Linux gamer, retired aviator, profanity enthusiast

  • 0 Posts
  • 84 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 20th, 2023

help-circle


  • If you mean, why not install a load cell in the spool holder instead of an RFID reader, well…

    I just happen to have four empty 1kg spools lying around, because I’m a total packrat. Let’s weigh them:

    1. 343g
    2. 319g
    3. 300g
    4. 254g

    So that’s a range of 89 grams, out of just four spools. And these are all visually similar 1kg black plastic spools. I’ve seen skeletonized spools that tried to reduce plastic, I’ve seen cardboard spools, and I’ve seen spools of different sizes. How is a printer supposed to tell a mostly empty 2.5kg spool from a full 1kg one?

    Then…What happens if you load one new spool, use some of it, unload it, use a different spool for awhile, then switch back to the first? Will you have to manually key in a tare weight for that first spool?

    If you install a load cell in addition to an RFID reader, well then the spool’s RFID chip could store the weight of the spool, the initial weight of the filament loaded, and the weight of the remaining filament, and the printer could weigh the spool to verify that, which could catch and correct errors caused by oozing, miscalculation, using the spool on another printer, having to cancel a job mid-run because of a problem, etc. I’d kind of like this for reloadable spools. Somebody is coming up with split spools that you can buy just the filament for, and then you could reload the spool with another load of the same filament, and a printer with a load cell could automatically weigh and recalibrate a reloaded spool including an updated tare weight.

    All told though, given how much it matters, I’d be fine with the dead reckoning approach done by the slicer. I mean, my personal 3D printer just turned 11, it has no auto bed leveling system, no filament runout sensor, no auto loading system, hell I haven’t updated the firmware since Barack was president, and I’m in the habit of running one spool all the way empty, and just shoving in the start of the next spool as the printer runs. I’ve done that for two-color signage and such, something with colored raised lettering on a white background or something. You can get away with shit on a primitive old clanker like mine that the newfangled units won’t put up with.



  • If the tag is read-only, it can allow:

    • marginally better loading, as the printer can heat the nozzle correctly for that filament without input from the user.
    • Comparing a G-code file to the loaded filament, either to throw a filament mismatch error, or to adjust temperature settings on the fly.
    • Allow slicer software with a network or serial attachment to the printer sense what filament is loaded

    If the tag is writable, it can allow for keeping track of how much filament remains on the spool, by writing how much was consumed during each print. This means, when you get to the end of the spool, the printer can warn you if there isn’t enough filament remaining without having to manually track the mass of the spool.


  • The definition of the First World is “The United States and its allies in the Cold War.” The Second World is the Soviet Union and its allies. The Third World is everyone else. This definition places Finland and Switzerland in the Third World.

    The connotation of “third world” meaning where we go to shoot those “for less than the price of a cup of coffee a day, you too can give food and water to this desolate brown child” commercials came later.




  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.workstoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldOk, boomer
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    9 days ago

    I mean, I’m going to invite everyone of every age to strip bottomless, take any “back in my day we didn’t have your fancy [whatever]” bitching an moaning you have to do, dip it in honey, roll it in sand, and cram it up your exposed ass.

    I’m 38. In my mid-20s, I taught flight school, mainly to people twice my age, and this included a fairly large section on reading Sectional Aeronautical Charts. I’ve got zero fucks to give for someone 7 years my senior pulling “back in my day we had maps” shit.








  • I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.

    Gnome is very aesthetic, but I swear it’s useless. You open Gnome Something Utility and it opens a flat, empty window with no elements at all except up in the top bar there’s a hamburger menu and a button that says “Do Something.” It’s perfectly rendered and kerned, it does something, as long as you want it to do the default something and you don’t want to so something slightly different. The Gnome Something Utility is called Something in all menus but the name of the executable is GSU and there’s no convenient way to find that out.

    KDE is configurable but kind of homely. It’s damn near impossible to get two adjoining widgets to have the same font size and kerning. When you launch Komething, you are met by a baffling array of text boxes, radio buttons and drop-downs, there are menus and tabs, none of which are lined up quite right giving it a kind of Windows 98 era jank to it. You can do every kind of Something, Something Else and Something Completely Different under the sun. There are professional closed-source Something apps that don’t have the features of Komething, but it looks like a Half Life mod configuration wizard a teenager made in 1999.

    Cinnamon is somewhere between those two extremes.




  • I’m a bachelor, I outright don’t like using full size kitchen trash bags because any cat litter or meat scraps I throw away start smelling Republican long before the bag is full. I haven’t bought trash bags in years, I only use grocery bags as trash bags.

    very occasionally, I ask for one paper bag. After it carries groceries home, it will get cut into rectangles and used for rubbing out the finish on my woodworking projects, because it’s cheaper and honestly better than 600 grit sandpaper. One bag will last awhile, I go through one a month when I’m really churning things out.

    Now, in my lifetime, grocery stores have changed. My childhood Juicy Juice was poured from a big metal can my mother opened with a church key. My Gerber baby food came out of glass jars, some of which I still have and still use as containers for screws and such 35 years later. Russet potatoes weren’t individually shrink wrapped. Cat food came in metal cans and paper bags. Now, all of those things and more are packaged in plastic. None of that is being addressed.