It is truly humbling how much this very simple device can take you far beyond your sense of competence. Rheology is a bitch.
Conversation
Motors, electronics... they're conceptually simpler, and the gap between the textbook and reality is small. But when you're talking a gooey melty viscous fluid going through an extruder and then cooling and hardening on a plate.... textbook understanding doesn't get you far.
2
8
Something I didn't realize in like 9 years of theory focused engineering school is just how much of what you need to know is basically only knowable through bug-fixing. Engineering education is 10% concepts/design/theory, and 90% bug fixing metis.
2
7
42
Bugs also thoroughly violate your sense of proportions of value/investment.
- The triviality of a bug has little correlation to how long it will take you to discover/fix it. That's entirely a function of experience.
- The cost of the bug is often the value of the whole project.
2
1
31
Bugs are basically insulting. They don't respect what you think you know. Only how strong your Fingerspitzengehfül for traversing the troubleshooting tree is.
2
1
24
To a first approximation, your engineering ability is the number of bugs you've fixed
3
7
37
ok printer seems to be working fine, though the black filament reel has run low and the filament motor seems to have some trouble pulling it now, which is probably what caused the last clog (via filament breaking)... same tension = less torque as spool radius goes down
1
This is basically a bad design: a circular sleev sitting on a square shaft. I’m manually helping the feeder along a bit. Might try to design and print a better bearing.
2
4
The play in the spool gets taken up until the tension is too high. Some interesting mechanics here.
1
2
Replying to
heh didn't think of that... and another fishing reference I see, like that time you told me about the hack to fix the telescope leg sleeve. I'm noticing a pattern here

