Early Risers.

[jjb1970]

I stopped off at Cold Storage (a local supermarket chain that does a lot of British stuff) and M&S for some goodies. I look for offers which reduce prices from Bonkers McBonkersly 'how ****** much' expensive to merely '****** expensive '. I bagged a couple of Waitrose 350gm blocks of Somerset cheddar at only S$10.30 (from S$20.60), some M&S best ever sausage rolls at S$6.90 for two (from S$14) and some M&S luxury hot cross buns at only S$3.60 (from S$7.20), who needs Aldi when we can access such bargain basement prices💪

[The Lurker]

Greetings all from a Sidcup that is currently bathed in sunshine - well, between the clouds anyway!

 

It's been a right old week at work - the boss has been over from Switzerland so that meant a series of long and involved meetings, although it did also mean we had a team meal out which was good. Scallops followed by Galloway Ribeye followed by Eton Mess, all washed down with a nice Zinfandel.

 

My Grandma too was in service in the 20s and 30s before she married and had children, somewhere in Bristol I believe. She moved to London before the war during which my Grandfather was killed. After the war she worked as a cleaner to supplement the war widow's pension,. I think one of the families was very kind to her because my Dad has talked about being sent round to a house to deliver something and coming away with more than he was sent with. Post war they lived in a prefab, which I guess means that wherever they had lived before had either been damaged in the war or was just no longer affordable. Later she moved into a flat overlooking Kenton Road in Kingsbury. 

 

I have never lived in a 2 up 2 down although some of the student accommodation in Leeds was of that type and some was back-to-back - no back door whatsoever and literally backing onto another house of the same type. Although the house I lived in on Burley Road was bigger than 2 up 2 down, it had next to no heating and the bathroom on the back was a single brick layer. It got bitterly cold in winter, so much so that a bottle of combined shampoo/conditioner which ordinarily separated into layers - you shook it to combine it before use - once shaken did not separate out; not enough latent wotsits for it all to clear I guess. Also the hot water tank froze over, and then burst, all through my room. It's amazing how much more tempting the library became. And how even more welcoming the Fox & Newt!

[New Haven Neil]

5 hours ago, Erichill16 said:

My friend, the one Neil knows, does a bit of 3D printing

 

Indeed - last week he brought some to show me.....

 

A G1 Austerity

 

 

...and a 15mm scale Manx Northern Railway 'Sharpie'.

 

 

As I've said before, he's a clever lad!  As well as being one of life's thoroughly nice people.

[Gwiwer]

G'morning all.

 

Midway through yesterday afternoon a thing happened.  In a matter of seconds the thick fog which had enveloped us all morning and the equally thick mizzle which had wetted us simply lifted and went away.  High-level cloud remained but the rest of the day was quite good.  

 

Today so far is still in that vein; there are occasional sunny moments between high-level cloud.  It is cool like an Autumn day and the air smells of Autumnal vegetation, drying out but past its best.  The aroma of cow-flop and the faint marine waft of the sea drift in on the breeze.  The gulls are noisy, the choughs are chuffed, the swifts are .... well ..... swift and the council is noisily collecting the green bins which have been replaced with black ones.  Because as they say "The green bins do not fit the collection vehicles"  Which is utter rubbish as they are the same size and design but hey what do we know?  

 

I must venture forth to various locations.  The Big Orange Shed must be visited (about an hour's drive), our esteemed Friends in Camborne have some goodies awaiting my collection, Pests at Home will supply needs for both ends of His Furship and Sainsburys will look after the two of us.  PaH / Sainsburys happen to be opposite Costa-lot Coffee so I'll probably take a break there for good measure.

 

But first it is time to throw the Gwiwer in the shower followed by shaving the teeth.  Avagoodun.  POETS if appropriate.  

[DaveF]

A fine suny morning with a few fluffy white clouds floating gently by.

 

Having got up and had breakfast I will now have to decide what to do today, there is the possibility of showers later which may influence my decision.

 

Apart from that a few small jobs have already been done so the magazines I've read are now no longer lying on the sofa and a few things have gone back into the kitchen cupboards.

 

David

[BSW01]

Good morning everyone 

 

We’ve had a small amount of rain overnight, but that has long gone and everywhere is now dry. Today is my usual Friday routine, I’ll shortly take a walk to the butchers for the weekly meat rations, as well as a pork pie for my dinner. After that, it’s a visit to the Trafford Centre for a few more bits and pieces. Whilst there, I’ll visit WHS to look at the latest magazines to see if there are any I’d like to buy. As for this afternoon, there’s nothing planned as yet, so a spot of online shopping may happen. 
 

Back later. 
 

Brian 

[Tony_S]

14 minutes ago, DaveF said:

fine suny morning with a few fluffy white clouds floating gently by.

The occasional sunbeams in Greenock have gone and clouds and drizzle have settled in , for the day I think. We are due to board a coach soon to take us to Glasgow to see the sights. 
Tony

[PhilJ W]

Trains to and from Paris disrupted.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cxe24vg59lzt

[tigerburnie]

To quote a certain furry inhabitant on here, friggin' turdycurses, just over a £grand for the bit of exhaust with the catalytic convertor attached.............ouch(but I have done over a 100k miles so to be expected), car is still worth keeping so has to done.

Edited July 26 by tigerburnie

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Another good night last night, woke up a couple of times but soon nodded off again. Just taxed the car, £255 I don't know what that is in Deltics but ouch! I was going to the Brentwood toy fair tomorrow but now it's doubtful as the knees are playing up.

[Grizz]

Morning All

 

Off shift today. So off to play on ‘Mdigger’ shortly. Got to continue tearing out six foot high bramble patches and clean up the edge of the paddocks, back to boundry fences. 
 

Have a great day all.

 

ATB Grizz

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, The White Rabbit said:

One early query for @monkeysarefun - are there versions which would produce weatherproof garden ornaments/items for outside? I'm thinking for either larger unmentionable objects to leave out all year round or at least over the better weather - or for minor mouldings to help with the gardening. 

 

 

An FDM printer (ie a filament type rather than resin) would be the one to get for that kind of thing, not only do they have a much larger build area but the filament range would no doubt include something that would withstand ultraviolet light and weather. 

 

Resin uses Ultraviolet light to cure so I'm not sure what effect being outdoors would have on items made from  it. Its a bit too early in the resin printing  technology timeframe for anyone to have definitive answers as to how it would stand up I reckon.

[jamie92208]

Good moaning from a warm and sunny Chatente.  Plans to put up flyscreens were scuppered by a lack of fixings  in the box.  It took 45 minutes to find a link to Leroy Merlin customer service.  Train spotting this afternoon.  It will be interesting to see what's running on the classic and high speed lines. 

 

As to 2 up 2 down, my first house was a modernised one with a small kitchen extension at the back.  I loved it. 

 

Jamie

Edited July 27 by jamie92208

[Gwiwer]

40 minutes ago, tigerburnie said:

To quote a certain furry inhabitant on here, friggin' turdycurses, just over a £grand for the bit of exhaust with the catalytic convertor attached.............ouch(but I have done over a 100k miles so to be expected), car is still worth keeping so has to done.

I'm waiting for something like that.  The Little Red Driving Box is 59-reg so no spring chicken but at 67,000 miles is still quite light on her feet.  Casual inspection and a history of zero MoT failures suggest she is sound but anything might happen at any time.  Book value is only around £1200 (less on some sites but condition and low miles lift it a bit) so even a nudge whilst parked could write her off.  At least the insurance is a zero-excess policy.  

[iL Dottore]

2 hours ago, polybear said:

 

Bear and @Grizz will be en-route** to iD's lair to explain in great detail just what's so wrong with that approach.....

 

**You won't know when - or at what time; it will be when you least expect it though.....

Many have tried, none have succeeded. And less you forget, Bear, Captain Cynical has my back.

 

The last person who decided he would "teach me a lesson" is now providing a valuable surface supporting part of the Gotthard Base tunnel!

[iL Dottore]

3 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

I stopped off at Cold Storage (a local supermarket chain that does a lot of British stuff) and M&S for some goodies. I look for offers which reduce prices from Bonkers McBonkersly 'how ****** much' expensive to merely '****** expensive '. I bagged a couple of Waitrose 350gm blocks of Somerset cheddar at only S$10.30 (from S$20.60), some M&S best ever sausage rolls at S$6.90 for two (from S$14) and some M&S luxury hot cross buns at only S$3.60 (from S$7.20), who needs Aldi when we can access such bargain basement prices💪

The Curse of The Ex-Pat: when the delights of local food (equal to and often surpassing the food “back home”) pale in significance to the half-remembered delights of food “back home” - often rendered edible in the memory by one’s rose-tinted glasses (or is that taste buds?).

 

But at least @jjb1970 still has taste - going for M&S food (often pretty decent if you avoid the UPF). There are some poor benighted souls for whom culinary homesickness can only be assuaged by a Greggs’ Pasty or a Microwaved ‘Spoons Breakfast….

[polybear]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

Many have tried, none have succeeded. And less you forget, Bear, Captain Cynical has my back.

 

 

Ah yes, but none of those people were Team Bear & Grizz....

 

 

[monkeysarefun]

I'm conscious of the risk of turning ER's into "Monkeysarefun Goes 3D Printing" but I did just send a file containing the shell of another building to the printer and while its half  time during the Carlton V Port Adelaide AFL  game, I thought that given the response I got from the 3D printing posts that some people here might be interested in a quick rundown on  the general workflow and technology involved in 3D resin printing, so if its ok I'll sneak one more in...

 

Firstly, obviously a suitable subject is needed. I've found that the @Gwiwer ex-stamping ground of Melbourne has a whole lot of interesting old buildings.

 

Sydney tends to bulldoze them or convert them into black-glass fronted residences which kills the ambience, so I just tend to wander around the inner Melbourne  suburbs of Brunswick, Carlton and Collingwood etc via Google Street view until I spot something interesting.  In this case its a character-filled old  milkbar in the suburb of Princes Hill.

 

 

 

 

I firstly take a heap of screenshots from Google street view and Google Earth. I also find the "Measure Distance" option of Google Maps accurate enough to  help me  work out basic dimensions. I try to get some "Square on" shots that I can import into Sketchup,  rescale and draw on top of.

 

After a lot of dithering around in Sketchup  I end up with something which if you make your eyes half crossed looks a bit like a 2mm/ft version of  the original. The banding on the side wall is due to every 6th brick course being header bricks, a feature of the original that can be easily replicated through 3D software. Whether it'll be noticeable in the end-model is another matter though!

 

 

 

 

This COULD be exported in one complete model and sent to the printer but as I said before, I tend not to do that because A) invariably some part gets  a glitch due to a printer issue t so the whole print is wasted, and B) I cant paint neatly enough to paint small details like the window frames, so I print all the small bits separately and install them after I've painted everything.

 

 

On the other hand I do like to print the building shell in one piece  because then I get no issues with corner joints. So  the next step is to export all the components that make up the basic brick shell. There are a number of possible formats such as stl, obj or dae.  I've found the Sketchup stl export option to be buggy but I installed a free extension that exports it as an obj file so I use that.

 

The next step is to import the .obj/.stl file into what is called a slicer programme.  The way a 3D   printer works is that it prints a layer of the print one at a time, working its way up the model, so a slicer is needed to create a file that contains each individual layer. Think of it like one of those deli slicer machines for slicing ham very thinly, set in a horizontal plane.

 

The model is imported into the  slicer programme, I use Chitubox. Besides slicing the file a slicing programme allows you to rescale the print if necessary, and to rotate it in all axes in order to place it on the build plate of the printer in a position that optimises printing. 

 

Now while  it is possible to just place the base of the model flat to the build plate  this will usually result in the lower few mm of the model being compressed and distorted  (called "Elephants foot")  due to the fact that the first few layers get extra-intense processing in order to get them to stick to the build plate.

 

Actually, a quick description of how a resin printer works would maybe  help some  here. Basically the important parts of a resin printer are a build plate, which runs up and down the Z axis, and a vat that holds the resin, which the build plate submerges into. The vat  has a clear base in order that the final important part - the LCD screen which is located below the vat  - can shine light through and progressively  set each layer of resin. 

 

So the weakness of a resin printer is that the model is built essentially upside down, so the first few layers need to be processed in such a way that they will defy gravity and stick to the bottom of the build plate  well enough that the subsequent process whereby the  following layers are exposed by the LCD screen and then pulled away from the clear base of the vat don't pull it off, resulting in a sad part-model lying in the vat.

The number one cause of swearing when it comes to resin  3D printers is that you send a print off to it, then check it 10 hours later to find that absolutely nothing has been printed even though the printer says its successfully finished in its smug little way on its LCD screen. This is usually due to insufficient curing of the initial layers so they don't stick, or a support structure (next paragraph!)  that was inadequate to support the model.

 

LIke I said you can just stick the bottom of the model straight flat onto the build plate, but it is far better to angle it to reduce the suction pressure that can rip it off the build plate , and to minimise layer lines. In order to do that it needs supports to be added to hold the model to the build plate  Fortunately all slicer programmes have the functionality of being able to add supports,  so here is the shell of the above building with supports added.

 

 

 

Actually, if I rotate it to match the way it actually prints, the importance of adequate supports might be easier to visualise!

 

 

 

 

So at this point its printing time! The vat is filled with resin and the print sent to it. 

 

Did it work? Its always a bit of a nail-biting time wandering down the stairs to my 3D printing cave after a few hours  to see if there is anything hanging off the build plate, but this time it worked! (Actually this latest printer has a camera that monitors the print progress so I can check it out from the comfort of my upstairs laptop at any time,  but that isnt as dramatic).

 

 

 

 

Anyone who says that resin printing isn't immensely messy should not be trusted. Resin is gooey and viscous and even though I'll leave this hanging there overnight  for the excess to drip off it'll still have a layer of wet resin covering it tomorrow morning. When handling resin covered prints  PPE in the form of gloves and a face mask are essential because the resin is brutal, I've had skin contact a couple of times through accidents and  carelessness and I've developed an itchy reaction to it.

 

Anyway, tomorrow I'll remove it from the build plate, pull off the supports while they are still soft,  then wash it in IPA  and then cure it. Both these steps can be done easily in a wash and cure station  that are marketed by most resin printer manufacturers and are well worth the cost.

 

Anyway, that's basically resin printing

 

. I was wondering if it'd be worthwhile posting occasional progress reports of this model  ( just 3 or 4 over a couple of weeks...) if anyone is 3D curious, covering  printing small parts, priming and  gluing   them etc and completing the model. If nothing else I will be able to answer the question of whether every 6th brick header course   (.55mm x .5mm with .12mm mortar gap) will even be visible?!

 

Just a thought, like I said I don't want to turn ER's into a one man 3D printing forum!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 26 by monkeysarefun

[Gwiwer]

2 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

I'm waiting for something like that.

I see our resident @polybear has chosen to reply to this in TNM 🤷‍♂️.  Curdy Turses?  

[The White Rabbit]

43 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

I'm conscious of the risk of turning ER's into "Monkeysarefun Goes 3D Printing" ... I was wondering if it'd be worthwhile posting occasional progress reports of this model if anyone is interested .....

 

I'm interested. I was thinking about very different buildings (and things) but the information and techniques are transferable and as said earlier, it's something lurking at the back of my mind to try so I'm trying to pick up some basic info now. Purists may invoke the awl but whether your posts are here, TNM or your own thread, I'd like to hear about it. If it's elsewhere, please tag me or mention it here. Thanks. 

[Coombe Barton]

... Final packing today, and off as early as possible tomorrow, which depends on sleep and tiredness ...

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2024/07/26/people-on-hospital-with-covid-horizon-board-in-the-dark-and-future-trust-trying-to-get-away/

[New Haven Neil]

@Gwiwer She's arrived!  Hiding behind the Ben-my-Chree.

 

 

Being a Fryday, the Old Farts went out for a brunch on the bikes, full Manx breakfast stylee.  The younger of our little crew has sneaked out and bought a new bike, a rather tasty Moto Guzzi V7 (750).  He does like his Eyetie bikes.

 

[polybear]

2 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

I see our resident @polybear has chosen to reply to this in TNM 🤷‍♂️.  Curdy Turses?  

 

Yup.  Hippo made me....

[PhilJ W]

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. I was going to do a bit of shopping this afternoon but the knees do protest mightily so the shopping is off until tomorrow. Not that I haven't got plenty to do today, another comic arrived today so that will be perused instead.

[Gwiwer]

19 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Yup.  Hippo made me....

Daily Wail headline .....

 

"Hippo Makes Bear.  Climate Change Blamed" 

 

😂