what are your ideas on those nonspill oil cups, shop made of course

[Paul Alciatore]

So I take it that you will come over to my shop and clean up when the inevitable spills occur. Are there any particular brands of coffee or beer that I should have on hand for you?

Adults that need a sippy cup for their oil... Sheeeshhh..

[Paul Alciatore]

At first I thought you were joking. But it seems that this was serious.

Why not just open the can with one of those side cutting can openers. I bought one for my kitchen and love it. It does a super neat job. And the lid can be replaced on the can with a snug fit. Clean the can and do the mods to the lid and then soft solder or glue it back on.

I thought that was what you did when I first saw the photo.



[QUOTE=CCWKen;1205247]LOL... No, the tuna and water were removed through the hole drilled for the tube. It's a tedious and stinky job. Several washes with lacquerer thinner were needed to finally get the tuna smell out. I don't remember the cost--It was the cheapest large can I could find on the grocery store shelves. I bought it specifically with the oiler in mind and didn't pay attention to the brand but I thought the water filler would be easier to get out than the oil.

...<snip>...

[MichaelP]

Yes, standard galvanized EMT conduit. I had plenty on hand and no copper pipe. It solders just as easy as copper pipe. Maybe easier. The zinc will grab the solder and flow with it. A little solder paste on the tin lid made short work of the solder job. I was using a mini-torch just like Mr. Pete. (Heat the thickest piece first.)

Interesting! I'll try soldering conduit pipe. Thank you.

I should have time either Wed or Friday. I'll create a new posting at that time so that I don't hijack this thread.

Thank you for the details, Dan. I'll start looking into the whole printer deal. Still cannot make myself sit down and start learning Fusion in a regular way. Have the software and books, but lacking discipline lately. Getting old, I suppose. I wish there were Fusion360 classes at our local community college.

And thank you in advance for the photos. No rush of course.

Mike

[Arcane]

LOL... No, the tuna and water were removed through the hole drilled for the tube. It's a tedious and stinky job. Several washes with lacquerer thinner were needed to finally get the tuna smell out................

Vinegar and water didn't work?

[3 Phase Lightbulb]

So I take it that you will come over to my shop and clean up when the inevitable spills occur. Are there any particular brands of coffee or beer that I should have on hand for you?

Maybe.... Can you get some Snapple Go Banana drinks? Or Nestle Banana Milk? I love both of them.

[Paul Alciatore]

Mike,

I also faced the problem of learning Fusion 360. Autodesk has some good videos, but the ones that I found to be the most helpful are by Paul McWhorter. Here is an introductory one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5tp4QXciK4&t=1121s

He takes you through examples step-by-step. I had the video in one window and Fusion in another to follow along. Great tutorial!

But there are hundreds of other videos on Fusion 360 on the web. It may not be really easy to learn, but the help is there, in spades. Google is your friend here.

Interesting! I'll try soldering conduit pipe. Thank you.



Thank you for the details, Dan. I'll start looking into the whole printer deal. Still cannot make myself sit down and start learning Fusion in a regular way. Have the software and books, but lacking discipline lately. Getting old, I suppose. I wish there were Fusion360 classes at our local community college.

And thank you in advance for the photos. No rush of course.

Mike

[Dan_the_Chemist]

Mike,

I also faced the problem of learning Fusion 360. Autodesk has some good videos, but the ones that I found to be the most helpful are by Paul McWhorter.

I will agree on McWhorter, and add Lars Christiansen to the mix.

But watch out for the majority of Fusion360 tutorials. Common problems are going too fast, using shortcuts, and non-standard interfaces.

Some people delight in showing how expert they are. I've actually had to run some tutorials at 1/4 speed to follow the mouse and key clicks.

What makes that harder is that there are many shortcuts in Fusion - mouse gestures can call up the previous command again, etc. So a person can just jiggle the mouse a tiny bit and all of a suddent menus are popping up and things change. PLUS the top bar can be customized, and a lot of the people use highly customized top bars... that means that when you are trying to follow what they are doing you have to spend time with Google trying to find what the icon meant and where it normally hides.

So, be careful of those people...

[MichaelP]

Thank you for the pointers, guys.

One of my problems is that I'm used to formal education and absolutely hate "press this icon and then click the left mouse button" approach. The majority of the videos on the subject I saw teach you what button to press instead of starting with the fundamentals and explaining the philosophy behind the software design. I'm used to learn "why", fist. "How" should follow later.

Meanwhile, I stated reading on 3D printers again. It makes me dizzy. Especially, when I read reviews written by actual users. It's so difficult to understand if there are decently built (=reliable) printers out there that are worth buying and investing time into. I strongly prefer buying quality tools, and would rather spend more instead of saving money and getting one with doubtful reliability history and no potential to do more as I learn. Of course, I'm not going to spend thousands on a 3D printer because my needs don't justify it, buy I won't mind paying a few hundred more for a clear winner.

[Dan_the_Chemist]

The majority of the videos on the subject I saw teach you what button to press instead of starting with the fundamentals and explaining the philosophy behind the software design. I'm used to learn "why", fist. "How" should follow later.

That rings very true in my case. I have never found a video that starts from absolute zero and explains the fundamental concepts behind Fusion360 modeling. Those concepts are very different from programs such as OpenSCAD, which I picked up very quickly.

OpenSCAD is like playing with building blocks. You can change the shapes of the blocks or make new blocks, and the blocks can be round, conical, etc... But it's like picking up stock. Then you assemble them. You say "Put block A at [0,0,0] and put block B at [1.000, 2.000, 2.500]. Then you drill holes, etc. It's very much like the shop... I started using OpenSCAD and could produce usable simple assemblies on the first day. It's very limited compared to Fusion360, but it's just bloody easy to use. It works in a very obvious way.

Fusion probably came out of the technical drawing world. Pretty much everything starts with a flat drawing (although there is a 3D modeling section that feels like an afterthough), which is then converted to 3D by extruding or pushing at faces. One thing that took me FOREVER to get my mind around - you don't really get to say "Put the lower right corner of this cube at [1.000, 2.000, 2.500]". They really work hard to make it impossible to specify absolute coordinates. There is a reason for that - if everything is relative to a start you can more easily handle assemblies of parts as entire components, or you can scale things without going back to change all the absolute coordinates. I finally figured out how to sneak absolute coordinates in... but it's not easy. It took me days before I started to produce useful stuff out of Fusion360. Now I'm getting to be "okay" with it, but it still fights me a lot...

Meanwhile, I stated reading on 3D printers again. It makes me dizzy. Especially, when I read reviews written by actual users. It's so difficult to understand if there are decently built (=reliable) printers out there that are worth buying and investing time into. I strongly prefer buying quality tools, and would rather spend more instead of saving money and getting one with doubtful reliability history and no potential to do more as I learn. Of course, I'm not going to spend thousands on a 3D printer because my needs don't justify it, buy I won't mind paying a few hundred more for a clear winner.

You and I are on the same wavelength again. When it was time for me to buy I searched for "Best 3D printers comparison" and "Best 3D printers review". I found a heap of confusing and contradictory reviews, but I finally began to realize that to some extent they were comparing the size of bumps on a planet. Within a given price bracket they are all more or less the same with minor differences. When I realized that I decided that I'd probably be happy with any machine that got more or less the same reviews, so I just made a decision based on my second criteria... service.

The reason I say service is that there is a company in Texas that imports the CR-10S from China, assembles them, tests them, tweaks them if neccessary, and then repackages it and sends it to you with their own warrenty. They also provide support that you can actually talk to, and who speaks English (Wayl, they don't reahly speyhk English. They speyhk Tehksan, which is kindah lyke English. But ifn they speyhk slow yew cahn understand it.) They tack on a roughly $100 bill for acting as the middleman. That was worth $100 to me.

For doing PLA I've had few complaints with the CR-10S. The first complain was about difficult table adjustment, but there is a fix for that in Thingaverse... Once I printed 4 height adjuster knobs it was easy. Some people complain about rigidty on tall builds, and there are fixes for that in Thingaverse. Since I haven't made anything taller than 5" that's not a problem for me, but if/when I do go tall I'll print the braces and attach them. Since then I've printed dozens and dozens of objects with no glitches/problems from the machine...

They are at https://tinymachines3d.com/

I have no affiliation with Tiny Machines, they have given me nothing of any value, they don't even know I exist apart from one purchase ...

[mklotz]

This thread inspired me to document a brief mathematical analysis of tuna-can style nospills I did. Some may find it interesting...

http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/nospill-oil-can-mathematics-70198#post121280

[MichaelP]

This thread inspired me to document a brief mathematical analysis of tuna-can style nospills I did. Some may find it interesting...

http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/n...198#post121280

Call it a coincidence, but a couple of days ago I was going to invite you to do this kind of analysis. Calculating the most optimal position of the vent was one aspect of it too. For example, the vent can be made in the pipe wall itself as well as on the lid.

[MichaelP]

That rings very true in my case. I have never found a video that starts from absolute zero and explains the fundamental concepts behind Fusion360 modeling. Those concepts are very different from programs such as OpenSCAD, which I picked up very quickly.

OpenSCAD is like playing with building blocks. You can change the shapes of the blocks or make new blocks, and the blocks can be round, conical, etc... But it's like picking up stock. Then you assemble them. You say "Put block A at [0,0,0] and put block B at [1.000, 2.000, 2.500]. Then you drill holes, etc. It's very much like the shop... I started using OpenSCAD and could produce usable simple assemblies on the first day. It's very limited compared to Fusion360, but it's just bloody easy to use. It works in a very obvious way.

Fusion probably came out of the technical drawing world. Pretty much everything starts with a flat drawing (although there is a 3D modeling section that feels like an afterthough), which is then converted to 3D by extruding or pushing at faces. One thing that took me FOREVER to get my mind around - you don't really get to say "Put the lower right corner of this cube at [1.000, 2.000, 2.500]". They really work hard to make it impossible to specify absolute coordinates. There is a reason for that - if everything is relative to a start you can more easily handle assemblies of parts as entire components, or you can scale things without going back to change all the absolute coordinates. I finally figured out how to sneak absolute coordinates in... but it's not easy. It took me days before I started to produce useful stuff out of Fusion360. Now I'm getting to be "okay" with it, but it still fights me a lot...



You and I are on the same wavelength again. When it was time for me to buy I searched for "Best 3D printers comparison" and "Best 3D printers review". I found a heap of confusing and contradictory reviews, but I finally began to realize that to some extent they were comparing the size of bumps on a planet. Within a given price bracket they are all more or less the same with minor differences. When I realized that I decided that I'd probably be happy with any machine that got more or less the same reviews, so I just made a decision based on my second criteria... service.

The reason I say service is that there is a company in Texas that imports the CR-10S from China, assembles them, tests them, tweaks them if neccessary, and then repackages it and sends it to you with their own warrenty. They also provide support that you can actually talk to, and who speaks English (Wayl, they don't reahly speyhk English. They speyhk Tehksan, which is kindah lyke English. But ifn they speyhk slow yew cahn understand it.) They tack on a roughly $100 bill for acting as the middleman. That was worth $100 to me.

For doing PLA I've had few complaints with the CR-10S. The first complain was about difficult table adjustment, but there is a fix for that in Thingaverse... Once I printed 4 height adjuster knobs it was easy. Some people complain about rigidty on tall builds, and there are fixes for that in Thingaverse. Since I haven't made anything taller than 5" that's not a problem for me, but if/when I do go tall I'll print the braces and attach them. Since then I've printed dozens and dozens of objects with no glitches/problems from the machine...

They are at https://tinymachines3d.com/

I have no affiliation with Tiny Machines, they have given me nothing of any value, they don't even know I exist apart from one purchase ...

Dan, thank you for the notes. I find them very helpful.

I noticed that Tiny Machines has an option to get some add-ons: https://tinymachines3d.com/products/creality-cr10s I wonder which of those you find to be worth to get, especially, if I want to use ABS more often. BL Touch, Microswiss, the Sock, Simplify 3D...? What are your thoughts on those add-ons listed there? Is their enclosure (https://tinymachines3d.com/products/...nter-enclosure) worth considering, or it will impede access for leveling, etc.? Maybe, when needed, I can just use something as rough as a cardboard box or a finer DIY contraption?

How often do you need to re-level the plate? How long does it take? Do you move the printer at all, or it stays in one place?

[Dan_the_Chemist]

Dan, thank you for the notes. I find them very helpful.

I noticed that Tiny Machines has an option to get some add-ons: https://tinymachines3d.com/products/creality-cr10s I wonder which of those you find to be worth to get, especially, if I want to use ABS more often. BL Touch, Microswiss, the Sock, Simplify 3D...? What are your thoughts on those add-ons listed there? Is their enclosure (https://tinymachines3d.com/products/...nter-enclosure) worth considering, or it will impede access for leveling, etc.? Maybe, when needed, I can just use something as rough as a cardboard box or a finer DIY contraption?

How often do you need to re-level the plate? How long does it take? Do you move the printer at all, or it stays in one place?

I bought the all metal head and the sock. I can't tell you if they were necessary since I installed them straight away and have no way to compare. My enclosure is a thick cardboard box with a towel on the front. I have had mediocre luck with ABS, so I can't say the cardboard box is good enough. Forums give the CR-10 a mixed review on ABS - a lot of people say they love it, a few say it doesn't work well. I suspect it takes a lot of fiddling to find the right conditions for ABS. What with the carbon fiber filled PLA on the market I haven't needed the qualities of ABS so I haven't done serious debugging to get it to work. Someday I will try nylon when I want more strength and flexability.

I re-level the plate every time it cools and warms up again, and sometimes after a long print and before another print. It takes 2 minutes, and with the printed knob handles it's easy. (search Thingaverse for "creality knob" and choose the one that suits your fancy) You twiddle the controller knob a couple of times to get to "Auto bed level". Push the button. It goes to the first corner, you twiddle the corner leveler knob until it barely bites a sheet of paper, and you push the control button to go to the next corner. Do that four times and you do the corners and the middle. Easy-peasy.

One add-on. When it arrives it will be packed in some hard closed cell foam. Cut feet out from that and put the CR-10 and the controller on those feet. It decouples the machine from your table top and makes it a lot quieter. The cardboard box has helped quiet it down too, so I haven't felt any need to move it from my office to the shop. It makes noise, but it's probably down around 60 - 65 dBA.. and it's a repetative whirr and swooshy noise, not clanky and banging. It's very easy to ignore.

[MichaelP]

Thanks a lot, Dan!

I pulled the trigger and bought the 10S model. I feel guilty because I went against your advice and purchased it from Lightinthebox.com. At today's $390 total it was $235 less expensive than they sell it at Tiny Machines ($625). A too significant difference to ignore. I hope everything will be fine (reviews of the seller are quite good).

Now I need to find a place to put it in my office. Not a trivial task considering its size.

See how an innocent thread about an oiler led me to financing yet another toy. And I'll tell you more: I ordered a can opener suggested by Paul to make an oiler similar to Ken's. Then I'll ask for your .stl file, and it will be two most expensive and unnecessary oilers I ever bought. It reminds me a story of my life, when we bought our first house because I wasn't sure if our condo floor will be able to support my new fish tank.

I should really fine the OP and three of you to partially compensate me for all this. Marv will run a calculation and send you the invoices.

[Dan_the_Chemist]

I feel guilty because I went against your advice and purchased it from Lightinthebox.com. At today's $390 total it was $235 less expensive than they sell it at Tiny Machine

I was just relating my decision making process at the beginning of the year. Things change and so that is probably a better choice at this time. Heck, for the price difference you could almost buy two at Lightinthebox for the same price as one from TinyMachines, and have a backup machine. As it turns out, I've never needed customer service, so while was that was comforting to me at time of purchase it turned out it was not needed. The online community is large enough that you can get any question answered that way.

See how an innocent thread about an oiler led me to financing yet another toy. And I'll tell you more: I ordered a can opener suggested by Paul to make an oiler similar to Ken's. Then I'll ask for your .stl file, and it will be two most expensive and unnecessary oilers I ever bought. It reminds me a story of my life, when we bought our first house because I wasn't sure if our condo floor will be able to support my new fish tank.

Someday I'll have to tell you about how a fish trained me, and then I got it UN refugee papers and a UK displaced person visa, complete with the UK ambassador to Sweden's signature and seal. That fish is now buried in the central quad of the Chemical Crystallography Lab in Oxford with a little plaque... "A better companion no man ever had"