novels. I like the idea if naming this using that style a lot.

Close....

I'll just leave this here...

T'other half saw Blondie at The Piece Hall last week. She said it was a great gig and the venue was fantastic. I have to confess I thought The Piece Hall was a trendy liberal left wing name "The Peace Hall" with, no doubt the Nelson Mandela bar, and had to forcibly reeducated by t'other half. In my defence I am normally the (not quite) trendy liberal lefty in our house.

Like the idea of a video and audio review, go for it

The Dog and Duck will know what's hit it ... pitchforks, tar and torches will be pulled out of their storage cupboards, strategically placed just for this type of problem.

There's two for sale still, fill your boots 😊

Not sure if this is the right place to ask but here goes.... My daughter turns 18 this year and we're looking to hire a band for her birthday which is Fri 20/9/24. It would be in a friends large tent somewhere near Sedbergh in Cumbria, I'm being a little vague as I actually have no idea myself where our friend lives, buts it's on a farm in that general area. She's heavily into Oasis and Blue and all that sort of stuff, but we're not looking for an Oasis or Blur tribute band, but a band that can play some of the of their numbers but can also play anything to get a group of kids (and parents) on their feet having fun. Personally speaking I'd prefer 25-30 years older, but it's not my 18th so I get no say. A band with energy and fun is more important to us than note perfect. This is a fun evening for everyone including, hopefully, the band as well. There will be a DJ for afterwards and people will be camping. The date is pretty fixed as she's 18 on 20/9/24 and she's playing rugby 22/9/24 and it's a big game. She's her fathers daughter. The last time I booked a band was U2 and they cost me £999 at Leciester Poly. Yep it was that U2 We also booked Gary Glitter but don;t talk about that now. I have no idea on stage size, power availability (but there will be some, I'd assume 13A/240V rather than three phase) or anything else at the moment. I would assume you'd need to bring everything you need, there certainly won't be a PA to jack into, I'd expect a small intimate arena rather than Wembley. The one thing that will be certain is that I won't be joining you on the stage playing bass so thats one less thing to worry about. If all this hasn't put you off yet, then PM me please with what you can do and costs. We know that people need to be paid and we're not going down the "play for exposure crap" route, sensible costs would be good. Thanks Rob

After a fair few hours with the Prusa Mk4, I can confidently say that the firmware integration with Octoprint is a f***ing joke. There are so many gotcha's about how Prusa have made it difficult to integrate that it is utterly pointless even trying to make it work if you want to do pauses or change filament. Just to be clear this is 100% the fault of Prusa who are being utter d1ckh3ads about integration. Prusa are claiming that they are working on the integration but being a cynical git, my money is that they are trying to push the childlike PrusaLink into the Octoprint area and will try and moneterise it. At the momnent PrusaLink is a broken childs toy and Octoprint is a professional system that works exceptionally well. PrusaLink looks neat but has almost no functionality and is so slow on uploads. I've abandoned Octoprint for a the moment on the MK4, it's still on the MK3, and am seeing if PrusaLink can even do simple stuff. There are also lots of issues with the MK4 filament sensor. It does not play well (or at all) with Octoprint and is a very big step back from the MK3 filament sensor which just worked. Somebody at Prusa cocked up big time with the new Hall Effect sensor which half the time just doesn't work. I've an open ticket with Prusa over this and if the MK4 keeps playing up, its going back. I suspect my lawyers, "Sue, Grabbit and Run" may get involved at some time. Rob

And I thought I had bad luck with kit. Can you let me know where you live and when you travel so I can be as far away as possible please? Theres a song in here somewhere...