Brand New Portable SSD 1TB 2TB External Hard Drive Type-C USB 3.0 High-Speed External Storage Hard Disks For Laptops/Desktop/Mac (WHL #95)

AliExpress and their stupid game rules finally made me (inadvertently) buy* something that I heard about at least 13 years ago…a full-sized USB hard disk that only houses a tiny USB stick!

*Ackchyually, that is not quite correct. Like with the NVMe drive of WHL #92 that took me a long time to get refunded (and it only happened via PayPal, since AE to this day strongly believes in returns to fake warehouses in Afghanistan), this one also ended in a dispute and now I get to return it in exchange for a full refund. This time, though, to a warehouse in Germany, so I unfortunately cannot keep it, but now that I know how to find these…

But first things first, this is the fake USB drive that I remember seeing all over the interwebs:

Funny back then, but it probably consisted of a fully working USB drive, just a very small one compared to the expected HDD. […]


The Ender 5 PlusPlus and some toasty PETG (#E20F4)

Time flies…

Six months and I think 3 spools of matte PLA later, the Ender 5 Plus is now pretty close to shape I want it to be. There’s a fully custom panelized and gridded bottom section now that carries all electronics above and the 230V input below the 80×40/40×40 extrusion layer. There’s an optimized holder system around (left, right, back) for the 60cm LED panels. There’s stiffening triangles on every corner now, except for the front top extrusion that is moved down a couple centimeters so the bed/nozzle is visible during setup. […]


NEW LSI 9300-16i 12Gbps SAS-3 PCIe x8 HBA P16 IT mode ZFS TrueNAS UNRAID (WHL #94)

Here’s a quick and simple one: Cooling advice for 16-port SAS cards.

The LSI 9300-16i cards have gotten surprisingly cheap over the past months. Dirt cheap, in fact. All-16 port SAS cards are traditionally pretty pricey, even though they are “just” two 8-port cards on one PCB. In the past 10, maybe 15 years, there was never a time when buying a 16-port card (used or new) was cheaper than buying two 8s. Sure, sometimes people needed a single-card solution (availability of PCIe slots, PCIe lanes, or space in general), but the usual recommendation for 16-bay chassis like my Supermicro 836 was always to buy 2×8 instead of 1×16. […]


Kautschuk Platten Dämmmatten selbstklebend Isolierung XT | 32mm Dämmdicke (WHL #93)

Back to 3D printing for a bit – still lots of changes to the printer, but this one might be interesting to a wider audience: Thermal insulation of the print bed (hard data at the very end of this post!).

You see, the stock Ender 5 Plus printer bed comes pre-“insulated”:

Soo…that is a 3mm mat of black foam material that is glued down with some obnoxious acetone-soluble gunk, and garnished with a bit of aluminium foil on top. Yup, certainly better than nothing, but it doesn’t even cover the entire area, it’s just inside of the mounting frame. […]


2023 New Original SSD 990 PRO M2 2280 Nvme PCIe Gen 4.0X4 2TB 4TB Internal Solid State Disk SSD HDD for Laptop/PS5/PC (WHL #92)

Fake flash from China today!

Fake drives have been around for quite some time now, it started out as USB flash drives emulating 2.5″ regular hard disks, scamming some tourists into buying worthless drives (and a pair of hex nuts, to simulate the weight). While classic spinning rust is basically dead for most people’s data transfer needs, fake flash has evolved. Nowadays, a lot of trash flash seems to end up in super-high capacity drives for pennies. There are legit 1 and 2TB USB flash drives, but those are 50€+ and 150€+ respectively, while the Chinesium ones stack up to 128TB and cost less than a tenner (more fake capacity still costs more money, obviously). […]


Xiaomi Mijia Bluetooth-compatible Thermometer 2 Electric Humidity Smart Home Wireless Hygrometer LCD Digital Moisture (WHL #91)

Some new gadgets have been sitting here for a while – couldn’t be arsed to write about them last week

It’s pack of three Xiaomi Mijia Temperature + Humidity Monitor 2 (what a name), product number seems to be LYWSD03MMC. They cost me 15.58€ in December, inclusive of shipping and indeed one CR2032 coin cell per unit. Units from German distributors are more like 10 to 15€ each with negligible volume discounts – and shipping cost on top of that.

Anyway, here’s an explosion view from the unit, likely made by Xiaomi and not the seller:

I’ve been using other cheapo thermometer/hygrometer units for the past, well, probably 10 to 15 years, they’re really inexpensive at sub-2€ each and run on LR44 batteries basically indefinitely. […]


Ancient Sunlu PLA+ yellow (WHL #90)

After all that Geeetech bashing, here’s something for you, Sunlu fanbois! Sunlu PLA+ yellow!

Dammit, spoiled the results already…

Okay, here’s the deal: That stuff was given to me by a colleague who told me this is the worst printer filament he has ever laid eyes on. It’s stringing a gram of material for every gram of material printed. And I said: OK… (challenge accepted!)

The very same guy also gave me one of those half-kg spools of TPU quite a while ago and said it’s difficult to print and doesn’t look all that nice. […]


More GEEETECH 1kg 1.75mm 1KG(2.2LBS) Pure PETG, 3D Printer Filament, Vacuum Packaging,Tangle-Free, 3d printing materials (WHL #89F2)

Results are in!

In the last blog post #89, I showcased my rookie mistake of printing large objects across two spools of filament. Yeah, it still sticks together, but there’s warping (hence a large crack) and a color mismatch.

Since then, I printed a couple more of these ducts. And I contacted Geeetech (no complaint or formal refund process, just plain messages to the seller) in parallel to resolve this issue.

Let’s start with the mail exchange. Generally, those are very nice folks. Some sellers require significant pressure to offer a customer-friendly solution; most of the time, those sellers *know* they’re selling subpar shite and aren’t too keen on keeping an unsatisfied customer. […]


Batches of GEEETECH 1kg 1.75mm PETG 3D Printer Filament Vacuum Packaging Overseas Warehouses Fast Ship (WHL #89)

Well, this might be obvious for everyone that has been into 3D printing for a long time, but I completely fell for it.
For a current project that’ll take a couple kilograms of material in chunks of like 500 to 700g, and the recent singles day/11.11. sales frenzy, I bought (among other spools) 3x 1kg of Geeetech PETG white. I previously bought a single roll of that exact “700-001-1310” stuff, so I figured I could just print one of the parts for as long as the filament lasts, and then simply switch over to the new spool.

Of course I was mistaken. […]


The Ender 5 Plus and a pack of RGEEK High quality 6.0 W/mK 200*400mm Thermal conductivity CPU Heatsink Cooling Conductive Silicone Pad Thermal Pads (#E20F4)

Someone was lazy and skipped the last four blog posts
So, let’s jump right in, the Ender series is probably good for another dozen posts. Today I’ll give a quick assessment on the use of silicone pads for the build plate.

The Ender 5 Plus (and many others) uses a 24V 400ish Watt heating plate that is screwed onto a sheet of aluminium, that is in turn mounted to the Z axis assembly of the printer. On top of that, a textured glass plate is “fixed” by some binder clips which I somewhat dislike. There is no solid connection between those – the clips press down on the glass on four corners, but that’s about it. […]