3D Printing

I partnered with my landlord, Paul Henninge, in buying a 3D printer for our office space. The printer we chose is the Prusa Printers i3 MK2 which we purchased in a kit version. This printer received the highest scores from Make Magazine over the winter....and it cost around $700. Prusa (a Czech company) received so many orders that PayPal shut them down....accusing them of money laundering. (The evilness that is PayPal is a blog post for another day.)

Assembling and calibrating the kit was quite an undertaking...once again, another post for another day....but once we got things set up, my first print was a triceratops skull that I printed from a file that came with the printer.

Prusa does a great job of sending files with their printer that are well-designed, bullet-proof prints. The resulting print is below:

The file was built with significant supporting material is removed after the print...but is required to support the print. Since 3D printers print from the bottom up....every overhand, and most parts that don't touch the base....require supports to be printed to 'hold' the print while it's being built. The pre-'edited' print is below:

Next.....I wanted to print a bust of Nefertiti.....this is the famous bust that currently resides in a Berlin Museum, and is one of the most famous Ancient Egyptian artifacts outside of the King Tut treasures. Some sleuthy types took 3D scans of the bust while visiting the museum and have published their files for the world to 3D print.

What I found, once I left the world of Prusa created files, and moved into my own world of creating printable files, is that 3D printing requires a lot more understanding, fiddling & knowledge that 2D printing. (Duh!) While I don't need to get into too much detail here, the variables that can be manipulated when creating a 3D printable file include:

Material type
Print speed
Fan speed-for cooling
At least 2 different temperatures--extruder temp and bed temp
Print width
Print height
Wall thickness
Base thickness
Internal structure

And this is even before one gets into designing the supports for the overhanging parts.

Needless to say....I've had to restart Nefertiti nearly 15 times already.....and the video below is a brief shot of my most recent attempt. I think that this one's going to work....so I've decided to blog it:

Anyway...enough for now....will send results with further thoughts once this print is finished....estimated time of completion is at least 5 hours from now.

So....completed the print successfully....ending video link is below

Finished product.

Correct, but not helpful....op/ed piece by Nicholas Kristof

Kristof Column

So....as anyone who has reached this post knows.....I strongly support stronger gun laws. I am also a gun owner (primarily for hunting) and search long and hard for common ground between responsible gun owners and gun law proponents. So...while I agree with Kristof's thesis, I don't see that this type of article does anything to find common ground. His point about the dangers of gun ownership by spouses who are proven to be violent to their partner is important...but making the point through a spurious (to me) comparison is not conducive to building support for universal background checks. It simply reminds folks of their fears...and probably doesn't get folks thinking about the desired result.

Comparison? Showing someone who's afraid of flying statistics about how much safer flying is than driving a car. The comparison doesn't lead to less fear of flying because the comparison often doesn't seem to matter....much like comparing domestic violence to terrorism.

Pi

Decided I needed to memorize at least 100 digits of Pi last year...it's been nearly 2 months since I tested myself....here goes:

3.14159265358979 (oops.....having to think too hard here) (cheated on next 4 digits) 3238462643389 (oops...last digit should have been a 3...as I've had to cheat again)...erase 9 and begin with 32795028841971693993751058209749........(ARRGH....nothing more!)....

14 still solid....two cheats and one error to get me to 58.....

Interesting test of short term v. long term memory. Will refresh over the next week and try again.

Puzzles

Over the past several years I have become addicted to puzzle solving. As a math-guy, puzzles of all types have a natural appeal. The obviously mathy puzzles, such as Sudoku, Kenken, Set & others, are really just a beginning, though. What I'm really addicted to are world puzzles.

And there's no better time for such an addiction.

To begin with....this is the age of Will Shortz. I may be way out of my element here, but I do think that Will possibly qualifies as the Steve Jobs or Babe Ruth or George Lucas of puzzling. Will has so transformed the puzzling world over the past 40 years or so, through Games magazine, the New York Times, NPR and other outlets, that it bears little resemblance to the field prior to his arrival. Like the other icons I mentioned, he is creative, multi-talented and visionary. He has inspired many others to emulate his work and then carry it further. He continues to create long after his legacy is secure. And, he is amazingly entertaining.

But there's much more than just Will Shortz to feed my addiction. The Internet has made it possible for many great puzzle makers to ply their trade, and (I would hope) make a living doing so. Puzzle makers can self-publish as opposed to get their only distribution through the various newspapers and magazines. Puzzle hounds like me can find these puzzles more easily via the Internet. AND....the Internet's nearly infinite knowledge gives us all the ability to solve puzzles in an entirely new way.

And, yet....like a Ronco commercial....there's more. Activities such as escape rooms, Shinteki, the MIT Mystery Hunt, the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the National Puzzle League....have all made puzzle solving a social activity as well as mental challenge. (FYI: Will Shortz founded the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.)

I close this post without offering up any more details about my puzzle addiction. Those details will come in later posts....as various puzzle types and various puzzle makers will get featured.