💾 Archived View for anal0g.ddns.net › blog › 20220516.gmi captured on 2023-06-16 at 16:22:18. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2022-06-03)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I was kinda busy with other projects work and my other hobbies so I barely touched gemini since then. I even neglected my astro botany plant [1].
I bought an 3D FDM Printer, mainly the Ender 3 V2. I know it's a pretty basic entry modle but I wanted to buy something like a "thinkpad of 3d priniting", which is reliable, easy to repair, has great community support and documentation. I was unable to get it printing at first which I thought was an issue related to bed leveling so I spent few hours trying to level the bed which didn't result in any improvement. I bought aftermarket bed leveling springs which somewhat helped but I still had issues with getting the print to stick.
Then I thought that it's beacause of the wobbly ikea cabinet I had it set up on. That cabinet is a real work of art the top moves like 10cm side to side so it's not the best place to put a 3d printer on. My solution was to build a table, a GREAT table not some store bought bullshit that will come apart and get loose after two months but something more like a shop workbench.
I brought my friend along to help me. We began by sketching out how the table wil go together and measuring how big it's supposed to be. It ended up being 100cm tall 120cm wide and 60cm deep. We used planks and a piece of board as a counter and long wood screws. The legs were made with 40x40 pieces which got reinforced in 2 places with 20x40 planks. All around, right under the counter and around 25cm off the ground to help with the rigidity of the legs. The counter itself was screwed into the legs from the top with 5 long screws per leg. Maybe in the future I'll get a next board and turn the lower reinforcing band into a shelf.
It turned out really nice and stable, I needed a work table anyways so putting the printer onto it was just an excuse to make it.
After another failed prints with everything supposedly perfect I asked on /diy/ what could be the problem, after posting a picture of my extruder some anon noticed that my extruder arm was broken which I missed completely. Turnes out that the underextrusion I was getting was not because the Z height was too low but the bearing wasn't pressing the filament into the extruder gear hard enough. I superglued the arm together and it started to somewhat work but I order a aluminium kit online in the meantime.
I installed the kit and now the printer works fine, and as it turns out buying the cheapest filament money could buy isn't a great idea.
The other thing I did is I finished a proof of concept for gemchan [2]! It's now live and working you can check it out in the links section below!
I will be adding many more features and fixing bugs when I have the time to do so but in the meantime you can check out all the (basic) features that are working currently.
The other hobbies I mentioned was mainly photography which I have gotten back into after a break.
I like to shoot on film with oldschool mechanical cameras, my daily camera up to this point was Minolta SRT100x with 50mm Rokkor lens but I was recently gifted a mint condition '76 Zenit E with a Helios 44-2 lens by my grandma, which reignited my interest in photography. Turns out that the SLR was sitting in her basement for 46 years in the box. She got it supposedly brand new in 1976 but she was gifted a better model (likely the Zenit TTL or even some western camera) by her brother and the Zenit was put away ever since then. There's a chance that my mom also used that camera when she was in highschool and university along side her Agfa Ambiflex but judging by the ammount of wear on the camera it's unlikely. She took, developed and printed a lot of pictures which shows by the ambiflex she used but the zenit was practically brand new.
After getting the Zenit home I began testing if all features work, turns out that even the selenium light meter, which are known to go bad after some time, is working perfectly well, the only thing that is "broken", apart form lack of lubrication, is that it triggers the flash when winding the film. I got curious and started searching, I found a service manual which stated that it means that the camera was put back together incorrectly. I unscrewed the bottom plate and discovered that the serial numbers on the outside and inside are not matching, which likely means that the camera was repaired at some point. I asked my grandma about it but she said she bought it as "new" from a camera store. It could be that the camera store was selling fixed ones in good condition as "new" but who knows, I wouldn't be surprised after all in 76 people were living under communism.
I bought some film and tried it out, the lens is really sharp, has beautiful bokeh, the film transport works well all in all it's perfect even the light meter. I posted few to my instagram [3] and youpic [4].
If I get around to it I will also post my photos here...