SWMF 2022 Review . . . Hands on 3D Printing: Design -> slice-> print!

Here is a recap of how it went at Southwest Maker Fest (SWMF) for the 3D print “program” (that’s what SWMF calls the workshop exhibits).

At first it was just going to be Sarah and Embrie and I running a “maker” booth where we had laptops and printers and let people go though the 3D printing process. But then another person contacted Eric about a 3D printing booth and we all thought it might be a good idea to combine forces! That person was in the early stages of what he wanted to do but at the very least he wanted to inspire people by having a variety of prints on hand as well as have some printers going. Sarah and Embrie and I wanted to make it hands on and have people print something they made which we knew was a bit ambitious.

Unfortunately there was a family emergency and our extra help that wanted to do a booth had to bail out. That means we didn’t have any sample prints, extra printers, extra canopy for our extra space, or that 4rd person that could help people thought the process.

Original Idea

Here is the proposal I submitted.

Attendees in this booth will design and print something and see the 3D printing process from design to physical product (as long as they wait a bit for the print to finish!). In this space we will have four laptops and at least six 3D printers. We are targeting prints that take from 10-20 minutes and if all goes well the people waiting for prints can help those doing the designs.

We also have plenty of examples to show to get people excited about the possibilities. And we might just have a few goodies to give away to participants!

A more detailed description is that we will have a project idea that you can design yourself in TinkerCAD. Once you are happy with your design, you will export that as an STL file. Then, you open the STL in a slicer (PrusaSlicer or Cura depending on which printer you are targeting) and turn a design into a set of commands for the printer to execute (this is called a GCODE file). You then sneakernet the GCODE file to the printer and start the printing process.

Idea vs Reality

In the “examples/museum” area the idea was to have examples of different infills and patterns and layer heights as well as just some cool prints. Without the extra help we just couldn’t deliver on that. And I think that would have been a good addition for people curious and looking around but didn’t really want to commit to trying something out or waiting since there was usually a line.

Outside of that I think we delivered everything we said we would and a ton more!

3D Pens

I thought it might be cool to bring some 3D pens that might be fun for a younger crowd or people that didn’t want to dedicate time to making a design or waiting on a print. We already had a couple 3D pens and my 9 year old daughter was really into them. I asked her if she wanted to run that part of the booth and she said yes! She spend a few hours in the days before finding some designs and paper printing “stencils” so that people would have ideas and have something to trace. As we were setting up the 3D Printing area she had extra time and made a pair of glasses for inspiration. People LOVED the pens and that tiny table with 2 working pens was busy the entire time. It was so overwhelming there was no room for Embrie! She said people were frustrated we didn’t have more pens!

3D Pen glasses! And a bit of the booth before it got busy.

Give Aways

We had a few hundred of the “Brick Rings” to give out and probably gave away about 150 of them (they were at the super crowed 3D pen station so people didn’t see them). We also had about 50 “whistle rings“. We waited till the end and just put them on a table that was cleared off and let people take as many as they wanted as long as they took a sanitizing wipe too! It was probably a good idea to wait on those since whenever someone got them they tried them and it could be a bit annoying to have a bunch of kids trying a whistle.

What we did

I WISH I would have taken pictures of the booth setup without a bunch of people in it but there really was no time. Even before we opened people stopped by and we started them on their journey.

The only idea that we could come up with was to make a “5mm tall design that had your name in it that we could print in about 20 minutes”. One person wanted to print a “monopoly hotel” and I showed him how I could search for that and just print it . . . but I took it a step further and imported the design into Tinkercad and added a “B” to the side of the tiny hotel to make it B hotel. We printed it and I think he liked it . . I think . . . right about then a big crowd showed up.

In PrusaSlicer we showed them how to put in a “filament switch” so most of them made 2 color designs (sometimes 3) and they were generally thrilled! Here are a few examples.

3 colors! And a heart! Nicely done Desiree.
Harper was THRILLED even though she wanted different colors it turned out great!

The printers

We brought along our 4 Prusa Minis (one that we donated to the school but borrowed) along with 2 Lulzbot Minis that were donated to the school recently plus the Creality CR6. The idea was that I would just have random stuff printing on the Lulzbot machines. That worked out fine on one of them for a few hours but the downside to those old machines was that it was nearly impossible to remove the prints without hurting yourself. And I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t control one of them to load the filament in the 10 minutes I had time to try. At some point the UPS started beeping and turning off the Lulzbot fixed that. (Hopefully by adding removable beds and a machine running Octoprint those problem will be eliminated and I can turn those those into more friendly and modern machines . . . the quality and reliability seem good!) We didn’t have a slicer setup that would work with the CR6 and it was just taking up table room we needed so pretty quickly we set it aside. It was so much easier to use printers that were all the same and if we ever do this again that will be how we run it.

Tinkercad

We setup a new account in Tinkercad and every computer was already logged into that account. Generally we would give a 1 minute tutorial where I would make a moon shape or a washer shape by combining shapes and “holes”. We told them it was easy and generally people just picked it up and ran with it. Thanks Tinkercad! I was honestly kinda worried I would have to sit with everyone the entire time but generally people figured it out. I would go and clean up the design a bit and make the heights so it would print faster but that generally worked out okay. People were really creative! Moons and hearts and all kinds of designs beyond the “rectangle” I envisioned.

The Numbers

We setup a new account in Tinkercad and every design was saved there. At the end of the day there were 34 designs! My guess is that we printed 30 of them. We only printed on the 4 Prusa Minis (which was REALLY NICE since we could use defaults from the setup of PrusaSlicer to the exporting of the gcode). We had about 20 rolls of different colors of PLA filament.

Those number line up with the reality of how busy it was. The event was 6 hours, prints took 20-30 minutes, we had 4 printers and 4 computers. Design time varied from 5 minutes to maybe an hour for the one person that wanted to make an ornament that had “Southwest Maker Fest 2022” on it and I showed her how to take the SWMF logo, cut out the text, import that image to a “jpg to stl” online tool, and then import that into TinkerCAD to clean it up. I do think we could have used ONE more Prusa Mini and there would have been less lines. 4 computers to every 5 printers seems about right for next time.

SWMF logo to STL in Tinkercad.

If prints took about 30 minutes on average, that means we had the capacity for about 48 prints (6 hours, 4 printers, 2 prints per hour) if everything went well and demand was even. In the beginning, people were designing and a few of the printers were not in use. By about 1pm, there was a line for the printers.

Problems to fix for next year

It was TOO BRIGHT to see the computer screens.

Our table arrangement made it TOO CROWDED and we need to spread out more.

People wanted more blue! We had about 20 rolls of different colors but people wanted blue more than anything and we only had this cool teal color. Also, it would have been nice to have duplicates of some of the basic colors like white and black.

We should scale up a bit for next time. 6 computers and 8 printers?

More 3D Pens! People loved them.

Examples! We didn’t have physical examples of the idea on account of JUST MAKING IT UP the day before.

We need better WRITTEN instructions about what to do and the size limits and stuff like that.

We need sponsors! While we didn’t go though a huge number of consumables, we did go though SOME not to mention the wear and tear on our own printers. Plus we did print the giveaways and that was probably a roll of filament all said. If we want to scale up we need a few more printers for sure. I honestly can’t believe they all worked without issue the entire time. I brought all my tools just in case but I wouldn’t have had time to fix anything anyway. I recently had to clean out one of of the print heads because of constant jamming and I had to replace the thermistor on my FIRST Prusa mini (it has more 3D printed parts than the new version) in the days before the event so I thought for sure something would happen but the only issue was that one of the filaments didn’t stick well even when changing the z-offset. We switched it out with different filament and an important lesson was learned. PLUS, we bought our own tables and a few other things too in support of the event.

We need MORE HELP. Sarah and I were going non-stop the entire day and could never sit down for more than about 30 seconds. We even had extra help from someone at Heatsync and even that wasn’t enough. Also the written instructions would have helped our help!

More thumb drives! We had 6 of them but one of them died and generally the line for a printer would be more fair if people could save to the thumb drive. I would say it would be cool if people had their own or we could give them away but cheap thumb drives don’t do well in the printer. I would say that one thumb drive for every computer and printer combined would be good. 8 in this case.

More pictures! Better contacts! Several people with nice professional cameras came by to take pictures (at least 3 different people asked if they could) but I don’t know who any of them were or where they might publish the pictures.

The rest of SWMF

I never left the booth. Not even to go to the bathroom. At the end of the day my back hurt so bad I wasn’t even sure I had to go. (Side note: I need to take a few pounds off!) I have no idea how the rest of the event went. But I know it as a success just in the sheer number of people that wandered back to our little corner. Seriously, there were at least HUNDREDS of people that were by our booth throughout the day. It might have only been 30 prints but it was crowded the entire day.

Conclusion

You might think when you read about all the problems above I think our program was a mess. Quite the contrary! Overall I think the event and our program in particular was a huge success! But I always want to make it better if we can. We were nervous no one would show up especially since we were in the back corner (which was by design because it’s where the power was). We were nervous that the printers might fail. After printing hundreds of the brick and whistle rings we started to worry no one would even want them. I was nervous no one would use the 3D pens and my daughter would be disappointed. But in the end it really worked out well. If you attended and you are reading this feel free to reach out on twitter @tooshel if you have feedback . . and it would be really cool if you had a picture of your print! We didn’t take enough pictures! That’s another problem to add to the list! 🙂

Hurt Feelings Cup Winter 2022

2v2 “no teams” AoE 4 Tournament

Why

Unlike the pros, who play and lose all the time, when real friends play an RTS it’s difficult to get over a ram push that destroys your town in the first 10 minutes (believe me I know!). It can ruin friendships! The 2v2 format means you can always blame the other player! And since there are no real teams you can transfer that blame to the next guy at the next game! No accountability! 

Format

4 people compete and play a total of 4 games. Each game is 2v2. The first three games have mixed teams where each player teams up with every other player. The last game is a “tie breaker” that determines the real winner. The players with the most wins play on opposite teams. If there are ties for who has the most wins an argument over it will ensue and the rules will be written down for next time. 

Players

ponga (1), elGrandSerot (2), nobodyman (3), tooshel (4)

Matches

Created via RNGGame 1Game 2Game 3Game 4
Team Aponga
nobodyman
nobodyman
tooshel
tooshel
ponga
TBD
Team BelGrandSerot
tooshel
ponga
elGrandSerot
elGrandSerot
nobodyman
TBD

Maps

Always the same map . . . French Pass, Large Size. 

Civs

No repeat for the first 3 matches, last one is a free for all again

Results

Created via RNGGame 1Game 2Game 3Game 4Total
Team Aponga
nobodyman
nobodyman
tooshel
tooshel
ponga
TBD
Team BelGrandSerot
tooshel
ponga
elGrandSerot
elGrandSerot
nobodyman
TBD
WinnerTeam BTeam ATeam A
ponga0011
nobodyman0101
elGrandSerot1001
tooshel1113
Published
Categorized as DIY

How did you break in?

Tonight I was talking to a friend and he asked me “How did you break in?” . . . meaning to the software industry, not a bank. Anyway, it ended up in a wall of text messages one at a time. Which he hates! Since he probably won’t read it I’ll post it here so even more people won’t read it.

I went to college and got into $60k in debt is the short answer.

At a shitty AZ school! (Side note, we talked about AZ schools earlier in the day and it was about how AZ is 48 out of 50 for education!)

While I was at ASU, I got a job at a web dev at the engineering school. They were teaching a new class that was going to “change engineering education” and I was hired to make and keep up the class website. It was the 90’s and that wasn’t really a thing then. Anyway, they had Cold Fusion so I made a site and kids could enter their SSN and get their grades! It was really cool if not a security nightmare. And I had my own cube on the 3rd floor of the computing commons. I had access others only dreamed of!

One day, a friend of mine from college who worked at this real estate company said “Our computers are always broken! Can you come and fix them?”

So I went to go fix computers but the owner of the company asked me about web development.

He sat me in a room asking me questions about being a web dev and eventually we made our way into the “server room” which was just a closet with tiny desk and the copier.

He wanted to see if I could change something on this web server.

It was VBScript and I knew Cold Fusion.

I don’t even know how I figured out where the files were stored.

I guess they both were on IIS or whatever came before IIS so I was able to look in some config or something.

Anyway, I changed something . . . I don’t know what it was but I got hired.

I got paid $15 per hour and I worked part time for a year and then full time for a year after that while I finished school.

Then a new company was formed . . . it was a startup! And I got a real salary of $50k or something close to it. It was crazy money!

But it wasn’t really much more than I made because before they didn’t take out any taxes.

2 years later I get a letter from the IRS.

I owed like $10k? or $20k with all the late fees. I don’t remember the amount but it was some amount that scared me.

It didn’t happen EXACTLY like that . . . . because now that I’m remembering, I also had an internship in there somewhere at Honeywell and I worked there a year on a “Fly by Light” system. And I remember how old I was . . . 21 . . . when I got my licence and a car! A Chevy Corsica. But the office was SO FAR and I quit after a year to take an internship at Motorola. But they didn’t hire me full time after the internship so I was out of a job. And I think that’s when I worked at ASU? And then the real estate company. I need to look at some old emails to piece this all together!

But the bigger picture is that it all happened for me because I was going to ASU and getting a degree in Electrical Engineering. That probably gave me some credibility back then.

Sheldon

Pixel 6 is trash

This is a classic “you failed us” post. I’m so disappointed.

Recently a friend of mine typed that line, “Pixel 6 is trash”, in chat. I asked “what do you mean”? And he talked about how slow it was, how the updates have been flawed and people are having trouble, and even a few other things I forgot now. And I feel the same way! The update issue didn’t really matter to me but the ONE THING I care about most is quickly taking pictures. I double tap the power and half the time it doesn’t work and I see the camera for a second and then it goes away and the phone is locked. And then of course the fingerprint sensor is trash so I can’t get it unlocked and then by the time I get the camera going the moment is over.

Did I mention the fingerprint unlock is bad? It’s so bad I just have the phone unlocked all the time at home otherwise I would throw this phone at the wall it’s so frustrating. I’m considering just removing the fingerprints and just using a number every time.

https://mobile.twitter.com/MKBHD/status/1481108783996751874

If only I could switch to the S21 Ultra. I sent my Pixel 3 XL to a friend in Africa so I can’t switch back to that either.

Yeah, the Jan update is going to fix it all. I heard that before. Why do I do this to myself?

  1. I like to tell my google home “find my phone” and then BOOM, my phone is ringing. Oh yeah, that’s broken sometimes too!
  2. That’s it. Also I’m just a Google fanboy. This makes no logical sense.

Sheldon

Published
Categorized as Rant

Yes. We got Covid.

And it was from the cursed cruise.

Mostly it was just a mild cold and resulted in a runny nose, fatigue, and what I call a “fat lip” that was kinds like a cold sore. Still though it wasn’t great and it meant waiting in long lines for tests not to mention not being able to take Dex to the baby sitter, missed school, etc.

I put the whole thing about the cruise on Twitter but I’ll add it here too just in case. In case of what? I don’t know, just in case you don’t want to look at twitter?

The only thing missing from twitter is that I contacted them via email and this “case number” they gave me on the boat to get me to go away. They made it seem like Carnival would do something about it. Weeks later and they didn’t even reply.

All of the below is from twitter

https://mobile.twitter.com/tooshel/status/1476723271081111560

Ran into more families that were surprised they were trapped on the Carnival Panorama on the only port day. Carnival didn’t communicate that “vaccination exemption” really meant “trapped”. We talked about how the Rachel Maddow MSNBC Story would go.

Customer Service lies and says they did tell us via email and while also saying it’s a new policy outside their control. At the gate to get off the boat, security lied and said we signed something.

Meanwhile, the boat is shut down since it’s a port day. And there is almost nothing a 0-4 year old kid can do. Not allowed in the pool. Can’t do kids club (starts at 5). No water slides. No rides. Internet sucks so no streaming. There are 3 TV channels. The list goes on and on.

They said we could do a “bubble tour” but of course we had no idea and there was no capacity when we looked (plus, you know that was going to be CHA CHING either way but that was nothing compared to being trapped).

There was NO COMMUNICATION! Nothing in the printed materials. I have several examples I could post where they didn’t say anything about “exemptions”.

In our case we went to leave the boat early (7:45) waited for at least an hour in huge crowds in the stairwells and it would have been longer if I wasn’t vigilant in that crowd. Others have stories were way worse.

The boat had at least 2-3 medical emergencies where we had to stop. We don’t know if it was related to covid but we also saw hasmat suits from our vantage point (WISH I took a picture!!).

Lots of children were crying aboard the Carnival Panorama this week. We talked to 4 families and none of them got concessions beyond a bear in their room and a bottle of wine. Everyone got a $50 onboard credit but that’s nothing and doesn’t address how kids were treated.

Last full day we had to subject the kids again to covid testing. I’m sure they brag about all the tests they do and while I appreciate it’s not the qtip up the nose for the kids’ sake, is the “test” they do really effective? Is it meant to make sure the positives are low?.

PLUS having to wait for hours before we could board with timeline after timeline slipping “we will have news at 2” “between 2:30 and 3” “by 4pm”. Always sounded like a threat “if you are allowed on board”. Even though we all jumped through hoop after hoop beforehand.

I gotta admit it was nice not having to cook and clean up Christmas dinner but that was the end of the fun on this ship. We get it was risky booking a cruise in the first place and in hindsight, we feel stupid.

We, of course, went to Carnival Customer Service but they just don’t seem to care. They have been hearing complaints all week I’m sure. Christine (carnival president) worked to clear us to arrive in Cabo but I guess kids are not a big enough market.

I don’t watch much news but this story seems compelling. I wish I had contacts at CNN, CBS, MSNBC and the like. And I would round up families all around the Carnival Panorama if it mattered but in the end, me writing this is my only concession.