Author: sheldon

Many years ago I got a regular Dyson vacuum that plugs into the wall (DC17 Asthma and Allergy). I have a registration email from Dyson I got on 5/20/2009. It still works. Over 15 years! All I have ever done to it is empty it and clean out the rollers of hair n stuff. It does “smell” in that it has that yucky vacuum cleaner smell whenever you use it but I just thought that’s how it was and if you wanted to avoid the stank you need to buy a new one ever few years. We don’t use it nearly as much as we should but it gets used often.

More recently I purchased a Dyson V8 Absolute SV10 which is a cordless vacuum. I figured that if it was easier, we would vacuum more! And the robot ones at the time just wouldn’t work for us. It was about $250 on a Black Friday sale on Nov 30, 2019 (I found a receipt from Paypal to Dyson direct!). Originally it was $450 and I even got some kit that was valued at about $60. Also got a V7 at the time and I imagine it was $150 or less. I just didn’t get why the V8 would be much better and I wanted to compare. Plus, my kid was at the age she would want to use one too. So why not have two! There were not really any serious competitors at the time and these were “the best” except for the latest and greatest from Dyson.

At first, we used them all the time! They were just so cool and easy to use and you didn’t have to drag around a cord and then roll it back up. I loved them and wanted to leave them out all the time so it was easy to get to them. After awhile, I lost the battle of leaving them out and my idea of where I wanted to mount the charging station (right in the front hall after you entered the house!) was DOA. “You are not supposed to leave the vacuum cleaner out!” I just didn’t get it and didn’t care what you were supposed to do. I wanted to do what was practical!

Eventually I put an outlet in the closet right across from where I wanted to mount it in the front hall and I shoved them in there to charge one day with the intention of eventually mounting the charging stand. I never mounted the charging stand. And over the next few years, whenever I wanted one it was dead. So I would plug it in and then go find old trusty and drag the cord around.

Over time, the closet gets more and more full of junk and it gets more difficult to get the vacuum let alone plug it in. But I would still try. One day I go in and they are both plugged in and neither of them work. What the hell?? Did I make a mistake? Looking back on the price I paid, I don’t think so. Even the cheap ones cost as much as I paid for these Dysons now and they lasted a few years at least. But once again I shut the closet and got out old trusty.

Today was different. The task as hand was to clean up the closet so I could get some more stuff in there. I take out the Dysons and sure enough, neither of them worked. The V7 goes on for a second and just turns off. The V8 goes on great but then it sorta pulses and acts all strange. For a few minutes, I thought about just putting them in the donate pile and making that the Christmas present I want this year. The also had the yucky vacuum smell so maybe it was time? Maybe the competition had caught up and I could just get a cheap Shark?

I looked at prices for a new one and the top rated one from Vacuum Wars (on youtube . . . so who knows if it’s real or just marketing) and it was nearly $700. Even #10 on the list was over $300. More than I paid for the Dyson! So maybe I should look at a robot one. Top rated was $1500. “Damn it. That’s too much. Maybe I can fix these.”

I figure with the V7, it’s probably the battery. I go look it up and an official one is nearly $100! The cheap ones on Amazon are around $40. I also see from some creators on youtube that you can just replace it with a DeWalt or Milwaukee battery. Okay NOW we are talking! Can I 3D print it? Hmmm. Maybe, but the top part is really thin and fragile. $20 isn’t bad for molded plastic and some metal prongs . . . let’s go for it!

With the V8, the small content creators said the pulsing was because it was clogged and they showed how to take apart and clean almost all of the Dysons cordless models. WOW. So easy. Basically, it all comes apart and most of the parts that come into contact with dirt you can easily clean with water and an old toothbrush. I could even clean the main brush area that was especially horrible because someone used it to clean up baking powder and parmesan cheese . . . . or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.

Right now it’s all drying but I’m sure it’ll work great. I’m going to mount that one in the closet right after this post! When the battery dies, I can always adapt it to other batteries. The downside to using drill batteries is you can’t charge it on the stands anymore but the upside is that I always have batteries fully charged and waiting anyway. And that’s only if it works. Still have to try that out with the V7. Otherwise Amazon is getting it back.

In the end, I don’t know if the Dysons are worth it. I don’t have any other vacuums to compare! I wish we could rely on “the internet” and “content creators” but everywhere you go that stuff has been gamed to sell products. Even when products are sent for free and that’s the only terms it’s only human to look at it favorably and your sense of if something is worth the money is all thrown off. Even Vacuum Wars . . . that buys all the products themselves . . . probably has bias too in that they have affiliate links and selling ANY vacuum is good for them so they are generally very favorable.

What I can say is that the battery operated Dysons from years ago seem solid and something that can last a long time with a little cleanup here and there. I with my old vacuum was as easy to take apart because it sure could use a cleaning! Maybe it is! But hopefully I use it less and less.

Also, the election was a disappointment. I don’t get it. But it seems pointless to post about it. Everyone is so divided and the results change nothing. The sides don’t even agree on basic truths let alone the bigger issues and the mechanism to solve them. Even a few days later I just want to avoid the news and stay heads down on ANYTHING else.

Once again I feel like I’m missing something. Lots of praise but I just don’t see this as a net positive. Here is a link.

“Today’s vote also makes clear that the Commission will exercise its authority over broadband in a narrowly tailored fashion— without rate regulation, tariffing, or unbundling—to foster continued innovation and investment”

Let me translate. We are going to create a bunch of rules that only a place like Cox will be able to follow and we are going to allow Cox to charge whatever they want for it.

Later on is a reference to “Safeguard National Security” and to me that translates as: “when competition that is funded by sources we don’t like we will revoke their ability to do business”. Again, I get National Security is important and we certainly don’t wany anyone spying on traffic . . . but we don’t want ANY of the ISP’s spying right? Not just the ones funded by China?

Maybe the positive thing is “Protect the Open Internet” but in the end the ISPs are going to get what they wanted anyway . . . the ability to CHARGE for an Open Internet.

Very strange to me to pick on a particular company using legislation. But so many people are happy about it including most of congress, Biden, Gruber, most of the hosts at All In. Just seems so strange to be agreeing with Sacks. Even a survey of close friends gets either a meh or a good. I think that if this app gives China a way to spy on Americans or tweak the algorithm in ways to influence Americans we should go up a level and hold Google and Apple responsible and making the kind of spying they are doing impossible. And make all companies share what goes into algorithms instead of banning one company. What am I missing?

For the last several years Heatsync Labs has held an event called HAXMAS where card holding members keep the lab open for at least 48 hours straight. The idea here is that with the lab open the public has time to MAKE the best Christmas gifts ever! Luis is the organizer of the event and takes on more than his share of hours.

Last year we had so much fun! As soon as the volunteer list opened I as I asked my 10 year old daughter and she jumped at the chance! She even surveyed her friends to see if they would be crazy enough to stay overnight in downtown Mesa and of course no one would. So that made it even more reasonable in her mind! 🙂

Spoiler alert: We had a fantastic time and will do it again next year!

We had a few different projects planned.

• Individually addressable LED Graham Cracker house (our new tradition)
• Finally put an E3D Revo Mini in a Prusa Mini that keeps clogging
• Swap out dead battery from Razor Crazy Cart Shift with a battery from a drill
• Finish up some outstanding “monthly box projects” that we get from Crunch Labs or the 3D printer focused ones we get from Alien3D.
• Play Switch Sports! It’s been too long!
• Painting and jewelry and online design projects for Christmas gifts.

We brought ALOT of stuff to the lab. A Switch and a 50 inch TV. The crazy cart and the parts we needed to transform it. A bunch of Ridgid batteries and a charger. A bunch of Milwaukee 12 volt tools just in case! A box full of candy and other Graham Cracker decoration and creation stuff. Several bins with tools and strings and strings of LEDs. The Alien3D boxes. A broken 3D printer and the parts to fix it. Pillows and air mattresses and blankets to stay warm and take a nap. The wagon to carry some of it.

LED Graham Cracker house and Art projects

The one thing we DID NOT BRING was the half done LED Graham Cracker houses! We were already running late and didn’t have time to go back and get them. So cross that off the list!

Ems decided to work on designing decorations in Canva (using the iPad and iPen or whatever it’s called). She also painted and did some other crafts. She was so busy with that stuff and playing on the Switch that she stayed up all night and we even took the crazy cart over to Lost Dutchman and got breakfast and hot chocolate a bit past 7am.

Crazy Cart Drill Battery Replacement

When we arrived, there were several people there (the regulars!). I opened up the crazy cart to get to work and they couldn’t help but ask what was up. I showed them what I wanted to do with the battery from the drill. In true Heatsync fashion, they all jumped in with ideas and one of them figured it all out and even contributed the transistor we needed to make it work!

The first thing I noticed was that there were two 12 volt batteries wired in series so it was looking like my plan of adding an 18 volt battery using this adapter and dropping the voltage with this module was likely not going to work.

I tried the easy thing and just wired up the battery to the controller in place of the two dead 12 volt batteries and while it LOOKED and SOUNDED like it would work, alas, the controller was not sending the power to the motor. You could hear a clicking when you pressed the petal so it seems like the voltage was doing something but it wasn’t enough to engage the motor. Luckily, we were at Heatsync and David knew of an easy to hook up power supply where we could vary the voltage! So we connected that, set it to 24 volts, and boom, it worked! And it wasn’t even drawing that much power. Turns out the motor being used was really small compared to, say, an electric bike. We dropped the voltage to see when the controller would cut off power to the motor and it was around 19 volts. Damn! The easy route was dead.

We has SO MANY OPTIONS. Wire up 2 12 volt batteries from Milwaukee instead. Get a module to increase the voltage instead of decrease it. See if we could modify the controller (it was a simple looking board) to ignore it’s battery safety check since we didn’t need that. Wire in our own relay and replicate what the board was doing. And that’s just the beginning.

Luckily, Linwood was there and he had a brilliant idea . . . can we just use a simple high current transistor? Similar to what was already on the board?

The current control board did a few things. Charge the battery. Turn on the cart. Listen to feedback from the petal. The petal it turns out, was a bit more complicated. It had a simple switch like you might except but it also had a hall effect sensor that was sensing the magnetism of a bar magnet as it ran past the sensor as someone pressed the pedal further down. Luckily, it also had that simple switch. Now, instead of being able to vary the speed by varying the pressure on the pedal, you would instead have to pulse it on and off. Which is how most kids used it anyway!

Using some alligator clips (thanks again heatsync) we wired up the prototype. And it worked! We could turn on and off the motor with the pedal as long as we grounded the drain (which was common . . . it doesn’t take much voltage to activate the transistor). Hurray. We replaced the alligator clips with some wire nuts and set out to test how the transistor would fair under load. We knew it was fine with no resistance running for a few minutes but what if it was pushing around an 80 lbs kid?

Well, it went fine! Here is a picture of how it looked before the test with the old (on the top) and new parts (down below) in the picture.

The transistor got warm but that was it . . . even after several minutes of running. Boom! Done! Thanks to Linwood for doing all the hard work and David and Nate for assisting! By then it was 10pm and I just spent some time soldering up the connections and replacing the wire nuts on all the connections except the battery.

3D printer fix fail

Next up was the 3D printer! The task was to replace a hot end that kept clogging (and was old . . had about 30 days of print time, so 720 hours) with an E3D Revo Micro using this guide. I printed the part I needed so all that was left was to take it apart and do it. This one was a huge failure. It was later at night and I didn’t pay attention and was twisting the hot end when I was twisting it on the new part and ended up ruining the spring. Hopefully I can just buy or make a replacement spring. The good news is I had another one ready and was able to replace it a few days later and since I did all that reading at HAXMAS it was a simple process.

Switch Sports

It was nice having a TV in the lab. We could play Christmas music, take a break and watch Youtube. And of course play Switch Sports. Ems and I were pretty even and I think we stopped playing when we were tied! Luis played too though it might have been too early to really get into it since it was 6am when he showed up.

Piano from Alien3d

I got this project back in October as my first Alien3D box. I had already printed out all the parts but dreaded doing the soldering of the 12 tiny buttons. And then all those wires! Heatsync was the perfect location to get me past the hump since I had whatever I needed right there. Soldering station with all the wire cutters and flush cuts I could imagine. I powered though and here is the result!

The piano and the print itself is cool. And it’s really cool that so little code can play these sound files off of an SD card. But it has a slow response and isn’t loud enough to be all that useful. Fun overall but a disappointing result. I think the M&M sorter from December will be way more fun!

Tours, Downtown Mesa, and the reindeer and sleigh

Several groups walked by and walked in. I welcomed at least 5 groups myself and I wasn’t he only one doing tours. Eric and Nate did some for sure too. Ems and I printed out over 25 reindeer and 10 sleighs to give away to people that showed up. We also brought in some flush cut so that people could “make something right there”. A few people did that and a few people just brought them home. Some people want you to sit there and show them step by step. I liked those prints because they are a bit of a challenge if you haven’t seen the final project . . . but that’s the point! Anyway, one thing we could have done better there is write up a sheet that explained it all . . . . not just to people that walked in but to other volunteers! Next time for sure.

One let down this year was there was nothing going on outside of Heatsync. Last year there were food vendors and little shops open around the Christmas tree and it was just cool to just walk around. This year there was nothing like that.

Conclusion

HAXMAS is super fun and I wish more people knew about it and showed up to make stuff. Of course, I’ve invested a ton of time in Heatsync and understand how it works, know people, and am able to be productive there. I thought at first it was “a privilege” but this is something I have earned by putting it the time and effort. I find it was worth it but I get how it can be intimidating to just anyone walking in. I do wish we could get more people to participate though. If you have ideas let me know!

#myprusastory tldr; My first 3D printer was free because a friend couldn’t get it to work. I wanted to try a better printer but $750? Then the Prusa Mini was announced! 2 years later and now we have 7. We take them to events where we teach people how to model->slice->print.

Long story

I got a free 3D printer from a friend that just wanted to throw it away to avoid thinking about a $400 mistake. It was a Monoprice Maker Select Plus and I had it working over a weekend. Generally speaking it printed just fine to me. I didn’t know the difference! Eventually I got into the “3D YouTube Community”. I couldn’t help but think that a Prusa was better but $750?

On YouTube NO ONE WAS TALKING about the printer I had. When I searched for it the reviews were from many many years before. And most of the time it was either “meh” or that it’s got problems. Everything on Youtube was all about the Ender 3. Endless content about the Ender 3. And while I consider myself a tinkerer . . . the effort people were putting into an Ender 3 to “make it good” seemed crazy to me. Why not spend more and get a Prusa MK3?

In October of 2019, the Prusa Mini was announced! I was nervous to buy it because it looked so . . . fragile. But then the reviews came out and it was generally positive including the fact that the prints were really high quality. I finally ordered it in December of 2019 but the wait was 5 months!

In the meantime, I learned a ton about the Ender 3 and Creality just from watching YouTube. During the time from December of 2019 to May of 2020, Creality put the CR-6 SE on Kickstarter. It seemed to be everything the Prusa Mini was but with a way bigger print area (even bigger than a Prusa Mk3!) and it had all the features that people were adding to the Ender 3 (dual Z motors, auto bed leveling, better extruder and hot end, etc.). I got caught up in the Kickstarter hype (thanks alot Joel!) and ordered that too.

They both arrived within a few months of each other. While on paper the only big difference was that the CR-6 SE had a glass bed and the Prusa Mini had a spring sheet, everything else beside build volume was supposedly the same. But it SOOO WASN’T. The firmware for the CR-6 SE was never updated. Once again, thanks to YouTube, I found out that it was best to use the “Community Edition” of the firmware. One I installed that the printer was pretty reliable but I still hated switching the filament and the glass was just a horrible decision and I would avoid printing anything with too big a print surface because it would be impossible to remove. Sometimes it would cool and the part would pop right off and sometimes it was back to the old scraper.

I never had any of those issues with the Prusa Mini. Changing filament was so easy. And so was popping stuff off the bed. Eventually it was the only printer I would use unless I needed a bigger build volume. I ordered another one a few months later. The mini wasn’t PERFECT and if I switched out filament types, like PETG back to PLA, then I would end up clogging the printer and it took me several hours over several weeks to figure out how to clear out those clogs. The issue manifest itself as the extruder clicking and I spent a long time thinking that was broken. But that didn’t happen often and it wasn’t all that hard to fix once I figured it out.

During all this time, I was still tinkering with the old Monoprice. I even bought another one because they were on sale for less than $200 (and then were canceled shortly after . . .damn you Monoprice!). I put on these cheap removeable beds. I added Raspberry Pis. I changed out the extruder handle for a metal one. I tried all metal hot ends but they were forever clogging up so I put the old ones back in. I added a BL Touch after updating the firmware to the excellent firmware ADVi3++ which revealed it had a color touch screen the whole time! I was able to do “tuning” on the printer so much easier. They printed okay but always had what I call “shaky lines”. And nothing that had moving parts would print well either. I heard that was cooling so I printed a Cii cooling fan shroud (using PC Blend filament on the Prusa Mini) and got a new way powerful fan. After installing that now I can’t print at all because of heat issues after the first layer. What? Anyway, one more thing to fix. But I did make it way easier to use with just the removable beds. The BLTouch . . . I’m not sure that’s been worth it although I do like that I just need to adjust the z-offset sometimes and I don’t have to level the entire bed all the time.

Meanwhile, I just kept ordering a new Prusa Mini whenever I had a little more money. Two years later and now I have 7. Two of them we leave at my wifes’ school and she teaches the kids there about them.

We took them all to Southwest Maker Fair and that was so fun. The model->slice->print idea was a huge success. And we also teach at my wife’s school at an after school program. Everyone gets so much joy out of seeing something they made come to life (even if it’s something simple like a 2 color name plate!). And of course, I print out stuff for around the house or for school projects or just stuff we think is interesting. It would be cool to find a way to make money with them so we can at least pay for filament . . . but they total bring me $400 * 7 amount of joy, that’s for sure.

I always wanted to get an Original Prusa MK3 but they had been out for SOOO LOOONG . . are they really that good still? The only have 8 bit boards and speak and spell like screens. Seems like such a downgrade. Once again Joel changed my mind on them when he bought like 30 of them to open a shop. That said I never was able to pull the trigger. But I kept seeing them on Aliexpress and the like . . . could the parts really be that good? The MK3S+ printer is completely open source and has been out for over 5 years so by now they must have it figured out, right? For $350 I decided to give a shot! Once I got it working it seemed FLAWLESS (especially after I ordered a real original Prusa spring sheet . . . the knockoff one is horrible). Will it last as long as a Prusa? Probably not. But how could I know for sure unless I got a real Prusa MK3S+ right? Maybe I’ll win one with the #myprusastory contest!