Posts on Random Hackery

Multicolor prints on a single extruder

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 10:54:24 +0200

The Bamboo labs X1 Carbon is an incredibly popular 3D printer. With its fast printing speeds, and its near flawless MMU (Multi-Material Unit), its an easy choice for those wanting a no hassle machine. Its closed source nature however, makes me leery to trust it over my Prusa MK4S. While the X1 is a faster printer, its ability to print with multiple material is not unique.

Prusa does have an MMU add-on, but the two people I know who owned one both claimed it was hot garbage that was prone to failure. I figured there had to be a simple way to get Prusa Silcer to allow one to print with multi-material but instead of using an automation switching solution, allow the user to manually change the filament. Unfortunately, I found none (only rumors of a “virtual extruder” setting that I could not find).

3D Printing my Dog

Sat, 18 Nov 2023 10:54:24 +0200

Two months ago I lost my boy to cancer. For 13 years Lando was my best friend, and his loss was devastating. When I first brought him home, he would not let me trim his toe nails at all. The vet told me that if I played with/pet his feet all the time, he would get used to it and trimming his nails would no longer be a problem. Over time this turned into me holding his paw like it was a hand whenever we would cuddle on the couch.

3D printed Mandalorian Armor

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 10:54:24 +0200

2020 was a dumpster fire of a year. Covid ravaged the planet, lockdowns destroyed my mental health and supply chain shortages became a thing. While once abundant as toilet paper, microchips have become as rare as a good Matrix movie. Sadly, no microchips, meant no hobby work. After months and months of not creating anything, I decided I would create with what I had, my 3D printer.

In 2021, I decided to create Mandalorian armor. I had no idea where to start, but discovering various YouTube channels (such as VaultFox) I was able to figure out not only how to smooth my prints to make them look legit, but also how to paint them. There are tons of videos out on the internet on how to do this, so I won’t get very detailed. However, I’d still like to document the process.

Project Nakatomi

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 10:54:24 +0200


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History

Last Christmas while spending time antiquing with family, I stumbled upon the remains of an ancient radio. Excited to get my hands on some tube tech, I was immediately drawn to it. Unfortunately for me, this particular radio was nothing more than a barren shell. This however created the idea to “refurbish” the radio with a Raspberry Pi and make a more modern stereo out of it without feeling guilt for destroying tubes.

Stargate Badge

Fri, 12 Jul 2019 10:54:24 +0200

Intro

After being apart of the #Badgelife community for the last several years, I figured it was finally time to actually pull my weight and create a badge. I’ve always loved Stargate, and figured making a badge that only did blinkenlights would be a much easier project to get out on a deadline. Overall the project was a success! Within a few days of posting it to twitter the badge had ~30k views. I’ve never had anything I’ve created get so much attention so quickly. Needless to say, once the prototype became public knowledge, the pressure was on. This is how I did it.

Home Built Keyboard

Sat, 24 Nov 2018 10:54:24 +0200

This is the first time I’ve ever posted something I did not design and build from scratch, but I felt like making an exception. For Christmas I wanted to build my father something. The problem is most of the things I build are not things he would necessarily want. I’ve always had a love of mechanical keyboards and thought one would serve as an excellent conduit for my DIY itch.

Thankfully many people have created open source circuit designs (or sell closed source ones) that most of the hard work was already done. Most of the designs I found were rather small (which seem to be the most popular ones). This board however was just the right size for my dad (had almost all they keys of a full sized board). A more complete kit (whole thing minus keycaps and switches) can be found here. They keycaps themselves (found here) are simply gorgeous. They feel and look amazing. Big thanks to Matthew Rowley for taking the good photos. I took the shitty ones.

Brotherhood of Steel Watch

Tue, 14 Aug 2018 10:54:24 +0200

Ad Victorium!

Intro for muggles

Many people do not like big watches. They are wrong. This “wonderfully ridiculous” watch in my line of large fallout themed watches is called “The Brotherhood of Steel” or the BOS watch. It was born out of various frustrations with its predecessor (the pipman). The project took about two years from start to finish, mostly because I had (have?) no idea what I’m doing. The goal was to build something smaller than the last one (if thinner counts as smaller then mission accomplished), more power friendly (I failed here…somehow) and fully fallout themed as I just really love the world Bethesda created (so please don’t sue me Bethesda).

Pipman GPS Watch

Mon, 07 Sep 2015 10:54:24 +0200

Intro

About two and a half years ago my wrist watch was beginning to fall apart. I had worn it for ten years, so this was not surprising. I happened to come across a slashdot article (yes I do still read slashdot every now and then) about watches for techies. Since I was in the market I gave the comments a good read. Some of the coolest features I read about where the ability to automatically set the time themselves, to be solar powered, and to store things like calendar information. I also wanted to have a color screen. At the time, no one had heard of an Apple iWatch or Samsung Gear. Color screens on watches were unheard of. However I could not find any particular watch that did all the things I wanted. I had at the time been playing a video game called Metro 2033 and one of the things that struck out to me was the custom homemade watch the main character used.

Adventures in 3d printing...Part II

Tue, 12 Nov 2013 10:54:24 +0200

ts been a few weeks now since I purchased my Makerbot. I thought I’d share some projects created and some things I learned in the process. Overall the Makerbot is really easy to use. Most of my prints have come out really well. Others, not so much.

The Successes

The thing I am most proud of so far is my Dead Space Marker Replica. To those unfamiliar with Dead Space (and those who didn’t read the wiki), Markers are Alien artifacts that wipe out entire populations and turns the corpses into Space Zombies™ and fun times are had by all. The particular Marker I wanted to create glossy black with red glowing glyphs. The Easiest way to achieve this was to print it clear and try to paint it.

Adventures in 3d printing...Part I

Tue, 22 Oct 2013 10:54:24 +0200

I bought a Makerbot Replicator 2 today. I don’t have a lot to show for it as of yet, but I am very excited about the future possibilities, like making custom 3d printed cases for my projects (like the GPS watch I am currently working on). With in half an hour I was able to create a few things. Anyways, bring on the media:

I am nerding out about this far more than I should 😀

Teensy Powered Arc Reactor Replica

Wed, 11 Sep 2013 10:54:24 +0200

Flipping through one of my ThinkGeek catalogs and I noticed this light up Tony Stark Arc Reactor shirt. I noticed the price tag and figured for $30, I could probably build a better one myself. The problem was, I didn’t know where to start. Prior to building my temperature monitor I haven’t had much experience building things. After searching around on the net I found some rather nice instructables to use as a starting point. The end goals for the project were:

Arduino Temperature Montior

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 10:54:24 +0200

This is an older entry for my first hardware project

So I recently got into basic circuitry as a hobby. The Arduino is a really cool development platform. It is an open source hardware project that basically runs off C++ code. I wasn’t sure what to create for my first project, but I bought a lcd screen with the Arduino nano. After getting a basic hello world demo working, I decided that the best thing to create with it was a temperature monitor for my desktop. Here is an image of the final product: