rwillett

The auto leveling works very well. The setup consists of tapping the cold nozzle with your finger tip and that was it. It only checks the bed level for the area being printed as well. So that's nice. There already is a replacement firmware that might address the display issue and lack of code. I thought I'd wait at least 24 hours after getting before I hacked the firmware around 😊 It looks like the filament sensor is a big issue for a lot of people. It's been reported on the Prusa Original XL. They start at twice the price of a MK4 and go up a lot more depending on number of print heads. They are enormous though. I'm struggling to understand why it's such a problem but clearly Prusa haven't solved it. Rob

I've just taken delivery of a Prusa MK4 to replace one of my MK3S+ 3D printers. A quick heads up in case anybody is thinking of buying one. I've done a load of test printing and there's good and bad. The good is the speed and the quality. It's so much faster than a MK3S+, nearly twice as fast on some pieces. The quality also looks very good indeed. There are new things such as Input Shaping that I haven't got my head around yet, but I'll learn. The bad is that Prusa appear to have deliberately crippled Octoprint to work with it. Octoprint acts as a print server, normally runs on something a Raspberry Pi and provides a fabulous wealth of plugins for users such as emails when the print is finished or when filament needs changing. Octoprint can also drive the front panel of a MK3S+ so you can see how long is left and other usefyk stuff. Prusa doesn't support the specific gcode for that, so the front panel on Mk4 looks very simplistic (see above). It was supported so I think Prusa is pushing towards Prusalink, they can forget that as I'll simply reuse an old tablet for the display and ignore the front panel. There also appears to be a long running issue over the filament sensor not working properly. It detects the filament is out but sometimes doesn't recognise the replacement filament and keeps saying put it in. I had it twice when I tested it but not actually reoccurred for the last 8-10 tests I then did. I'll keep an eye on that. Very, very dissapointing from Prusa. The ticket on it started 6/7/2023 and its still not resolved. Just had anotehr look at a test print and it is very, very good with Input Shaping. .

I'd suggest this as a stand for it

So long as they use it, thats great. I don't want to give them something that sits in a corner and isn't used. Thats the only criteria. I've downsized some guitars to them as well. If I don't use it, I'd rather somebody else did. I've seen a few of them in use at concerts which is great. Kids break things as well, so I suspect they go through lots of stuff. Rob

He also has three of them... somebody made one of them and thought... "Do you know what the world needs more of? Expensive, hideous and unusable bass guitars with really nice hardware." So they went and elevated their first "mistake" into a crime against taste. If I ever find out who did this, I'd give their care worker and their guide dog a dammed good talking to. Rob

Santa has come early this year, FedEx have just dropped off a little surprise I'm doing so much printing that I needed a faster printer and better printer, so my old Prusa MK3 which has been upgraded and upgraded and upgraded is now being donated to the local school. Nothing wrong with it, but its a pain changing nozzles, it's not as fast and I wanted to see if the quality was better in Mk4's. I wanted an Prusa Original XL which has a 360mm x 360mm build plate but a) it was circa £4K and b) its enormous. Its ready to be installed once I read the instrucitons and Prusa 2 finishes it;s last ever job for me. Thanks Rob

@SamIAm Makes me think of a new book "Famous Five go mad with 3D printing". This is the version of one piece of the body, due to the shape it's full of support. Just no getting around it. The red is the stuff to keep, the blue is the stuff to discard. This took 12 hours to print at 0.3mm layers, the thickest I can get away with. Moving down to 0.15 will give better quality but take 24 hours. I have seven of these types to do for an open body and seven for a closed body So 14 x 12 hours or 14 x 24 hours of non stop printing. So no mater how rough the body is, printing and sanding is a lot quicker than printing high quality.

I presume the circa £2K is given to me to take it away and burn it.

I've done an awful lot of printing these week to see how I can get a good finish. I've also redesigned things so that body is chamfered on both sides. This involves printing the body on the side so its upright, There are two strands of work. Designing and printing a solid body as opposed to the open body previously used. Designing and printing a very open body with large spaces. Both have pro's and con's. A solid body is far, far easier to sand and finish. as there's really only two surfaces, front and back. The open body looks far better but all surfaces need to be finished and thats hard work. printing in 0.2mm or even lower resolution reduces the layer lines but does not eradicate them. I'm going to get some printing resin (not filament), mix it with baby powder and brush it on the parts. This acts as a slurry and *should* make sanding easier. I'll need a UV torch to cure the resin as nobody makes a cheap extra large UV curing system (600mmx600mm) and whilst I can make one (another rabbit hole to pop down), I want to test the idea out first. Other people have shown that it works OK and simplifies sanding, which is good in my book. Here's the solid body design and the (very) open body design Ignore the lines in the model, they are the join lines. Printing time is much the same as I need to print supports and thats time consuming. And here they are being printed. I'm going to move to gray filament as it's so difficult to see the black This should be sprayable so perhaps some new bright colours can be used.

@zbd1960 It was good to see you. Sorry about the anxiety, not sure what we could do to help, but please let us know it we can do anything. The picture makes the village hall look like some medieval long hall which is nice. Thanks Rob

As per subject title, need to speak to a site admin about a new account that's been setup. May be legit or may be not, hence the DM Thanks Rob

Everytime I see a headless bass (or make one) I think thats clever, there can't be another way to do it and I get proven wrong time and time again. That's very neat, very elegant and that gets my nod of approval. A bit like a Paul Hollywood handshake but significantly rarer. I very much like that. Rob

Damm, won't post it otherwise perfect.

Thats the killer part of this

Accidental dupe

That pyramid looks like its coming out of the body, but I think it's an optical illusion (or nightmare). Rob

I did have a play with getting this working over the weekend it works very well. I plugged in a Line 6 Shortboard FBV MKII pedalboard into the Mod Dwarf, put an iRig on one output of the Mod Dwarf with an Ipad into BiasFX2 and routed the output back to the input of the Mod Dwarf and then to a set of headphones. It worked well, there may be latency but I couldn't hear any. I did try to connect the Line 6 to the iPad but it drew too much power and the Camer Connection Kit would not power it. I suppose a powered USB hub would help here rather than an unpowered one. This does open up using the ipad as well nopw, so Bias FX 2, Bias Pedal and Amplitube. The iPad and the Mod Dwarf are NOT MIDI connected, so thats the next problem to resolve.

Nah, seems legit to me, just the sort of tool this bloke needs...

The sort of bass The Adams Family would play

This covers a lot of ground about metal printing https://all3dp.com/2/how-much-does-a-metal-3d-printer-cost/ I think after reading this, I'd say that the most cost effective way to get this type of vice is by buying and restoring an older one.

I think it would be ok if it was made in metal. As you tighten it up, the plastic holes are slightly deforming and it slowly rises up in the middle. The 8mm threaded rod is the strongest component and it is forcing deformation in each of the plastic parts. There are a couple of areas that need slight adjustment as well, no big changes but an extra mm would help clearances. I have no experience in metal printing and there are some tiny but vital dovetails that hold each semi circular component in place and allow it to rotate. The design is quite good here and they work. I should have printed in 0.12mm rather than 0.2mm as this wasn't so smooth. If you want to look at it, I'll happily post it down to you. I built it as a fun project but need to focus on finding the right finish for the bass. Rob

Finished the fractal vice. I built whilst doing test prints for how to get a good finish on the headless bass. The vice is OK, I wouldn't describe it as a vice, more a holder. Its good enough for holding things for soldering or painting, but its nowhere near strong enough for holding anything that has a load on it. You could use it for small things in a pillar drill but anything bigger than a 3mm hold might put too much load on it. I note that some toerags have this advertised this on Etsy for £150. I'll happily sell you this for £50 It does work, its a novelty and if I don't like it, I can reclaim all the bolts and lead screw and use them elsewhere.

Ah, thats makes sense. I liked Portal, great game and sometimes very weird physics I agree over the constraints with Dwarf but it is what it is. The Line 6 foot controller isn't that sophisticated and can't send multiple commands but can send the same command on multiple channels. So I could probably do what I wanted to do that way. Already tried the plugin you suggested. The issue is the Dwarf works on the midi command BEFORE it gets to the plugin, not after its been changed. So it make no difference. Great minds think etc etc I did think about snapshots, the Line 6 Controller can be configured to send a different MIDI command on the first press (aka turn on) and the second press (aka turn off). It's a bit of hack (Editor: "and all the other things you're trying aren't hacks?"]. It does get around the latency issue and may well be the best solution. The other solution I came up with was hooking the Line 6 pedalboard to an iPad (already done) and using Audiobus to capture the MIDI command and then sound out multiple commands. A poor mans MorningStart unit I will keep looking at this as that will be a useful thing to be able to do. Thanks for the thoughts on this. Some new ones which is great. Rob

Thanks for this. I kept looking at the options and had a nagging feeling that there was a solution, but couldn't see it. What do you mean by Portal please? Good call on the latency, as I'm such a super fast metal shredding guitarist, this could be a major problem for me (stop laughing at the back). I did read something a few months ago about using multiple cores to reduce latency, so will investigate further. The reason for this is that I have spent a bit of money on Amplitube and BIAS FX on the iPad and they do have some great sounds. If I can keep the Mod Dwarf and the iPad coexisting then its a win for me. I can also confirm that the Line 6 FBV Shortboard (which is possibly the biggest lie on a piece of music gear as it's around 45cm long) MKII works out the box with the Mod Dwarf. I had an old one I picked up for a few quid, connected it to the USB-A socket on the MD and it worked. No configuration needed at all. I know I can change the pedals over, but the MD learns what the assignements are so it doesn't matter. Not tested every pedal yet, but A-D work fine. Rob

This might be the solution...