MakerBlock

I watched Primer the other night [12/30/2010]

Maker Block — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 04:04:09 +0000

[In complete draft post… for some incomplete thoughts. The movie Primer was a real trip. Even so, it’s not nearly as wild as Timecrimes. If you haven’t seen it, don’t read anything, just watch it.]

Often I’m able to figure out what’s going on in a film before the end.

I think I’ll be sticking to Doctor Who for my time travel sci-fi needs.

Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts

You can keep your filthy money [12/28/2010]

Maker Block — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 04:01:52 +0000

[Dang. I sure was salty that day.]

I have a totally different website that operates as a webservice to a very¹ niche market of generally non-technically savvy people. Non-technically savvy as in IE6 is prevalent. Nay, rampant. Please, please, please don’t run IE6 and expect anything on the interwebs to work. I’d rather lose income than build a site that works with IE6.

Moral of the story: Get a real browser or I don’t want your filthy money.

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Very very very

Potential improvements for Leonardo Voltron [12/27/20210]

Maker Block — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 03:59:58 +0000

[A very incomplete blog post about a variation on a snap-together action figure, which I’d modified to turn into a Voltron. Because I always wanted a Voltron as a kid. :)]

When I was working on this Voltron derivative of the Leonardo Robot, I was trying to make it more detailed overall. That version

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Mendel to the power of 101 [12/21/2010]

Maker Block — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 03:57:45 +0000

[Nophead has been clearly deeply dedicated to producing RepRap parts. It’s pretty incredible he could run his printers around the clock for 9 months to produce more than 100 RepRap part sets. This comes out to about 3 days for each set. The RepRap website has a wealth of information on all the different kinds of RepRaps that can be built – but it doesn’t look like there’s any longer one “official” recommended build. The strength of the movement – diverse ideas, highly configurable and customizable designs, can make it very daunt for someone just getting started. I’m honestly not sure where I would get started if I wanted to scratch-build a RepRap these days. After noodling around with a few of the models, I’m guessing it might be possible to build a set of modern RepRap parts in as little as 12 hours.]

Nophead of the HydraRaptor blog is probably the most prolific producer of plastic RepRap parts. He recently posted that he’s run his 3D printers¹ just about constantly for the last year, printing 101 sets of Mendel parts.

Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts

A Mendel and his own HydraRaptor

Ultimachine PLA review [12/15/2010]

Maker Block — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 02:10:54 +0000

[Just an unpublished review for Ultimachine PLA purchased 16 years ago. I don’t think any review I might have written back then would be fair today, not least of which because I simply didn’t have a good handle on printing with PLA very well back then.]

My Ulimachine PLA arrived while I was at Botacon. I had ordered black PLA and silver PLA. The black was a shiny black plastic and the silver was a dark gun-metal color – about the same shininess and darkness as a piece of duct tape. Admittedly, I was expecting a lighter, shinier, plastic – more like a true polished silver, rather than a metallic color. Mind, I’m not at all disappointed. I’m very much looking forward to using it.

Tonight (well, technically last night as it is now very early morning) I tried printing with some Ultimachine black PLA. I tried out my stock MakerBot settings. My settings are only those that come with ReplicatorG, except that I extrude PLA at 200C and ABS at 230. I keep each in its own profile and have edited the “start.txt” files so that they are at the proper temperature.

In any case, I tried printing out with the black PLA at using the exact settings I’ve been printing using to print clear MakerBot PLA. The parts came out beautifully with no warp and I noticed very little oozing. When my clear PLA is heated up to 200C or so, it can tend to ooze right out of the extruder. Perhaps its the formula of PLA or the pigments, but the blank PLA didn’t seem to do that nearly as much.

For the first few objected printed from the black Ultimachine PLA, I would call it a success. I would also note that they included some green and white plastic as well. I suspect they’re both PLA, but I don’t know for sure as they’re not labeled and there’s no accompanying note. I would have to actually try them out in the extruder and see how they behave when melted before I would venture a guess as to which plastic they are with any degree of confidence.

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Dilbert comic [12/13/2010]

Maker Block — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 02:07:08 +0000

[Full disclosure: I’ve come to deeply dislike Scott Adams for his political views in the years since this comic strip. What’s particularly strange about this comic strip is that while I must have found something about it interesting at the time … now it doesn’t speak to me at all. Maybe it’s that there doesn’t actually appear to be an joke in this comic at all? Maybe it’s the awkward Dilbert approaching a coworker, at work, to ask her out in a strange way. Anyway, in keeping with the spirit of this series, here’s the post.]

Dilbert circa

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Dilbert circa 12/10/2010

Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts

Princess Bride with Lightsabers [12/13/2010]

Maker Block — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 01:59:39 +0000

[The entire draft was nothing more than this link to a “Star Wars meets The Princess Bride – The Chatty Duelists video” by VFXFreak. This was nearly 16 years ago, long before AI slop videos, which means someone spent their own time and effort to create this.]

Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts

Very Smol Vacuum Former

Maker Block — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 18:11:27 +0000

I’ve seen a few small vacuum formers, most notably the peanut butter jar vacuum former and some small ones over on Kickstarter, but this one by odemir_atelier seems particularly small, cute, and well put together. It’s basically an attachment for a vacuum hose/handled vacuum and a frame for a sheet of plastic. Apply heat with a heat gun, then lower the plastic on the vacuum box. They’re using a sheet of 3mm plywood with holes cut into it for heat resistance. Since heat is applied while the plastic is placed on the box, it makes sense that this sheet is not made of a material that softens under heat.¹

Click to view slideshow.

The maker has an interesting “drop down” style small vacuum former on Printables, which is likely to reduce errors, but one of these vacuum attachment ones. It seems reasonably easy to produce. It’s basically a box, a tube out the side, and a platform where you can place a holey 3mm board. If I wasn’t trying to be fancy, I imagine I could knock out this design in a few minutes of OpenSCAD work.

Well. I just can’t help myself.

Vacuum former box adapter

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Vacuum former box adapter

The box puts the adapter inside the box, so it’s not sticking out, has some supports underneath the lip supporting the cutout for the plywood plate. Sure, this would still need a way to hold the plastic sheet, but that’s less interesting so I didn’t make it. :)

Vacuum Formers

You might wonder why I’m including screenshots rather than embedding the video… I basically don’t count on users not deleting their content and don’t trust any online platform that they will still be here in the future.

3D Printer Pens for Makerspaces

Maker Block — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:47:00 +0000

While I haven’t done extensive testing on these, I have some experience with 3D printing pens. Overall, I’d recommend against them for use in a makerspace with a limited budget. They’re generally inexpensive, but have such limited utility and reliability, I don’t think they’re worth the shelf or budget space.

I’ve used a 3Doodler 3D printing pen at a makerspace and I bought a cheapie one off Amazon. I though the 3Doodler was okay, but found it too slow and manual to make anything very interesting to me. ¹

Given the speed, lack of precision, need for a steady hand, market packed with cheap knockoffs, there aren’t a lot of these tools I’d ever use. The highest personal use for one of these low speed, low volume 3D printer pens I could think of would be repairs of 3D prints. For a school or makerspace, these would be interesting, but even the best ones would probably be more novelty than any kind of real tool.

The one exception would be Tim Keller’s Struder which I’ve seen and used. It essentially uses a full sized extruder and hot end and has the kind of flowrate you’d expect from a 3D printer, except that it is hand held. The artists who’ve used his Struder have made some pretty cool things.

Making a Makerspace

Though, I remember this video from several years ago that clearly makes the case for making good looking objects with a 3D printing pen and other tools.

The Patents for disc shooters [12/10/2010]

Maker Block — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:45:48 +0000

[There’s no secret I’ve always loved the old “disc shooters” that could be picked up in a grocery store aisle. These were called the “Rayline Tracer Gun“, sold from the 1960’s to 1980’s, and then kind of disappeared. Much more recently, someone started selling replicas on Amazon. Once I had a 3D printer, this was one of my ideal prints. It was easy to blow through a pile of the discs and lose them all in an afternoon. But, the little discs look very printable.

A year after the below post, I’d go on to post about a contest for a design of a disc shooter. I started building some of the components for the disc shooter and the disc cartridge, but never end up building a reasonably functional shooter.

This is a project I’d still like to come back to and resurrect. ¹ I’m confident with enough trial and error, I could design something that would work in a similar fashion. Anyhow, below are links to the patents for these toys which I’d found as part of my research into building one for myself.]

Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts

Get in line!