Somebody needs to think about this stuff...
Windows 10 Pro for Workstations: “I insert a mystical 10 second delay between OS start and when apps can be loaded to ensure a smooth user experience.”
Me: “You run on a machine with 112 cores & 768GB RAM that boots directly from a 512GB battery backed high-speed RAM cache that sits in front of 30TB of RAID0 flash. Why are you inserting a delay?”
“Y’all got any more of them “block this user” on LinkedIn slots?”
Decades ago, in the “scene” (that would be the warez trading scene) there were the “summer crews” that would crop up like clockwork.
“Summer crews” or “summer groups” were the teenagers home from school on their summer break who got together, formed a warez trading group, spammed the crap out of the scene with their repackaged releases, and then folded within a few months as school went back in session.
You would also see the same cyclic explosion of griefers, noobs and summer guilds on the MUSHs, MOOs, MMOs and hack-n-slash CRPGs with every Summer break. And just as quickly, within a couple of months, it all died down to the usual slow simmer within whatever game you were into at the time.
There was a similar, though tangentially different problem in higher education too as each freshman class rolled in and started accessing the shared online social spaces, but the n00bs lacked the social moires and graces of the local environment which lead to the usual friction between the old hands (people who were in their 2nd year) and the freshmen.
LinkedIn, for the past 18 months, as so many became WFH, turned in to a perpetual “Summer group”/Freshman class, but with adults. At least, I think they’re adults, they get offended by words like “shit” and “fuck” in a professional setting, but then act like entitled, spoiled children when you block them because you aren’t interested in their CRM automated messaging systems they have deployed where it is nothing but pitch, pitch, pitch with every interaction.
The problem with LinkedIn is that everyone is trying to optimize, optimize, optimize. Blast that pitch at as many connections as you can. Use up all your InMails for the month to extract maximum value. Invite as many connections as possible. “It’s a numbers game!”
More.
More.
Faster.
Faster.
Slow down my dude. We’re all going to the same grave.
Don’t measure your productivity in how many connections you spammed, measure it in how many lives you touched in a positive way. You’ll be happier for it. And so will your connections.
When you get asked to explain the three month gap in your work history that is on your LinkedIn profile but not your C.V.
From 27 years ago.
I used to do stand-up and improv comedy, and got heckled quite a bit, and got pretty good with off-the-cuff comebacks.
“It just seems rather a long time for a software developer to be out of work these days.” she said.
“Yes, I was waiting for my visa approval so I could emmigrate to the US but thank you for the red flag. Imma put it over here with all the other red flags you’ve given me so far. A few more and it will look like a field of poppies where this job interview will go to die.”
“Wow!” she said.
“I know, it was a pretty good comeback wasn’t it? I’m actually impressed with myself.”
“That is just… wow! So… unprofessional.” she said.
“And that concludes the interview. Thank you for taking the time to see me today.”
Imagine this post is written in a lurid shade of crayon on a circle of pastel coloured paper.
My Saturday:
I overslept
I got to drive a car!
I drank really strong coffee from a cup smaller than your thumb.
I went grocery shopping and bought anything I wanted
I ate a sandwich bigger than my head
I took a nap
I read Asterix comics
I played video games for three hours.
I got to taste my dog’s food.
If you don’t think any three of those things would make for the most awesome Saturday you need to go ask for your child-like wonder to be returned to you.
Don’t let anyone tell you that being
P.S. Y’all looked at your thumb, didn’t you? Made ya look!
P.P.S. That dog food statement is probably going to take a bit of explaining.
Last night I watched the first episode of Foundation from AppleTV.
And…
It. Was. Bad.
The Foundation TV show veers so far from books and Asimov’s vision that it is an entirely different story with minor elements that are similar, e.g. character names and buzzwordy concepts. But other than those similarities it bears little in common. And whilst the writers and all the visionaries of the TV show are quite talented, it takes their entire team to be even a modicum as good as Asimov was at the height of his skills. Foundation ranks right up there with John Carpenter of Mars as yet another bad execution.
Almost every SF book and fantasy book that I have adored and loved over the years that has been adapted to a film or TV show, with the exception of one or two, has just been dreadful. I suspect I will check out the next couple episodes, to see if it gets better, but I’m kinda predisposed to doubting that.
Wow! This was bad.
I am at a loss for words. The film has an apocalyptic”grey goo” scenario in it, and Keanu Reeves as an actor has vastly improved in the past 13 years, but he was wooden in this, and honestly, I don’t think his acting is all that bad, I really think the director just gave him shitty direction.
“See that door Keanu? Be the door! Be the door Keanu!”
I feel sorry for Reeves, in a way, to have to turn in this performance.
All the military/intelligence personnel were war-mongering crackpots and jackasses whose solution to every problem was to shoot it.
And Jaden’s character was simply annoying. Most children in adult films are annoying, but the writers & director just used Jaden’s character to move the story along when they ran out of ideas of how to move the story along.
This remake is not a patch on the original 1951 release.
It was fun in a run of the mill kind of way.
It was what Ready Player One! should have been.
Free Guy used a lot of recognizable gaming tropes from one aspect that were kind of funny but there was also a lot of “meh, old news” tropes and jokes that just went wide. Maybe if you haven’t ever seen a single gamer oriented movie with in-jokes before they might be kinda funny.
Film was obviously made for a young audience.
You want to know the biggest issue I had with the entire movie? When the villain is destroying the servers at the end. Totally broke suspension of disbelief.
1) You aren’t going to put your servers in your building.
2) They won’t be on the ground floor
3) Redundant servers? Hello? Even without sharding the most basic server architecture wouldn’t work how it was depicted. Or shut down in the way depicted either.
Yeah, I know, my brain can put aside all the other fantastical elements of the film but I get hung up on the server architecture and the server installation.
And yeah, I know main villain took a fireaxe to the computers, but they don’t spark like that when you hit them. They’d probably just keep on trucking.
Frankly I would have just started yanking network cables rather than the dramatic show of violent frustration.
Additional thought: If you watched the trailer, you’ve watched the movie.
My wife: “Talk dirty to me. En Francais. Did I say that right, en francais?”
Me, with my broken French I have not used in 30 years and having hastily googled key phrases a few years ago that I can now barely pronounce: “Oui. Viens ici ma petite lingette humide. Fascinons-nous avec des fromages affinés à pâte molle.”
My wife: “That’s hot. What did you say?”
Hard to believe I spent more than a year during my 20’s living and working in France with a non-English speaking team, isn’t it?
Today I read a paper titled “Eyes Tell All: Irregular Pupil Shapes Reveal GAN-generated Faces.”
Currently I am pursuing some research into reliable tracking of hands, mouth and eyes, and a colleague surfaced this paper as a “that’s interesting…” side subject. This presents an interesting technique on detecting either doctored, i.e. Photoshopped images or, more importantly, faces that were generated by a computer algorithm.
The abstract is:
Generative adversary network (GAN) generated high-realistic human faces have been used as profile images for fake social media accounts and are visually challenging to discern from real ones. In this work, we show that GAN-generated faces can be exposed via irregular pupil shapes. This phenomenon is caused by the lack of physiological constraints in the GAN models. We demonstrate that such artifacts exist widely in high-quality GAN-generated faces and further describe an automatic method to extract the pupils from two eyes and analysis their shapes for exposing the GAN-generated faces. Qualitative and quantitative evaluations of our method suggest its simplicity and effectiveness in distinguishing GAN-generated faces.
Eyes Tell All Irregular Pupil Shapes Reveal GAN-generated Faces
You can buy a Form3L for around $12,000. The wash station and cure station is another $6,000 which we would purchase later in the year. Plus various accessories. It is precisely what you want, and will work perfectly for everything you want to do with it.
You can buy a Form3 for around $8,000 with all the accessories, and a bunch of resin. It will do everything you want and need.
You can also turn the 3D printer in to a little cottage industry by selling the Form3 services on eBay to recoup some of the costs. We will need to figure out a costing & pricing system for doing prints. Register on 100kgarages, and perhaps a few other places. Create a small micro/niche website for the service if you want. Joyce could use it for jewellery design. Printing little figurines. Some stuff on Etsy. And so forth. We’d find uses for it, if there is a will.
How does either of these purchases impact us financially? It doesn’t affect retirement. It doesn’t affect our savings. It doesn’t affect our life. It just comes down to timing on payouts from my day job and my annuities.
If I buy the regular Form3, the only impact it will have is on other stuff I wish to purchase in the next few months. That’s pretty much it. It is about two weeks payouts. It pushes out expansion of the farm to later in the year. It has no impact on our savings, retirement funds, crypto, annuities, lifestyle or our AMEX pay down.
If I buy the Form3L, it means I won’t be buying storage for the farm for at least three months. And my workshop tool purchases will take an hiatus for a few months. “You see, the problem with having an unlimited budget isn’t the spending of the money, it’s where do you put all the tools…?” I am effectively spending three week’s income on the printer. Or about three months of toys. It stalls our AMEX pay down by one month, maybe two months, pushing us out to December for final payoff.
If I time it just right, e.g. 21st, then everything works out fine and dandy. It also means the AMEX bill isn’t due until 14th of following month. I can either pay down a chunk of the amount owed prior to that, or throw it in to Logix and pay it when due. Essentially I will be paying off the entirety of the cost of the printer 45 days from now, and interest free. Works for me.
Do I really need the $1,000 pro service plan? I don’t care about hot swap printers or pro level walkthrough. I do care about making sure the printer works, and continues to work. But the printer usage will be pretty lightweight unless I am selling prints on-line.
If I use a referral code I get $500 off, which is the cost of shipping to my door.
What if we are declined by AMEX?
The potential that AMEX may not approve the amount is high on the list. In which case we stash the money in to Logix temporarily, use the guy in Pasadena to print my parts, and then just wing it. I am going to probe AMEX now to see if I can get approval for the purchase.
I have just verified that AMEX will approve me for the $15,000 purchase. So now it is simply a matter of timing.
Losing my job. Though I suspect this is a pretty low risk. The probability is quite low at this time unless I royally fuck up. Losing the job means I have to pay for it from our savings. I’d rather not do that and just pay it off with what I earn.
The Form3 uses a transparent window that is good for so many hundreds of hours of printing. Whilst I don’t expect to use it up rapidly, it does have a finite lifespan, and a new one is $300, so I should plan on obtaining a second build plate with the initial purchase. And then keeping a couple more on the shelf for when I need them.
[Note: I was actually referring to the resin tanks here, I didn’t have the terminology of the parts clear in my head]
I need to read up and watch videos on best practices for recycling resin & IPA.
I should keep several boxes of latex gloves on hand, in the basement, near the 3D printer. Tricky during the pandemic, but this too shall pass.
I need to build a cabinet on wheels to house the 3D printer. The cabinet should have doors on front and rear to access the printer, but also to keep the printer clean and dust free.
It should have a drawer to keep the resin containers, IPA, tools, accessories, Wash L, Cure L, power bar, UPS, additional material,
Form3L dimensions 30.3 × 20.5 × 29.1 in
We need to be aware that the front of the Form3L flips out and up, adding about another 8″ to 10″ to its overall height. When placed on a cart which I estimate to be 36″ tall, it appears the Form3L sits at just over the 6′ mark when opened, so that makes the Form3L about 38″ tall when opened.
I cannot find dimensions for the Cure or Wash stations, but my estimate is the Cure station is about 18″ tall, and the wash station is about 30″ tall, but 48″ tall when the lid is opened. The Wash station is about 36″ wide, the Cure station is about 30″ wide.
These dimensions mean that you cannot really have a single cabinet to hold the printer, the cure station, the wash station, tools, accessories and extra resin and IPA. You would need either two cabinets, or one very wide or deep cabinet. The cabinet would be about 72″ tall, and about 60″ wide. That is a big cabinet.
We could solve this by stacking everything vertically. The Wash station on the bottom, the Form3L in the middle, the Cure station on the top. We do this by making the Wash station sit on a platform that slides out to permit access to the top of the station. So long as you are careful when moving the Wash station on the sliding platform then no sloshing of solvent would occur. This would make the cabinet about 90″ tall. This isn’t a terrible idea.
Runs on 100V to 240V (means it will work in Europe and UK just fine), and consumes 650W so will work on a UPS just fine too.
It has both an ethernet port and WiFi. I suspect it requires connection to the FormLabs cloud and registration with them unfortunately.
I need to sweep up all the dust in the workshop, finish attaching the lights, finish up the table saw cabinet, organize a lot of stuff in the workshop to make it more functional, and also finish off the duct work. That looks like it is going to Sunday for me. At least for the organizing, sweeping up debris, finishing the duct work and finishing the wiring on the lights. I can also mount the shop fans on the back wall, and I can also install the track lighting above the washer/dryer.
I have reached out to Formlabs to ask if the $1,000 pro service surcharge is absolutely necessary in my particular case as I will only be using it for hobbies. Saving this $1,000 is effectively reducing the cost of the printer by the tax amount.
I can use a referral code, apparently these cannot be used in their online form, that will give me $500 off. Which is the cost of shipping.
None of the coupon websites appear to have a working coupon valid for the website.
Printer has been purchased. I was able to ask questions of the sales rep, and also get the $1,000 pro service plan removed. I can purchase an extended warranty, and I have up to 60 days to do that. I will probably purchase that mid-month or maybe even month after as the sales rep he could kind of make that happen if needed. The WashL and CureL are, as expected, having supply chain issues so I couldn’t have ordered those even if I had wanted too. Total cost was just a hair over $14,000. I bought three types of resin, and three separate resin tanks, for grey, black and clear. I also purchased two litres of each resin because the Form3L needs to be loaded up with two 1L bottles of each type of resin because the tanks are so massive. It takes an entire litre to just fill the resin tank.
Form3L printer arrived today in the afternoon on a huge pallet with all the accessories and such. Only items that did not arrive was the clear resin.
I took pictures of the printer on the pallet. It was stacked 6ft tall at least. Joyce and I unloaded it, and having previously watched the videos on how to unbox, it went smoothly. I put the printer on the MFT assembly bench for now. I’ll find it a more permanent home later in the year when I build a cabinet for it.
I have sent my first print at just before 10PM, a 20mm XYZ calibration cube.
I was able to clean up my workshop a bit today. Put some tools in to boxes to at least make it a little easier. I put up two clamp brackets on the side of a cabinet. One bracket will hold the big Bessy parallel clamps, and the other bracket holds the regular Bessy clamps. I tried putting the small clamps on the bracket but they just fall right off due to mass. I will probably get a few of the Woodpeckers brackets and those will get attached to the wall, or the side of a more permanent installed cabinet.
Just that brief bit of tidying up made me feel so much better. Just puttering around in the workshop. My therapy.
I think I would like to spend an hour in the workshop tomorrow doing the same thing. Put up more brackets, attach fans to ceiling, and so forth.
I also put four of the Fastcap track saw track holders on to the back of the garage door. I had eight of those ready to install. I have space on the back of the garage door for six more additional brackets. Though my brain said “need to buy more” I think I might hold off because I want to make some brackets for the Woodpeckers story sticks, so those will take up some room too.
My intention is to assemble a dedicated 3D printer cabinet over the next couple of weeks. I will make further notes about that beyond the ones mentioned prior in a separate section.
The print that is currently taking place states it will take 2 hours or so to finish. But looking at the print, it doesn’t seem to have dispensed that much resin into the tank, so I am unsure what is going on right now. I will stay awake until the print has finished and then I will take a further look. We are currently around layer 40 of 400+ layers.
A few other people have mentioned the slow tank fill. It might be that the bite valve on the resin bottles is not dispensing properly. I can take a look at that, maybe poke it with an xacto blade to get the spice flowing a little faster. I will wait for the print to finish and see what I get.
I need to put the “Grey v4” label directly on the tank. I have put a label on the tank storage box already.
I need to find a place that can sell me IPA and TPM in bulk, and a reasonable cost. TPM is apparently better than IPA, but I think I will stick with IPA for the time being, until I get the WashL and CureL stations, then I will most likely switch over to TPM. I am currently using two pints of IPA in a mason jar with a toothbrush to clean up my prints, which works fine for the small parts I am wanting to print right now. I put them out on the patio table for a few hours to cure, or if I am in the workshop, just outside the workshop door in the afternoon sun and they cure in no time.
I already detailed some notes on a cabinet for the 3D printer. Having seen the size of it, and the accessories I need for it, my thought is to build a shallow, wide, tall cabinet, with doors that open to protect everything from dust. But primarily to store all the accessories and resins and such. I am probably going to have a half-dozen or more storage tanks, which are quite large, and probably 20L or more of resin, both in use and in stock ready to go. Figure you will probably keep 4L or 5L of the resin you use regularly, and 2L or 3L of the resin you only use a little bit. Grey, black, clear, white will be 20L of resin right there. Plus Tough, Jewellery and a few others.
I will also keep a couple of boxes of Nitrile gloves. Hand tools. Gallons of IPA or TPM, both in the wash station and also on-hand for refills.
I am also thinking this cabinet should have a place to prop up my laptop, with a power supply to attach to.
I am also thinking that the cabinet should have a UPS to run the printer for a few hours in the event of a power failure. You don’t want a power outage in the middle of a 10 hour print.
I will need to figure out what kind of wattage the printer draws, and if I can get a reasonably priced Li-Po or Ni-Cad UPS to run it for 10+ hours without power.
Where the current wood pile is, or possibly where the rack of non-food items is stored might be a good choice. If I build those cabinets above the washer/dryer then a large majority of those items will migrate there. Paper products, detergents, etc. If I build a pedestal cabinet that sits between washer and dryer, that pedestal could hold all of the bottles of Tide, bottles of bleach, boxes of bounce, and any other laundry supplies. Then the cabinets above would hold paper products, other cleaning supplies.
I am thinking a couple of drawers, with special inserts/dividers that snugly hold each resin bottle in an orientation that would prevent them from leaking. The plastic tabs on the bottom of the resin bottles might be reusable, in which case we can put the plugs back in. But I think resin bottles stored on their side, with the valve at the top would work.
This could simply be few large drawers that holds ten or more bottles of resin per drawer, with dividers to hold the resin bottles in place. Plan on four bottles of popular resin of each type in stock, and then three bottles of the less popular resin in stock.
I am thinking these can be simple cubby holes to store each resin tank. Deep enough to slide a tank in lengthways.
I would want to be able to store five or six resin tanks at the very least. This storage should be a long, shallow drawer, or a drawer with no sides, that holds a resin tank. There is a label on the front of each drawer describing the type of resin tank to be found in there.
A simple drawer with Kaizen form or similar that holds the various hand tools. Side snips, flush cut japanese saw, perhaps some sand paper, pallet knife for pulling things from the build plate, resin tank cleaning tweezers.
A slide out work surface where I can place the build plate or hand tools I am currently using.
Enough storage for two extra build plates. This should probably be a drawer that holds the build plates in kaizen foam slots.
A cubby specifically for a Prusa i3/i5 FDM printer.
A drawer or other storage area for FDM printer accessories, e.g. build plate.
A storage drawer for extra 1 gallon IPA bottles.
This should be a storage drawer that can hold 4 gallons or 6 gallons of IPA. Separate dividers for each drawer.
A storage drawer for PLA filament storage. I assume we are using 8″ spools.
I need a drawer that holds about a half-dozen boxes of nitrile gloves, along with a box of nitrile gloves currently in use.
I should have a trash can that can be tipped out at an angle, and stay in place, that lets me clean up a print without bits getting everywhere.
The WashL when opened is 45″ tall, I think we should put the WashL on a slide out, it can then be pulled out, loaded up with a build plate, then slid back in to its cubby hole.
This is the page for the WashL and CureL boxes that contain the dimensions: https://formlabs.com/post-processing/wash-cure/tech-specs/
If I use drawer slides to hold the WashL then I want to make sure that the slides are heavy duty rated for hundreds of pounds, and probably lock in place.
These are the dimensions for the CureL
First print of a low-detail dimensional test cube 20mm on a side failed. Printed on a raft at 100um layer thickness with Grey V4. No adherence.
I note that the resin did not dispense correctly from either resin container. Very low, sporadic flow.
I am not familiar with the Form3L but I assume it would want to dispense as much as the regular Form3. By the time tank had enough resin in it, the print was at layer 100+. The tank was very dry to start. I aborted the print at layer 200 or so.
Thoroughly cleaned the cured resin from the tank and cleaned off the build platform from the faintest smear of cured resin that remained and I am now trying the print again.
formlabs does not use particularly accurate weight sensors on the resin containers to gauge how much resin is in them on the Form3L. Probably weight sensors with inverse log resistive function so the accuracy drops off markedly the less resin in the container remains.
I am guessing the function that dispenses the resin uses a timer on a valve to gauge how much resin has been dispensed rather than weighing the resin cartridge. So I am guessing the code that estimates how much resin has been dispensed is the same exact code on the Form3, i.e. just a function that waits a certain period of elapsed time.
Now that the resin tank contains enough resin, fingers crossed the second print of the dimensional cube works.
I need to diagnose and read further articles and will open a support ticket if I cannot resolve the following issue:
My dashboard shows that the left resin tank is not installed. But the printer shows that the left resin tank is installed. And it is physically there and fully secured. And I have reseated both resin containers twice.
My dashboard shows that the build platform is not installed. And the printer also indicates that the build platform is not installed. Or rather, the graphic image, and the accompanying text, shows a lack of build platform, but the printer must believe the build platform is there, because if it wasn’t the printer wouldn’t print. The build platform is physically there and fully secured. And I have reseated it and locked it down twice.
I will look for dust or debris in any sensors in the morning when the light in the workshop is better and I am not so tired.
I made sure to open the relief valve on both resin containers during initial installation, and double-checked them during the first failed print to verify I did not forget. I shut the relief valves, removed both resin tanks, verified that the rubber dispense valve was not clogged and could dispense resin, I palpated to verify, reinstalled the resign containers in to their respective slots, and re-opened the relief valves on both containers. I did agitate the resin containers before installation, perhaps not enough.
I am currently running a second print to see if the problem has resolved itself. That said, the dashboard, both in Preform (which is simply a QTWebEngine browser page embedded in the Preform application) and the Formlabs dashboard on the website both indicate that the left resin tank is not installed, but the printer clearly indicates it is and is aware of it. This might just be a minor software issue or a synchronization issue.
Setup instructions on printer failed to mention removing the little bit of orange tape on the relief valve before installing. Setup instructions did mention removing the orange plastic tab on the underside of the resin container situated on the dispense valve.
Self inflicted injury when I smacked my forehead on the build platform locking bracket as I attempted to gently remove the cardboard retainer from the X axis lead screw. I am a dumb arse.
Large UV protective window and touch screen need peelable film, not for any protective reason but wife was very disappointed she did not get to peel off large swathes of sticky protective film like a giant iPhone. Had to console her with peeling off protective film on resin tank storage boxes. I note Adam Savage got peelable film on his Form3L. I feel slighted. Sleighted? Slited?
Instructions lack detail on whether the bit of foam holding the wiper arm during transport in the resin tank can be thrown away. Of course it can be, but there is not clear instruction on whether it should be saved. Neither in the packaging, on the resin storage box, nor, as far as I can ascertain, on the formlabs website.
Printer was exceptionally well packaged (that kind of packaging must cost formlabs an absolute fortune to manufacture) and arrived safely. I especially like the cardboard sling underneath the printer.
Phone keeps hunting for focus under the glare of the shop lights and the light bounce off the touch screen. The printer is printing at the time the photograph was taken, but the printer indicates the build platform is missing, so I am going to assume that’s a software bug. Can clearly see that the printer believes both resin containers are installed, but the dashboard in Preform and on the website thinks the resin container for’ard, closer to the touchscreen, is missing. Both resin containers are securely seated.
Firmware version on machine is rc-1.6.14-369 and was stock from the factory. Connected via WiFi to house network. Preform is 3.22.1 running on Windows 10 Pro for Workstations with Firefox as the browser.
The second attempt at the test cube came out flawlessly.
And also, when using Preform, and the locally connected printer view that is on the local network, (not the cloud webview), Preform shows that the resin cartridges are both installed properly, and I of course get the confirmation beep to indicate their correct installation. But both the cloud dashboard in Preform, and the dashboard accessible via a web browser, which is effectively the same thing, show that the left resin tank is missing, so I am going to put that down to a minor software bug or synchronization issue.
Will reboot the printer in the morning and see if it resolves itself. The old “Did you try turning it off an back on?” IT office admin trick.
Removing the build platform and rebooting the printer cleared the “build platform not present” issue, and also cleared the “resin tank not present” issue on the cloud/website dashboard. So I am thinking there is probably some sync issues that the backend API has, that as a customer, there isn’t much I can do about except to quietly ignore. I am sure it’ll get resolved eventually in a future software patch. So long as the printer prints, I’m happy.
I’m running some other parts on the printer today, and other than keeping an eye on the resin dispensing issue, I suspect those prints will work fine.
I sometimes pick up on inconsequential details that I really shouldn’t be concerning myself with – “Why does the onscreen graphic mentioning the removal of the orange tabs on the resin cartridge only indicate the underside tab, but the text uses a plural form to indicate both dispense valve tab and relief valve tab?” or “why is there some splattering of resin on the inside of the flip up door during printing, is that normal? Is the tank too full?” or “those leveling feet need to be a 1/2″ longer if you install in a garage with a sloped floor” or “that wifi antenna is too close to the USB to prevent cross-talk and anttenuation” or “blue highlighted stripes on places where the resin tank inserts and the build platform inserts, oh, the build platform has a magnetic catch as well as a locking lever” or “other unboxing videos showed that the touch screen and UV window had plastic coverings, mine doesn’t, is that a change in manufacturing process or a mistake?” or “how did they determine the universal size for nitrile gloves to pack in? I wonder how the supply chain issues affected the number of gloves they include. I notice that a early-2021 printer used blue nitrile gloves, mine uses black, I wonder if it was always black but the pandemic caused them to switch suppliers.”
I like the Form3L. It’s well built. It’s well packaged. A real “slick” product. Even the website and all the technical support materials. The printer is expensive, but it is a quality piece of hardware and software. I will be reaching out to formlabs within a week or two to order the WashL and CureL devices.
I need to verify I am up to date on firmware in the printer before I print any further. 3D printers are temperamental beasts, so teething troubles are to be expected. The printer firmware could use a little polish, I think there might some “someone forgot to disable the sleep timer during a print job” kind of bugs.
“3D printing, it’s like woodworking, but I don’t have to be there to operate the power tools.”
I’ve run two more prints…
I manually filled a resin tank with about 500ml of black resin. Then loaded a full resin cartridge in to the right hand resin catridge slot, and the now half-empty resign cartridge in to the left cartridge slot.
So the set up is, 50% full black resin v4 in left slot, 100% full black resin v4 in right slot, resin tank with about 500ml of resin in it.
I start a 20 hour print.
About 2 hours in to the print the LCD screen switches itself off and becomes non-responsive, but the printer continues to print. Sleep mode maybe? I did set the “sleep mode timer to 30 minutes.” But sleep timer engaged the middle of the print?
About four hours in to the print the web dashboard stops receiving any updates from the printer, but the Preform software continues to receive updates.
At five hours in to the print, at the 10% mark, the build plate raises up to about the midway point, and the printer informs my Preform software that the resin cartridge is low and there is not enough resin to complete the job.
Print job failed when the material supports gave out, even though the rafts themselves had good adhesion to the build plate. I understand that the build plate will raise up if there is cured resin adhered to the film in the resin tank and the wiper/mixer drag arm magnetically disconnects from the LPU. I cleared the film of cured resin but unfortunately there was no way for me to anything but manually cycle power on the printer, which on reboot gave me an “Error 293” which is, from reading the tech support documentation, a generic error code of “damned if I know.”
What was disconcerting was even though there is a full black v4 resin in the right cartridge slot, which the printer is aware of. The printer was pretty insistent that the print would not finish to due running out of ink. 1L full right cartridge, 500ml left cartridge, 500ml in the tank. Form3L is obviously not aware how much resin is in the tank. This is after the print had failed, so I cannot tell if the build plate raising up and halting was due to the failed print with cured resin adhered to the FEP film in the tank, or the low resin issue, I suspect the cured resin. During all of this the LCD screen remains blank and unresponsive.
So I was 4+ hours in to a 20 hour print, an unresponsive, blank LCD screen, a printer that isn’t communicating with the dashboard, a printer kvetching there isn’t enough ink to finish a print that should take around 230ml of ink, when there is clearly a full 1L cartridge installed, and about 300ml of resin left in the other cartridge (even though the printer is saying there is 130ml, I think my electronic scale in the workshop is probably a bit more sensitive than the sensor in the Form3L), and the printer is paused and I have no way to make it resume the print because the dashboard doesn’t provide for that functionality, nor does it communicate with the printer reliably, and the only controls on the printer are behind a blank, non-responsive touch screen. The LED back light behind the LCD, and the illuminated formlabs logo were lit, the build chamber was warm, and the interior lights were on and I could ping the printer.
I suspect what happened is that the print failed, the build platform retracted due to adhered resin on the FEP film, and it sat there for about 30 minutes (I wasn’t present) and then the sleep timer kicked in and the machine went to sleep, but because the print had failed, there was no way to bring the machine out of sleep state. Effectively I was locked out of the machine until power cycle.
After clearing the build plate and thoroughly cleaning the resin, I switched the now mostly empty resing cartridge that was on the left with the completely full cartridge that was on the right. So now the configuration is 1L full on the left, about 300ml on the right. I disabled sleep timer, and I reran the exact same print. Which printed all the way through.
I printed six identical storage organizer parts, two of which failed. Both parts failed in the same way, but at different print layers, but both for the same reason, the supports themselves gave way. Fortunately the cured resin did not adhere to the film in the tank and the print was able to finish. I was using the “beta” supports option in Preform, on very narrow parts, so I suspect that had something to do with it. Interestingly the printer drained the right cartridge to empty, and continued on printing without any warnings about possibly running out of resin. I wonder if the software has a test condition that doesn’t check the resin cartridges, or handle switchover, in a consistent manner. Easy mistake to make in the code.
I will run some more test prints later today, that are of a shorter duration, and only single parts and see what I get.
For me it is “this is interesting, that’s interesting, ooh! what made that fail? Ooh! How does that work?” Will be ordering the CureL and WashL in a month or two. Also, I am going to put some of my problems down to “User was over-caffeinated and excited about using the product and did not carefully read the instructions.”
Note to self on lesson learned: Manually fill resin tank when deploying a fresh tank to increase chance of successful print.
Second note to self: Design & print a bracket that will let me invert a resin cartridge over the resin tank and hold the cartridge securely so I can wander off and do something else whilst the resin tank is being maually filled.
I have used up my two liters of black resin (prints of darkness, get it?) and almost the entire two liters of grey resin. I need to order more. Made a drive cage to insert into my computer workstation to hold the SSDs due to the PSU being honking huge.
Experimenting with a fan cowling that will hold a radiator for the crypto miner server. Still experimenting with that. Also experimented with snap lock tab fittings and I’ve got to say, those are not easy to design.
Designed and printed a couple of other small parts for organizational projects around the home. Created some tabs to let me mount the ISDT battery chargers to the wall.
I may need to investigate cheaper printing options for prototypes.
I just switched jobs. I am no longer with Ericsson. I have moved on to a VR hardware start-up that is doing much more exciting work. No financial impact but definitely one of those “pause for thought” moments.
Have been so tired and stressed with work I fell asleep at the marble table again. New job is keeping me busy and work/life balance is out of whack. Enjoying the work, not enjoying the hours. Waiting for a printer job to finish up and then heading to bed. I don’t think I am going to get to use my printer very much for a while due to workload and stress with the job. Everything seems to be falling apart in my hands.
A textbook case of how to lose the interest of a candidate in 5 seconds and get yourself blocked on LinkedIn.
Me: “Thank you for making me aware of this opportunity. I don’t work on anything military related, any product or service designed to maim or kill, or anything that can be easily weaponized. Good luck in your continuing candidate search.”
Recruiter: “Oh really? So what makes you so high and mighty? Must be nice to be able to turn down that much money.”†
Recruiter got himself blocked so fast he should try out for the Olympics.
† It was $120K.
I run the Adobe Creative Cloud crap out of necessity rather than any desire to use that terrible software.
Many of the Adobe apps insist on phoning home for a variety of reasons, and not just to verify proper software licenses.
A few of the Adobe products, Indesign for instance, will 100% crash on launch with an inscrutable error if it cannot phone home.
If I drop the firewall, Indesign launches just fine.
I’ll be damned if I am going to drop my firewall for a piece of software to launch, and I’ll be damned if I will let a piece of software phone home for analytics and crash if it cannot. Doesn’t exactly instill any confidence in me when you software crashes because it cannot talk to some remote server somewhere.
The absolutely absurd thing is, I can redirect the IP of the AWS server , in this case lcs-robs.adobe.io, which is listed under the Adobe documentation as being used for the “Admin Console” https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/AdminGuide/endpoints.html that InDesign is trying to reach to my loopback, and InDesign works just fine. InDesign literally crashes because it cannot open the network port.