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This one died, which sucks, like, a lot.
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This one is being repaired right now.
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My UP! Plus that I got last year broke. This sucks, I really liked my printer, I made almost all of my stuff on this printer. There is currently no backup for the UP! plus, this means that all projects that require 3D printing are delayed until further notice. No props, no Plan B improvements and no 3rd generation 3DP until I get a 3D printer working. I will see if I can get one of my old 3D printer, the Mendel V2 (a generation 2 relic) to work, but it might take a few weeks. I will see if I still have warranty on the UP!, otherwise I will refit the entire printer with open source electronics.
Forum
The forum is running almost a month now, and there are 4 active users excluding me. A big forum might look at this and laugh, but it makes me smile. There is however an issue. However, the login is not perfect and was recently fixed because loging in was impossible (now it is possible again though). I added an active preview, but it caused some issues on smartphones and left html things in the posts. It was removed yesterday. If there are any suggestions on improving the forum, please tell me. I am convinced that it can be better.
Plan B BOM updates
I forgot the flags on the BOM. They have been added. Also a few nuts and bolt appear to be slightly too short, I will try to fix this soon. Also Important, the M8 threaded rods had some discrepancies. The bom said 185, while the drawing said 130 (it was 130mm). I now fixed this. Another warning.
Apologies if it caused any inconvenience and if you have more flaws or mistakes in the files, please contact me, either through the contact form or the (now fixed) forum.
Hydroponics
While it is still in it’s early concept stage, I want to start with my first medium scale hydroponics setup coming spring, but I don’t want a standard system. While that would be fun, it would also be slightly uninteresting, especially for this site. I want to have it fully automated, or at least as automated as I can make it. This means automatic PH, water level, temperature and EC monitoring and adjusting. I have started with some sensors needed to run a system like this. I will make a page for my hydroponics and subpages for different parts of the system. I will still be working on 3D printers and most notably the next gen powder printer, but I need side-projects and I hope this will be a good one. Also with my UP! out of the running the hydroponic parts are nice 3D printerless projects.
A capacitive fluid level sensor, a contact free, solid state way of measuring a fluid level, has already been made for the system. More will follow the coming months.
Plan B experiments
With the FDM printer out of the running, all Improvement projects are delayed. I might as well use this time to start some experiments with other powders. A few things I want to try are:
- sugar and meringue
- Ceramic and maltodextrine
- Gypsum and maltodextrine
All will be bound with a water alcohol mix. The nice thing about all of these powders is that they cost less than €10/kg. Posts will be made when there is success.