Always tooting for th'antihero @Momentrabbit@awoo.space

Another 12-hour shift, this time with a heavy late delivery and our old friend, 'Microsleeps on the Highway!' >.< So if you were passed on the highway today by a van with some lunatic rabbit screaming along to Very Loud Music, well, sorry 'bout that.

I'm going to have to start packing additional amphetamine for late afternoons again.

A wish for belonging, autonomy, and quiet success to all of us today.

Morning, all. On a deadline here - I need the design specs and plans for the old Mars rover undercarriage - wheels, motors, suspension, etc. Somebody hook a bunny up?

The 80s were nearly 40 years ago.

That... that happened very quickly. I mean, it took forever at the time, but it was simultaneously just *yesterday*.

Time Compression is real, and it is lossy, and it is starting to scare the hell out of me.

An introspective new year post?

Mmf. Continue to drift further away, turning and turning in the widening gyre - but keep my dish pointed at home and respond to pings.

Cook more. Eat less. Share surplus.

Find a way to draw again.

And this year? Build the gawd damned tin dog. I'll never be in a better place, there will never be a better time.

Right. Time to dig out the car and go back to work.

Happy 2018 from the eastern time zone.

Be kind, if you can.

If you can't, at least be quick.

I *may* have been underextruding plastic the whole time I've been using the Folly, btw. Currently I'm running an extrusion multiplier of 1.23 and getting better results in term of shell adhesion: may need to calibrate my extruder better, but I'll poke at that some other day. The multiplier is a good enough workaround.

Daaaaaamn. Rigid and a *gloriously* matte, smooth finish. I am definitely using this for 'finished' work in future. https://awoo.space/media/ZKwj9hryq5wZuQttiVY

Note to self: -50 diopter, -10 degrees from right side 0 mark (quadrant 1), removes horizontal component of right eye blur: need cylindrical adjustment to ameliorate vertical component. Research prismatic lenses.

Also, optometry is way overdue as a field for disruption. Suggest bowel disrupter, setting '3-day old burrito'.

Another copy of the folly is due for delivery early next week - just prepaid the duties on the kit. It was cheaper to buy a discounted kit than to build the mechanicals from parts and scrap, amazingly. 9.9 Once it's mechanically sound, it becomes the test-bed for the new build - a RAMPS controller, multi-extruder explorations, bit more power in the power supply, different drives for flexible filaments. Tinkering, in other words. n.n

I'm trying out a testcube of the PLA/Carbon Fiber composite right now. Interesting filament - unlike the softer and flexible nylon or PETG stuff, this stuff is actually a bit brittle pre-printing - a bit more flexible than pasta of the same diameter, but you get the idea. You can snap it with a finger. After printing, the various stressors should all cancel out. Or something.

Pretty, if you like that matte black tactical look.

Fuck the sternocleidomastoid with a pitchfork sideways.

Hmm. Our laser can work perfectly well on welding-quality gas, although I know we buy up a grade or two from that - fewer impurities == higher grade (and cost). But I wonder... from a connoisseur's perspective, is a more pure helium *more* tasty, or less? It's the impurities that make alcohol tasty - or horrid, depends on the impurities.

"A vintage helium, aged in a burnt-oak sherry cask with notes of xenon and phenols..."

"Pure helium, freshly decanted from Novgorod Tokamak, five 9's!"

@Momentrabbit We shall see, having often asked for the rule to be wound *at the factory by machine* correctly, if the head office now gets that this rewind really isn't an optional request.

I am going to make a jig to do this: something with clamps and safeties that keeps hands away from metal and so forth, with handles and frictiin fittings and anti-kickback devices.

Just in case they figure a few stitches per year is a sustainable cost.

@Momentrabbit So I rewound it. Locked one cartridge of clockwise-wound rule into position, fed the rule into an empty cartride, and rewound onto the empty cartridge counter-clockwise, then manually fed the rule onto the new spindle.

I've done this without injury hundreds of times. I was wearing cut-resistant gloves, aramid fibre and latex. And I still managed to open a gash in the heel of my hand that needed three stitches to close.

@Momentrabbit The coil comes wound clockwise, or counterclockwise. It feeds into the machine we use to bend it from the left: if the coil is wound *counterclockwise*, the slight curve the coil imparts to the metal during storage presses the lead edge against the *back* of the punch-block, which is smooth. This goes through with far fewer jams and spoiled pieces.

Had to use a new, tightly would coil yesterday: it was wound *clockwise*, and constantly jamming.

So. I bend rules for a living - sometime I break them. That's a not-inaccurate way to say I use a CNC machine to process various heights and thickness of razor-sharp metal rule, several hundred feet per day. These come in coils - which I've referred to in the past as mainsprings, for obvious reasons. There's a fair amount of potential kinetic energy stored in a 1"X150' coil of 4pt spring steel wound into a 20" diameter.

That's not directly how I cut myself.

When your day improves because your boss says you need to go get stitches, there's something wrong with your work environment.

More later. I am stitched and operational. Minor damage, should heal up fine.

@Momentrabbit Side note - there's a $40 difference between EU plug and US plug. However, having built it, I am 99% certain the only difference is the actual shape of the plug - it wires directly into the switchmode DC supply, which handles 220/110 60Hz/50Hz. Which I'll be replacing anyhow, so. n.n

@Momentrabbit That's where I got the original from: same model, so I know what I'm dealing with. On a slow boat from Shenzhen, but I'm not going anywhere.