Notices by Koz Ross (koz@chaos.social)

Qidi 'engineering' strikes again: https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1jnuju1/rqiditech3d_permanently_banned_me_for_warning/

tl;dr - a Qidi Plus4's SSR (which we have been warning about since day freaking 1) finally blew and caught fire, with serious consequences.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: do not buy Qidi printers, don't suggest others buy Qidi printers. This isn't just sloppy engineering, this is outright dangerous.

#3DPrinting #FDM

@3dprinting

@dalias @3dprinting I have access to butt connectors. How would one abuse ferrules for this purpose?

I suspect I'm just bad at crimping honestly, lol.

On the advice of @mia , and with the experience of @amd , I have decided to finally get Catboat-1 running again by rebuilding its toolhead. I'm going with the Xol, using the Tap carriage and the MeowXol faceplate. Now I have to order some parts (in transit now), but I can print the shell at least!

Overall, _super_ impressed with the design of these parts, especially their supports.

#3DPrinting #FDM @3dprinting

@mia @amd @3dprinting "But Koz, weren't you just saying how much you love the DB?"

Yes, I was, and I still think that the DB is a good toolhead. However, for a Trident, it's definitely far from optimal, especially given how I chose to wire it. The Xol is better suited for this use case, and it also gives me an excuse to improve a bunch of other things on Catboat-1 that aren't great at the moment.

@3dprinting Notably, I have finally relented on the use of a toolhead PCB. The reason? I finally found one that I don't think is terrible: https://wiki.fysetc.com/H36_Combo/

Why is this one good enough to convince me?

1. Its MCU is rated for 125C, instead of the 85 or so of most of its competitors. As someone who's had a toolhead PCB fry due to inadequate temp management, this is a non-negotiable thing for me.
2. It has a ridiculous amount of IO. There's _four_ fans on it!

(cont)

@3dprinting

3. I don't have to use CAN if I don't want to. The H36 allows you to run a USB line for data, and two power lines (live and ground), while also having an X30 connector (which is motion rated and thus doesn't have issues that USB alone would). You can still use CAN if you want, but I figured taking one more layer out of the system can only be a good thing.
4. The board is _extremely_ well-documented, down to an _interactive_ BOM on their Github.

(cont)

@3dprinting Now, to be fair, this board does have one very notable downside: it uses JST PH connectors _everywhere_. Those things are a real pain to work with, as crimping them is fiddly and annoying. However, this might just be when I learn to solder: you can buy precrimped PHs for not too much money (or re-use some you already have lying around), and then solder join your wires.

It is my experience in general that someone who is critically and incurably wrong about _one_ thing is often critically and incurably wrong about _all_ things.

Recent experiences have done nothing to dispel this.

@dalias I have no objection to sandboxing of this kind by default - it is a sensible default and should stay that way. However, there is _no way whatsoever_ I can see to allow this to work. I've tried blanket-enabling _every_ filesystem permission in Flatseal, and even adding /var/lib _manually_, and _still_ it fails.

@dalias Oh, for extra joy - a globally-installed OpenSCAD won't work either, even with aforementioned nuclear permit-all Flatseal settings.

Great, now I have to figure out how I'm going to do this simple-seeming task in _Blender_, because apparently competence, FreeCAD and Flatpak live in different realities.

@poleguy @dalias I guess I could, but this doesn't change the fact the Flatpak is broken in this particular instance. I'd also likely try distro FreeCAD first, since that _should_ be able to see everything.

#Blender Fedi: how do I bevel an edge at an exact angle? Context: I want to chamfer at a 45 degree angle exactly, and the face I'm chamfering is parallel to the XY plane.

Today's fun discovery: apparently, if you install the #FreeCAD Flatpak and try to use the OpenSCAD workbench, you _cannot_ give it a Flatpak-installed OpenSCAD. Literally impossible, even if you nuclear Flatseal permit it everything, because by default, it can neither see the export directory of Flatpak nor the Flatpak binary itself, which it needs to run said export.

How the idea that someone might want a working OpenSCAD workbench in a Flatpak FreeCAD didn't occur to the packager, I dunno.

@zeitkunst @fribbledom Prusa haven't been all that open-source in truth or spirit for quite some time. Their 'open hardware' claims around the Mini are 100% a lie, and the MK4 is so proprietary that _opening up its extruder_ without a support staffer telling you to is a warranty breach.

@Polychrome @efi @ben @bunni I figured they would, but I'm curious exactly how they plan to detect and block it. Parallel importing is _generally_ a legal grey area, and kind of hard to track, which is why everyone does it.

@Polychrome @efi @ben @bunni Wouldn't this just lead to a huge rise in parallel importing? "Sure, these GPUs are for sale to New Zealand. Yep, growing economy, lots of AI and gamers there, we definitely need 10 million GPUs a year for a population of 5 million...."

As a fan of #Gridfinity, I found this #OpenSCAD tool both really useful and really convenient. I've made a lot of different bins with it, and can confirm it works well.

https://www.printables.com/model/274917-gridfinity-rebuilt-in-openscad

@3dprinting

#DIY #FDM #3DPrinting

I've been investigating (slowly, with a lot of help from @jookia and @amd ) a #DIY #CNC build. In the process, I have learned a lot of things, and felt like sharing some of what I've learned.

One example is from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clgpZJFoqIQ

The tl;dws are:

1. Stepper motors (closed or open loop) never hit their holding torque at _any_ rotation.
2. Servos have less peak torque, but hold it at _any_ rotation speed they're rated for.

Conclusion for me: servos and gearing are best here.

#Linux Fedi: I'm at an absolute loss. I have an AMD laptop running Arch, which works fantastically well, but occasionally, almost always when watching something on Youtube in Firefox, the frame rate crashes through the floor. We're talking like 2fps even just moving the mouse around.

Only a restart fixes this - restarting the DE doesn't help. I'm on kernel 6.11.5, but anything newer is worse.

Any ideas what this might be?

@dalias That was a _very_ interesting read. My experience operating a Bowden printer definitely lines up with what is described there, and the solution is really clever.