Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[CitroJim]

Gosh That was a lucky escape with the fridge Zel! Pleased it was not the disaster it could so easily have been

Great to see the fun the dog had!

Thought of you this morning when I ran very close to your house during my Boxing day run

[Zelandeth]

Need to have a closer look at things to confirm what the issue actually is. The door seals I've checked and seem okay. The possibility is definitely there that we've had an excess moisture problem due to a blocked condensate drain as that was quite plugged - though hard to tell if it was just iced up.

Curse of a fridge using forced air cooling is that the evaporator is buried inside the ductwork so you can't access the drain without taking the entire fridge to bits.

Star did also get involved, though rather less rambunctiously than Tesla. She stole two bits delicately then sat on her bed quietly atomising it for the next couple of hours.

[Gibbo2286]

Talk about speakers here reminded me that I have this sitting on my shelf looking for a home, it's all that was salvageable from a set that was destroyed by a *(*($£ giving them a kick. it has numbers on it WFRMONM16PHCR-4 and SGC 035025 that might mean something to some. It's 186mm diameter at its widest and about 95mm front to rear.

[CitroJim]

They look a bit seriously good Eric, how big are they in diameter and depth?

[Hell Razor5543]

Need to have a closer look at things to confirm what the issue actually is. The door seals I've checked and seem okay. The possibility is definitely there that we've had an excess moisture problem due to a blocked condensate drain as that was quite plugged - though hard to tell if it was just iced up.

Curse of a fridge using forced air cooling is that the evaporator is buried inside the ductwork so you can't access the drain without taking the entire fridge to bits.

Star did also get involved, though rather less rambunctiously than Tesla. She stole two bits delicately then sat on her bed quietly atomising it for the next couple of hours.

Well, it seems that males (of most sentient creatures) are very impulsive, while females are far more methodical and take their time to enjoy themselves.

[Zelandeth]

Talk about speakers here reminded me that I have this sitting on my shelf looking for a home, it's all that was salvageable from a set that was destroyed by a *(*($£ giving them a kick. it has numbers on it WFRMONM16PHCR-4 and SGC 035025 that might mean something to some. It's 186mm diameter at its widest and about 95mm front to rear.

That's a pretty beefy looking woofer...looks like it's from one of these linky

This afternoon I wanted to make something useful out of this box of bits.



Wasn't entirely sure what to expect here. Two reasons...One is that I've never set eyes on a 3D printer of this type in person before, and secondly this is a direct from China box...so you're never quite sure what that means where assembly is concerned.

For those playing along at home, this is a Flsun Q5 printer.

Everything was soon out of the box and laid out on the desk it will live.



At this point a couple of things became immediately clear. Firstly being a delta printer means that there are far less bits than more conventional design. Secondly that my immediate impression of everything as it came out of the box was that it felt like a quality product.

The instructions were somewhat classic Chinglish, but to be honest beyond "the rails are labelled X, Y and Z, match them up..." You really don't need them.

They have included everything you need in the box, including all the Allen keys (including those for maintenance in addition to the actual assembly), cable ties, a screwdriver and even a surprisingly decent set of side cutters.

The three linear rails slot into and bolt onto the upper housing (where the controller and power supply live).



The only slightly fiddly bit is plugging the data leads from the controller into the stepper motor control boards. Not bad, but if the leads were 1/4" longer it would have been a 0/10 for difficulty rather than 3/10.

Five minutes later we had all the rails attached.



Then you need to flip it the right way up and bolt it down onto the base. At this point there is one more screw that goes from the outside of the upper casing as well. They're not taking chances with rigidity.

Forgot a photo of that stage...but the next one is then to attach the actuating rods to their bushings on the rails and the extruder to them. You could probably attach them all to the extruder then to the rails...but I figured doing them one at a time reduces the number of bits and pieces you've got flailing around.



The filament reel holder then goes on top, the cabling all gets connected up along with the filament guide. The wire connectors are all either keyed or colour coded so you really can't go wrong.



We're about 20 minutes in at this point.

Time to hook the power supply up (after double checking the voltage selection switch is indeed set to 230V not 110) and seeing what happens.



Powered up normally...bonus.

At this point with a conventional printer you would normally enter the time consuming faff where you have to level the build platform.

Not so with a delta printer. You attach a little levelling tool to the extruder (there's a magnet in it so it just snaps into place)...



then click on "Autolevel" in the tools menu.

It even reminds you to attach the levelling tool when you start it. Nice touch.



The printer then goes off and gently "pokes" the build plate in a couple of dozen places to build up an accurate map of where the bed is. The levelling tool can then be unplugged and stored safely.

The only remaining configuration step you need to do is fine tune the actual level of the Z axies. There is a dedicated button for this in the tools menu too. This scoots the extruder down to nearly touching the bed, you then slip a piece of standard paper in there and manually lower it until the extruder nozzle *just* drags on the paper. Click save and you're ready to go.

Well nearly. You need to load filament, *then* you're ready to go. That's simple too. Probably far more so with decent filament, the little starter reel that came in the box is pretty cheap and nasty.

You preheat the extruder nozzle (two button presses) for the appropriate type, then press the filament change button and "load." You need to make sure you cut the end of the filament to a point so it doesn't snag while feeding. Basically just a smaller version of feeding wire into a MIG welder then. When you hit the button to load the filament it runs the feed motor for a preset time to ensure it's all the way to the extruder and any air has been expelled. Getting the filament into the feed roller is a bit fiddly but it's pretty self explanatory what you need to do.

*Now* you're good to go!

The SD card they supply in the box has a few example designs on, so I picked one at random and pressed print.



Off we go!





Yes, the wiring still wants to be tidied up a bit, figured I'd ensure everything worked before I got too involved there.

I then left it be for a while while I got dinner.

When I got back this message was waiting on the screen.



More surprisingly though, this was on the build plate!



Seriously?!? Straight out of the box, with the horrible freebie filament, we've got a successful print?

Nothing wrong with this.





Now I've never owned a 3D printer before, nor ever printed anything myself on one. I have watched a friend getting things printed on their Makerbot Replicator...which did a good job but did involve a not insignificant amount of wrangling after any period of inactivity.

This just working out the box is definitely a good sign.

Overall impression so far: hugely impressed. I've assembled IKEA bookshelves that were more complicated to put together than this. If you've got any vague engineering know how you could put this thing together with your eyes closed.

There's only one type of screw used in assembly. Connectors are all colour coded or keyed, all the holes are precisely drilled and tapped cleanly. The critical ones in the rose joints on the extruder actuator arms have thread lock already applied, the edges are all nicely machines so there aren't any burrs or sharp edges...and it just worked. Overall the impression is one of really decent quality.

Very pleased so far.

Delta printers do take up a pleasingly small footprint on your desk too, as the build platform doesn't move nothing actually extends beyond the footprint of the printer.



Only gripes? The stepper motor wires could do with being a tiny bit longer. Not a big issue but it would make assembly that little bit easier. Finally, the filament they include in the box is pretty poor...but having said that, it did the job and proved the printer works! So can't grumble too much.

Only time will tell when we start getting more involved projects underway, but really impressed so far.

[CitroJim]

Wow! That's an impressive start to 3D printing

[myglaren]

They seem to have made it very simple to construct and use. Should be loads of fun and very useful.

[Gibbo2286]

Got it in one on the speaker Zel, that's exactly what it came from,

[Zelandeth]

They seem to have made it very simple to construct and use. Should be loads of fun and very useful.

The degree to which they have minimised the wailing and gnashing of teeth during the initial setup is quite astonishing. Definitely one it's not worth paying the extra £100 or whatever it is for a fully constructed one over the kit version.

Think the biggest bonus with this style of printer though has to be the lack of messing about getting the build platform levelled. I remember that alone taking longer to get right on Craig's Makerbot than the whole process of building and initial setup of this one.

[mickthemaverick]

Looks like a nice bit of kit for the starter Zel, all you need now is one of these:

https://uk.dhgate.com/product/scanner-3 ... 5cc559eb28

[Zelandeth]

Looks like a nice bit of kit for the starter Zel, all you need now is one of these:

https://uk.dhgate.com/product/scanner-3 ... 5cc559eb28

Intriguing...Assume from the look of it that it's basically just a bog standard webcam and a laser pointer with either a grid or linear refractive lens in it. Can't see it giving you exactly high precision results...but if all you're looking for is something that gets a rough working model into whichever 3D modelling package takes your fancy...it might actually work. I've learned a lesson over the years not to just discount a tool as useless because it looks shonky at first glance. Imagine the real clever side there would have to be in the software which interprets the data from the camera rather than the actual image acquisition side of things.

Software wise I suspect I've got quite a steep learning curve ahead.



While I know there are a few more basic tools out there, I do tend to think that if I can wrap my brain around it that learning to drive Blender is probably worthwhile. Purely because of how versatile it is and that it's what a few folks I know use, so there's a bit of a safety net out there I can turn to if I get stuck with a very specific task. Plus there are more tutorials out there then you can shake a stick at.

Just finished putting together the second box that was gifted to me. A proper dual monitor mount for the right hand two monitors to get them up off the desk and clear me a substantial amount of space.

Before:





Annoyingly I did have to pay extra for some adaptors as HP oh-so-helpfully decided not to include VESA mounting points on the Pavilion 24XW monitors. Given how much better the image quality was than the others I was considering I'd probably still have bought them even if I had spotted that...but it would have made me pause. HP want £40 a shot for the adaptor plate!



Helpfully you can get a pack of two on Amazon for £15...which still stings for a bit of stamped steel which as far as I'm concerned there's no excuse for HP not just including in the box with the monitor - especially given these things cost the best part of £250 each when I originally bought them if I remember right.



Work in progress...



The end result:





It's hard to convey on a photo quite how much of the desktop it has cleared. I'll get an additional single arm for the left hand monitor shortly as well. At least that does have standard VESA mounting points, which also allow the ability to flip it to a portrait orientation to be retained as that can be handy sometimes.

The original stands for those HP monitors weren't exactly sturdy either so they used to wobble quite a bit when I was typing, glad to report that's now a thing of the past.

[Zelandeth]

I might die of shock...I actually just uploaded a new page to my website.

First time since 2017 I think! Hopefully the first of many as I've quite a few things I want to get written and uploaded - and I *really* want to rewrite some of the older pages. A huge portion of that site was written when I was in my teens and it really, really shows. Nothing will be actually deleted, but a large portion of it will be stuffed behind a clearly labelled archival link, and the pages themselves labelled accordingly in case anyone lands on them via a Google search or anything like that.

I did realise a few minutes ago that I didn't so much as proof read the page I just wrote before uploading it...Though I need to go back tomorrow to add the alt-text to the photos anyway so can do a quite spelling and grammar sanity check when I do that. Just had it so close to done that I really wanted to get the page up this evening rather than delaying it a day.

[CitroJim]

Your website is a great place to get lost in for a few hours Zel

[Zelandeth]

Your website is a great place to get lost in for a few hours Zel

I just wish the writing on 95% of it didn't make me cringe quite so badly!