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      Monday, January 04, 2021


otherstuff
01:59 PM - 01/04/2021

The topic: Almost two months later….
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Life has just been weird the past couple of months. Lots of little annoying things, nothing really big, but just not a lot of incentive to add to this weblog.

I got a new router that didn't do as much as I thought it would. The router is at one end of the house, in the office, and we live on the other end. Diagonally. Our fireplace (that we never use because I'm not gonna clean it) is stonework on both sides (it's a diagonal wall between the family room and the living room) and the signal has a tough time getting through cleanly. It took some trial and error with different range extenders to get the signal so that when we watch streaming shows, there's no buffering.

And I've been trying to make tv things easier for Brian. I'd like him to have some choice in what we watch at night. He's fine with the cable remote, but hitting the Roku or Amazon streamers, he's lost. I did find a universal remote that works along with Alexa or Google, still trying to figure it out. "Alexa, switch to Roku" is hopefully something I'll be able to get it to do.

I finally finished the holiday cards between keeping the internet up (part of the router problem which was a priority - no internet, no work. But I'm hoping it's okay at this point. I need a break.). I didn't get them sent out until the Wednesday before Christmas.

Then I somehow hurt my back. Left butt cheek. For two weeks I was certain my left hip had gone out. But it got better. Whew. Probably hurt it climbing up and down on stools cleaning up device connections. You know, like the router and range extenders.

And it's been cold. I don't do cold. Well, I do, but me doing cold is a blanket over me on the sofa. And for most of my life, a blanket over me means time to sleep. Don't get much done sleeping.

And the arthritis in my right hand has been acting up, so that's pretty sucky as well.

I did finish making containers for my stamp pads with my 3D printer. So, working with stamps should be a lot less frustrating since I don't have to dig through piles of different colored ink pads. The boxes took about twenty hours each and I learned that my printer will resume after turned back on after a power outage. (Helium filled mylar balloons hit a power line a couple of weeks ago.) And I also learned how to change out the filament when running out is pretty close and the project isn't even half done.

And, let's see...the truck needed a bunch of work done on it (and one of the problems wasn't resolved, it needs to go to an electrical shop) and I actually drove down to the repair shop to pick Brian up! First time I drove in close to two years.
 

And this morning I actually drove to the vet's office to get fluids for Mario. Look out! I'm back in the driver's seat!
 

Mario is slowing way down. I can't imagine he'll be with us come spring time. But he might surprise us. I hope he does.

Little Bitty Dawg has had some health problems this last month. He quit eating and the vet ran blood tests and there was a problem with his liver values as well as his pancreas. After a week of meds (Denamarin), we took him in for a recheck on the bloodwork on Christmas eve and the pancreas was perfect, the liver value, which should be around 160, was 500. It had been over 1500 the week before. So, he's still on medication, but he's doing lots better. Last night was the first night since he got sick that he spent the entire night in bed. And his appetite is back. The bad appetite was what alerted to the problem in the first place.

(I put some Blue Emo cream on my athritis finger about twenty minutes ago and almost no pain!)

I noticed mid month last month that the weather cam was no longer working. We got a new one and Brian installed it last week. It's pretty cool. I'm working on getting a little streaming feed, but am not having much luck.

And that's about it.

 

 

 

router    mario    jingles    catstuff   

      Tuesday, January 19, 2021


craftstuff
09:50 AM - 01/19/2021

The topic: About the containers for stamp pads
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I have an Ender3 Pro 3D printer.

I have a big container full of all of my stamp pads. Some are pretty old. Some are pretty new. But they were all just thrown in the storage box. I tried stacking them, but they'd fall over. Using plastic ziplock bags were fine for the smaller pads, but not for the regular sized pads.

I got to thinking that maybe I could make little storage containers for the stamp pads and I checked out thingiverse.com (I have an account there, the stuff is all free - my user name is....wait for it....lisaviolet), going through the pages and pages of patterns. And I found one.

This one. The thing that grabbed me about this one is that it's customizable. You can change the size according to your needs. And it's stackable! The problem is the thingiverse customizer doesn't work. So, here's what happened.

I had to do a little research. I found a website forum where one of the users explains how to change the sizes without using the customizer.

First, I needed to click on the customizer link on the thingiverse page, then download the changed code. But the code wasn't changed. Which I realized after I started my first print. Boo. I'll post the code here since the thingiverse customizer page no longer comes up. And it didn't work anyway. This is the code for Ranger Mini Ink pads.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

// Length of Box (X-Axis)
Length=127;        // [20:500]

// Width of Box (Y-Axis)
Width=39;        // [20:500]

// Height of Box (Z-Axis)
Height=58;        // [15:500]

// Wall Thickness
Wall=2;            // [0.5:0.1:5]


difference()
{
    union()
    {
        cube([Length, Width, Height - 5 - 2]);
        translate([0, 0, Height - 5 - 2]) hull()
        {
            translate([0, 0, -1]) cube([Length, Width, 1]);
            translate([-Wall, -Wall, 2]) cube([Length + Wall * 2, Width + Wall * 2, 5]);
        }
        translate([0, 0, Height]) cube([Length, Width, 2]);
    }
    
    translate([Wall, Wall, Wall]) cube([Length - Wall * 2, Width - Wall * 2, Height + Wall]);
    
    translate([-0.4, -0.4, Height - 5 + 0.1]) cube([Length + 0.8, Width + 0.8, 7]);
}

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copy the text between the dashed lines in its entirety. Save as a TXT or SCAD file. I use MS notepad to make the necessary edits to only the top three measurements - the ones in red (height, width and length - all in millimeters). Leave the rest of the code as is.  If you save as a TXT file, all you need to do is rename it SCAD to get it into a converter. I use anyconv.com to convert the SCAD file to STL, which is what the Ender3 uses.

I figure out the size that I want in inches, then use an online converter for inches to millimeters. My first mistakes were not taking the actual dimensions of the finished print. I was only doing the empty places when figuring out the size I need and was really confused why my pads wouldn't fit. You know, okay, this little box is 1.5" x 2", so let's do the conversion and start the print!

Yeah, 1.5" x 2" would be the INSIDE dimensions. Duh. No wonder it didn't fit. (And sadly, it took me a while to figure out why I was having this problem.) So, don't be like me and make that mistake.

Then I use the Cura software that came with my printer.

I didn't mess with any of the other measurements, I could have since these don't need to be heavy duty or anything, but I still haven't figured out how to do supports (being clueless about supports, my first attempt at a print that needed supports turned out quite badly - it was a glow in the dark weenie (dick) whistle for a friend, ended up in the trash). So many pies, so few fingers, yanno?

Anyway, if you have any questions I'll try to answer them. I'll try.

Here are some pictures of what I made in use.  The larger ones took about twenty hours to print, the smaller took about ten hours, but I printed two at a time, so it was around twenty hours. As usual, there are larger images when you click on them. Over on my photo site. For more detail. Or something. I dunno, I'm lost.


This was printing when the power went out (and I was getting low on filament). You can see a line above the pinkish area. This is where the print resumed (yay!). A couple of hours later I changed out the color filament for black, since the color filament had almost run out. I was surprised how smoothly it went.


My ink stash, all nice and neat. The Colorbox cat eye inks are just stuffed in a bag. They're pretty old and dried out.


Ink pads stacked. And there's room for more! The pads at the right are Tsukineko inks, and they're fine in their little cases that they came with. Most of the other inks are Ranger.


The containers. I used some rainbow filament that I had that I didn't really care for the color, so it was great I found a use for it.

So, that's it. That's my storage fix for my pads. Brian suggested putting ink on the edges of the inks so I can see what color is there. I think that's a great idea. I'll put the ink on a small sticker and place it on the edge of the pad.

storage    photos    ink pads    hobbies    craftstuff    3d printing   

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lisaviolet is seventy something, married with no kids, takes care of lots of cats, likes taking photographs, loves Southern California weather and spends altogether too much time avoiding her responsibilities.

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