Disease with no Cura

I experimented a bit with Meshmixer to optimize the orientation and supports for a model before slicing and printing with Dremel’s software. Pro: it was easy to remove the tree-style supports it generated. Con: the surface quality was no better for all the extra work involved, and actually required a bit more sanding to be usable.

So I tried the current version of Cura (which has a bewildering array of tree-support options) with the machine definition copied from Dremel’s older version and the built-in generic filament and quality definitions. The print took just as long as with the Dremel software, but practically crumbled in my hand. All the small parts could be snapped off with very light pressure, and the main body’s 20% infill wasn’t enough to survive squeezing between thumb and forefinger. Definitely need to import the Dremel-specific filament and quality settings before I try that again.

Then I tried to decipher the UI for Autodesk Fusion 360, which honestly looks like it was designed to sell training classes. Also, it has a fairly short list of available machine, material, and quality profiles, so I’d have to enter everything by hand for my printer. Yeah, no. If I can manage to figure out how to use it before the mouse bindings drive me to throw a laptop out a window, I’ll try designing a part and exporting to Dremel’s software. It also really, really wants to keep everything in their cloud, which you have to manage from a real browser; it took me a good five minutes to figure out how to completely delete one accidental upload.

Then I took a brief look at FreeCAD, where instead of having their own UI paradigm, they simply emulate everyone else’s and allow you to pick one. Or more. Initial impression: the 2D tools make Illustrator look like the easiest-to-learn drawing software in the world; I didn’t get to the 3D tools. I did like the Bézier curve visualization, though.

CorelCAD is a full-featured 2D/3D package, and for $700 it ought to be. In prehistoric times I found CorelDRAW a lot easier to learn than Illustrator and used it a lot, but then they had a very, very buggy major release that drove me away, and I never looked back. They have free trials of all their software, and a subscription model for some of them, but the very first question on their FAQ page is:

“How do I turn off popup ads in CorelDRAW?”

’nuf said.

Video killed by radio star

The Dremel’s camera went offline during one of my prints, and since nothing was listening on the port, obviously the software had crashed on the printer. There’s nothing checking for this and restarting it, so the only way to get the feed back is to power-cycle, which had to wait until I was done sending test prints for the day. The printer still printed, and the status API kept reporting correctly, so it was no big deal. Their app doesn’t really know what to do when there’s no video feed, but it still functions.

By the way, extracting the Busybox image from the latest firmware update and running strings on the binaries revealed a few additional commands in the API: GETJOBSTATUS, CANCEL, PAUSE, RESUME, NOZZLEHEAT, PLATEHEAT, STOPNOZZLEHEAT, STOPPLATEHEAT; I have no need to try most of those out. A quick tcpdump while I was driving it from the GUI showed the two-part command to print across the network: you upload the file by POSTing to /print_file_uploads with name, filename, and data fields, then POST PRINT=filename to /command (and then spam it with GETPRINTERSTATUS every few seconds, at least if you’re Dremel’s software).

Update: unofficial official GCODE/API manual

So, if I ever get another slicer that generates good code for this device, I won’t have to walk the gcode over to the printer on a thumb drive, through the snow, uphill both ways. That will matter more once I move it upstairs into my office, because while it’s not loud, it is audible, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to turn off the built-in lighting. Closing the office door will make lengthy overnight prints less intrusive.

…unless I ever have a houseguest again, because the guest bedroom is right next to the office.

…unless the guest is my sister, who stubbornly insists that my couch provides a much better sleeping experience. Honestly, if I ever win the lottery and build my dream house, her room will just have a sectional sofa, large-screen TV, and a bookshelf. And excellent wifi coverage. Maybe its own kitchen. Oh, what the hell, just make it a studio apartment without a bed.

Little Monsters

If it ever becomes possible to play tabletop games in person again, mz4250’s extremely large set of free miniatures will be useful. The detailing on some of them is nice enough to scale up for decoration, and it’s not just the complete set of D&D monsters and an ever-increasing set of module-specific characters. There are other genres, as well as disturbing nightmare creations.

No Magic Bullet

I think I’ve gone down enough software rat-holes for now. Back to just coding up shapes in OpenSCAD and printing them with the supplied software and its “old-fashioned” support structures.

Cognitive Disinfectant

Remember when everyone was up in arms about the antibiotic-resistant bacteria crisis, and we all needed to stop using antibacterial products right now? Corona-chan really kicked the pins out from under that campaign. Now it seems like everywhere you go, assuming you’re allowed out, there’s a hand-sanitizer station every 20 feet, and every public surface is being wiped down dozens of times each day with strong disinfectants.

True Lies Matter

On the off chance Trump beats the margin of fraud, I’d like to remind everyone in the “punch a nazi” crowd that A) you’re not very good at nazi-identification, B) the ‘nazi’ gets to punch back in self-defense, or shoot if your attack is serious enough, C) you’ll be the one facing felony charges, D) if you go out in force to protest the election results, 10USC331 could make those charges federal, which means no catch-and-release by the local po-po, and E) that felony conviction may stop you from voting or owning guns.

Software update not found

Turns out Dremel’s software is based on Cura 2.7, and the current version is 4.7. Settings extracted from the various resource directories don’t quite work as-is, due to substantial changes over the past three years. Cura silently ignores non-compliant materials and settings files, so a bit of trial-and-error will be necessary. I was able to import the basic printer definition by changing two lines, but not the materials or quality settings.

I’m honestly surprised this hasn’t been done by someone yet. It’s not hard, just tedious, and there will likely be times that the features in the newer software will be useful. I haven’t found anything wrong with the current version, but 3 years is a long time in this sort of software.

On the plus side, getting direct network access to the Dremel’s status and video without using their app is refreshingly easy:

# retrieve status as JSON
curl -d GETPRINTERSTATUS $IPADDR/command | jq .

# watch the video in any browser or VLC
http://$IPADDR:10123/?action=stream

Looks like you can also upload files and start print jobs through this API, too. Downside: so can anyone else on your network. Not a problem for me, fortunately.

On a whim, I installed Slic3r to try it out, but when I launched it, the embedded Perl interpreter started grinding on my CPU. I couldn’t decide if it was mining cryptocurrency, encrypting my hard drive, or just bad code. The latest 1.3.1-dev release started up instantly, which is suggestive. As a true open-source project, it comes with a completely empty printer and materials library, making it more of a lifestyle than a tool.

I searched Pixiv for a nice 3D-created illustration to insert here, but the ones that weren’t loli porn were bondage porn, so here’s a perfectly innocent picture from Genshin Impact.

Not much of a cheese shop, then, is it?

The Internet Archive has implemented “fact checks” and “context” for The Wayback Machine. They now confirm that the chocolate ration has been increased to 20 grams/week.

A few quick comments on my new Dremel 3D45:

• The documentation is laughably terrible, even supplemented by the online support pages and videos. Between the two, you can manage to get it up and running correctly, but everything was very clearly done by tech writers for a power-tool manufacturer, not by a consumer-electronics company.

• Why, yes, I did manage to misfeed my filament the first time, resulting in a small test print that looked like it came out of one of the first low-budget 3d-printer kits on the market. Fortunately I knew what a skipping stepper motor sounded like, and was able to quickly abort the print and start over.

• The touchscreen is kinda cheap for a $2,000 printer. Clear and bright, but only responsive to slow, firm touches. Entering my 52-character wifi password (three times) was quite painful.

• And, yes, I had to set up wifi even though I had an ethernet cable plugged in when it booted the first time.

• By the way, all the documentation insists that there is no LAN printing support, and that if you want to print without a USB cable or thumb-drive and watch your job through the built-in camera, you must connect to their cloud. Neither of these statements is true. Works great, auto-detects printers on the local LAN (wired or wireless), shows the progress and remaining time, and the camera even includes the filament spool in the frame so you can visually confirm that you’re not running low.

• Also, their cloud setup got stuck in an endless SSO-auth loop. Yeah, fuck the cloud.

• The bundled software, which initially seems a bit limited, is in fact quite competitive, being built around the open-source Cura package, which means that it includes the ability to read .fdm_material files for a wide variety of third-party filaments.

• Dremel also supports and recommends Simplify3D, which is well-regarded despite its complete lack of anything resembling a material library. It has a basic profile for the Dremel models, but doesn’t even support the material that comes in the box.

• That is, Dremel officially sells and supports branded PLA, PETG, Nylon, and Eco-ABS (actually a modified PLA with a confusing name), and ships the printer with one spool of Eco-ABS and one of PETG. Simplify3D’s device profile lists PLA, ABS (apparently Eco-ABS), and Nylon; they don’t include PETG in any of their profiles, and do not clearly document how to add additional materials, although they have web pages describing common parameter ranges for many generic types of filament.

• One last note on software: Simplify3D requires an active Internet connection at all times to work, and their “free trial” involves giving them $150 up front and asking for a refund within two weeks. Yeah, fuck that.

• Note that third-party filament, while supported, has to be rewound onto a Dremel-sized spool before use, and you’ll want to remove the RFID tag so the printer doesn’t auto-detect it as the wrong stuff. There are plenty of designs on Thingiverse for assisting with this process.

• By the way, Dremel says they’ll send me two free rolls of filament for blogging a review of my printer. “Your proposal is acceptable. Especially since I was going to do that anyway.”

• Update! Just noticed that Dremel’s software also auto-detects thumb-drives as a destination to save your gcode, and offers an eject button after the copy finishes. That’s convenient.

Network printing

Why, yes, I did name it Ricotta; she’s a pro maker, dawg. Er, “pro maker dog”.

The proof is in the solidified pudding

My first print job was a redesigned koma for the baby takadai. 30 minutes at medium quality, 30 more minutes after I broke one of the pins off while remembering how to cleanly remove the supports (been a few years since I used one of these, and the documentation consists only of the words “use needle nose pliers”), and I had a part that fit perfectly and worked exactly as intended.

I had it print 9 more overnight, and woke up to a full set of koma much better than what that poor woodworker had managed with a router, a drill press, and not nearly enough time to get them all out the door in time for the conference.

Note that the 3d-printed design does something that would have been a real pain with a drill press: the front pin is exactly at the front, so there’s no double-width gap between pins on adjacent koma. I swiped the idea from the Braidershand design, which gets very close to the front of the koma with their pins. Little touches like that are why their gear has an 18-month waiting list.

Second job was a gravity ratchet and pawl downloaded directly from the McMaster-Carr online catalog. I’m going to scale and recreate this design in OpenSCAD to use for the take-up reel in my next babydai mod.

Keep Calm and SOHCAHTOA

For the third job, I had a sudden inspiration about how to solve the problem of tensioned threads falling into the narrow gap between two koma: curve the ends. This took longer to work out on paper and in OpenSCAD than it took to print in high-speed draft mode (30 minutes for two).

They came out exactly how I expected, and I was quickly able to confirm that the idea was sound, but I really wanted the curved ends to go the other way…

Thirty minutes later, I had another pair of prototypes.

24-hour opinion?

At this point, I have full confidence that the Dremel 3D45 will reliably deliver excellent 3D prints with their branded filament, and that I should be able to successfully import working settings for common third-party filaments when I get around to buying some.

The hardware is solid and well-designed, the software is quite capable, the filament seems to be of decent quality (if a bit hard to find right now, between Corona-chan and their change from 500-gram spools to 750-gram), and the price is reasonable for the feature set. The packaging is excellent, by the way, and easy to reuse for travel or repair.

I haven’t used the High or Ultra quality settings yet, or increased the infill percentage; Medium/20% was smooth enough and strong enough for koma with 1/8-inch pins and small weighted tama. High-Speed (draft) is kind of ugly and a bit stringy, but does what it’s supposed to.

“The battle’s done, and we kinda won…”

My next project will be a more significant drop-in mod to the baby takadai, relocating the torii, take-up reel, and sword pads, unlocking the ability to use all those new koma I printed and make much wider braids with up to 48 weighted bobbins. I’ll be releasing the OpenSCAD models and STL files so that any of the other conference attendees can mod theirs. Given the crowd, though, I’ll likely also end up printing a few sets to send people. 😁

After that, well, as much as I love the capacity of the 22 9-pin koma on my Braidershand takadai, I also like to braid with thick yarn, and my first attempt at that made me wish I had a set of 6-pin koma with big wide gaps between pins. And since my OpenSCAD design is parametric, that’s just a few long print jobs (roughly 5 hours and 38 grams of filament, each). Hardly a project at all. I’ll probably do them in white; black would be pretty harsh against maple.

Then there’s that complete parametric takadai design I did a few years back, which could be easily framed with connectors like Jonction P. And the long list of CNC projects I still haven’t gotten to. And this idea I just had for an easy tilt/shift adapter for my Sony a6500 and an old Mamiya 6x6 lens. And…

No boxes

I briefly toyed with the idea of designing parametric boxes for tama storage, since I have large quantities of bobbins in different sizes, weights, and shapes (236 total at the moment, but there will be more someday). Then I went to Michaels, based on a tip from the recent kumihimo conference. Their 99-cent crayon boxes hold 4 standard-size tama, their $1.99 pencil boxes hold 10, a larger pencil/craft box holds 9 large tama, and somewhere else in the store I found boxes that were perfect for holding 16 of the latest thing in affordable tama (another conference tip).

I don’t think I’ll need any more tama or boxes this year, but there will come a day when I’ve got 60 of one weight on the big takadai, 39 little ones on the babydai, 32 on the big marudai, 9 on the little marudai, and three dozen cats to feed.

Corona-chan Wants Candy

Unrelated, this is the first time in 20 years that I have had zero trick-or-treaters, down from the usual ~120. I bought a few pounds of candy just in case, but especially since I’ll be working from home until June, I didn’t risk a big buy.

This just in:

Fans spinning up on your Mac laptop during high network traffic? Apple ships a user-mode driver for common USB-C and Thunderbolt docks.

“The call was coming from inside the house!”

Got woken up at 3am this morning by a loud party somewhere nearby. I couldn’t make out what music was playing, just that it had a beat and you could dance to it. I turned on the red-noise generator on my tablet to drown it out and went back to sleep. Sort of.

Two hours later, it’s still going on, and I can’t imagine how someone hasn’t complained. I get out of bed to look out the window and see what the hell is going on, and as my ears sort out the direction it’s coming from, it’s not from a nearby back yard.

It’s coming from almost directly beneath me.

The Echo device in my kitchen is shuffling Talking Heads songs at high volume.

I did not request this. I had not requested anything for at least two hours before this started. Around 9pm I had whimsically asked it to play songs by Talking Bunbun, which are available on last.fm but not Amazon, and The New Normal for Alexa-based devices when they can’t find what you want is to assume that anything that sounds vaguely similar is acceptable, so it started playing Talking Heads.

I said stop, at 9pm, and it stopped, at 9pm. Then it started back up on its own, at 3am. Even if I shouted in my sleep I couldn’t have told it to do that. Unlike my old haunted Ooma box, where the root cause turned out to be the top-panel LEDs generating interference with the touch panel, the most likely cause for this is Amazon’s ongoing attempts to increase sensitivity and language recognition.

I’m guessing that some random sound like the icemaker in the fridge got interpreted as the wake word, and then it went into the new “whisper” mode and invented words from background noise that got turned into a command like “resume”.

What could possibly go wrong?

“The Seattle City Council is considering new legislation that would create a legal loophole that would make substance addiction, mental illness or poverty a valid legal defense for nearly all misdemeanor crimes committed in the city.” (via)

Turn the page…

It’s not my imagination: neither of the standard reference books on takadai braiding explains how to translate their diagrams into actual physical motions to open the shed and pass bobbins through. Tada simply pairs the first few simple braids with an overhead drawing showing the matching shed, but never discusses it again, even when progressing to four-armed and two-sided braids.

Owen’s notation is slightly different, but the only reason it’s a little clearer is that his book includes photos from multiple angles, not directly tied to the brief explanation of the diagrams.

As I was tinkering with the babydai and my OmniGraffle design template, I thought of a simple way to explain how to always correctly interpret either notation: rotate the page and work your hand along the line.

That is, given this “top-down view” notation:

divide the diagram down the middle, then rotate the page 90° counter-clockwise for right-side moves and clockwise for left-side moves:

So, to twill the shed, on the right-hand gedan your hand goes over 1 under 3, over 2, under 2, and then up to the jodan to go over 3; insert the sword and pass the first gedan bobbin through to the open position on the left-hand gedan.

You could also valley-fold the diagram, but that’s not recommended for expensive imported out-of-print braiding manuals. 😁

(this is the first of eight moves in the nimai-mono braid Ryūkō-gumi, CToB4 #47)

Coming soon…

The realization that I’ll be working from home until June came with a moment of clarity: I can do lengthy 3D cnc/print jobs every day. I have an excellent CNC router that doesn’t get nearly enough use, but I’ve stayed out of the additive 3D market until now. Well, not so much “now” as Friday, when my new Dremel 3D45 arrives.

Naturally I bought this just as Dremel is updating their filament product line to increase spool capacity by 50%, so most flavors are out of stock everywhere. There’s probably also still some covid supply-chain issues, although I think everyone who was going to print PPE and mask-holders at home already has.

Why the Dremel? I don’t want a kit, I don’t want a MakerBot, and the Prusa has a 3-4 week lead time (and an open frame, which I don’t like, but it’s highly recommended for print quality). For a brief moment I entertained the thought of splurging on a Form 3, but then I came to my senses. Something to do with needing a separate consumable resin tank for each type and color of resin that you use. Also several liters of 90%+ isopropyl alcohol, nitrile gloves, and good ventilation.

Coming soon…

My neighbors rented a bouncy castle over the weekend. I’m not sure who they had over; the music didn’t seem particularly small-child-friendly, so I’m guessing tweens. If Corona-chan spikes in the neighborhood next week, I’ll have a pretty good guess as to why.

Amusing note: the only prior association I had with that song was a short video of dancing Korean camgirls sent to me by Brickmuppet a while back.

Speaking of random spikes:

Coming soon…

I need to reinstall some of the Windows software on my old gaming laptop (Carbide3D, VCarve, Gearotic, etc), but I’ve already dusted off my OpenSCAD scripting and started designing parts to improve the baby takadai. Some of them will be easier to do on the printer than the router, such as “traditional” koma, which would be a two-sided 3D job on the Nomad but a quick print on the Dremel.

The second babydai mod will be more elaborate, and I’ll prototype it on the Dremel. If I want to make it stronger and better-looking, I’ll cut it on the Nomad, but only after I finalize the design.

There are three key problems with the current design: the torii is placed about an inch too far forward (limiting your ability to beat the weft into place), the sword pads are 3/4-inch too low, and the take-up reel is too narrow (limiting how wide a braid you can make). That is, just trying to do the basic plain-weave braid with doubled embroidery floss was slightly too wide to fit on the takeup reel, and slightly too close to the torii to beat easily.

Basically, the original Japanese designer did some very clever things that got lost in the attempt to make one that looks more traditional, compounded by the fact that they were built for an experienced takadai braider, but not by one.

My mod will also add a proper gravity ratchet for the take-up reel; this is a nice simple design for small spaces.

Coming soon…

While everyone in California (and I’m pretty sure I mean everyone) was mailed a mail-in ballot, you can vote in person. I’ve confirmed that my usual polling station is one of the ones that will be open, and since work has declared election day Zoom-free, there won’t be any issues even if there is a line.

I kind of hope there’s a line…

Coming soon…

As a side project, now that I have a full-sized professional takadai, I’m going to take detailed measurements to revise the proportions I used in my OpenSCAD parametric design.

This may lead to 3D-printing a set of tinkertoy connectors for people to make a new-and-re-improved baby takadai at their local craft store.

Coming soon…

Still no sign of Jacquie Carey’s Samurai Braids book that was supposed to come out last fall, but when I opened up the new edition of Makiko Tada’s Comprehensive Treatise of Braids 1, I saw the following promising news:

Forthcoming books
Book 8: Andean Braids
Book 9: Unusual Braids - Karakumi and 3D braids
Book 10: Marudai Braids 2

Coming soon…

Speaking of braiding, during the recent AKS Virtual Gathering, I knocked together a template for making clean, print-quality takadai braiding diagrams like the ones in Tada’s books, and unlike the ones made for the babydai instructions. Sometime soon I’ll post some babydai-compatible braids that weren’t included in the instructions.

Coming soon…

It’s subtle enough that I didn’t notice until I saw them twitch during one of her idle animations, but Sucrose has dog ears. No tail, though, to ensure the loyalty of the ass-otaku crowd.

NSFW

(the “futanari” tag is for one of the variations the artist did; there’s nothing about the picture or the lore to say she’s The Doggy-Girl With Something Extra)

Despite appearances, Keqing is not a catgirl; she just has a very patient hair-stylist.

So, if you want a real piece of tail, you have to wait for loli catgirl Diona’s debut.

And here I thought the recommendation engine had settled down a bit…

Zen and the Art of Republic Maintenance

“​…battling gangs for local charities”

4-Kata

How do you sit?

Burning down the house

This is aligned with my interests…

They really are this stupid

And they hope you are, too.

Be kind, rebind!

PSA - the command to detach a GNU screen (Control-A Control-D) is the same command in Outlook that selects all your email… and then deletes all of your email. Fun times. – Robert Hansen

I’ve never been able to use the default Control-A setup for Screen, because I run Emacs. I changed it to Control-R many years ago, because I do reverse searches a lot less often than “go to beginning of line”.

Don’t order the orange…

The Super Sonico Café secret menu:

NSFW

I don’t have one of these yet

Qiqi is currently the only female cryo-user (loli catgirl Diona is apparently “coming soon”) in Genshin Impact, so until I manage to get her in a gacha pull, I’m stuck with a male character for that element.

Sadly, she’s a zombie loli, so she’ll never grow up…

Vorish Art

The Spanish publisher for the Vorkosigan-verse novels commissioned a coordinated set of cover illustrations that’s, well, different:

I think Ethan of Athos could be a real conversation-starter.

AperTableLightPhotoRoom

Last night, I consolidated and de-duped (almost) all of my (digital) photo archives into Lightroom, using Avalanche. As soon as they support Apple’s Photos app, I’ll be able to merge in the last few old iPhoto libraries that were scattered across multiple Macs. The downside was that copying everything onto my MacBook Air first really screwed up my Time Machine backups and snapshots for a few days. Good thing I got the 2TB SSD.

Related, all the image processing still took so long that I got this close to pulling the trigger on a tricked-out Asus ZenBook Pro Duo. The Air is great for a lot of things, but a graphics powerhouse it is not.

Maybe now I’ll actually start processing pictures from last spring’s Japan trip. 😁

Related, we’ve just rebooked for a 16-day/night trip in Spring 2021. Fingers, toes, and eyes crossed that Japan will let us in. For this visit, I’ve penciled in side trips to Nagoya, Kamakura, and Nikko.

No Witnesses

I hadn’t thought about this benefit of lockdowns, mostly because when the JWs knock on my door, they usually leave immediately when they realize I don’t speak Spanish.

Half-rim Gacha

I had accumulated enough of the various non-cash-based currencies in Genshin Impact to manage another 10x gacha pull. I got eight unimpressive weapons, a new 4-star character (Sucrose, air-halfrims), and a new 5-star character (Klee, bomberloli).

I want to file a bug report that Sucrose’s half-rim glasses are not a proper red:

Maybe next weekend…

The new Pokemon Sword/Shield DLC is live (and they’ve helpfully released new DLC-included versions of the games, in case you just now decided to catch them all), and I haven’t even turned on my Switches yet to download it. I suppose I should, if only to claim the set of hat-wearing-Pikachu codes they’re distributing. Come to think of it, though, I’ve never used a Pikachu in this game. Or an Eevee.