Category: editorial note

Car racing in stationary cars (#E25)

Well, it’s been a bit quiet here lately, as I went from very time-consuming car enjoyment at the very end of 2024 to very time-consuming car troubles at the very beginning of 2025. And while I can only share that the latter is FUCKING EXPENSIVE, I have a little more stuff on hand for the former. Since the battle for track times and fame in Beach Buggy Racing is currently flaring up in the German Tesla forum TFF, I thought taping a couple of runs would add value. So I went ahead and captured some…18 hours of it. To show off the best rounds (as there is very little content on Youtube), and to study things like item effects and the perfect racing lines (there’s none), and of course to compile dumb shit into funny videos. […]

12th January 2025 12th January 2025 By Bzzz In No Comment

Fluke product registration card (#E24)

Silly people doing silly things.

Today: Fluke product registration via snail mail.

In the dark ages of the Interwebs™, retail hardware often came with some registration post card. I think I never sent one in, but apparently this was how one would subscribe to real newsletters on colourful dead tree.

Five months ago, in a low-key effort to clean up the office for a) a cleaner office (duh!) and b) less junk around that needs to be sorted, thrown out or boxed before early January ’25 when the company moves to a new building, I sifted through stuff from a random rack. […]

17th November 2024 17th November 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

Processing a gigabyte of data (#E23)

Processing a gigabyte of work data…at home.

So?

Everybody had log files of mundane server daemons that spilled over, what’s the big news on a gig of data?

Will he post pics of tiny USB drives and say “look what I found”?

Yeah. Kinda.

At work, we’re preparing to move to a new building, purpose-built to our specs. We’ve been in the old one for like 30+ years and there are still plenty of coworkers that started at this era. It won’t be as pretty as the current one and it absolutely will not have a view like this (horses not included during winter) – but it will feature enough space for offices and production areas. […]

27th October 2024 28th October 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

The Ender 5 PlusPlus on linear rails (#E21F6)

In the recent weeks, I printed quite a few parts for work. Some large ones (post incoming) several times, with the opportunity to optimize slicer settings, some others in very large sizes, with the opportunity to tweak the printer to the max settings, even beyond the actual printer bed (390mm along Y!), and some small ones in search for the perfect settings for clear PETG. My fluidd klipper interface apparently only keeps a history of 50 jobs, and that list doesn’t even cover five days.

So after all the software tweaking, I figured it’s time for another hardware printer modification: (Dual) linear rails for the Y axis. […]

18th August 2024 19th August 2024 By Bzzz In 1 Comment

Aircraft museum Laatzen and Wunstorf (#E22)

Traveling!
Among many other things, I visited two aircraft museums in the Hannover area, Luftfahrtmuseum Laatzen (south of Hannover), as well as JU52-Halle Wunstorf (north-west). Technically I also passed by a museum dedicated to helicopters, the Hubschraubermuseum Bückeburg, but I effing took too long visiting our colleagues nearby (so…technically also a business trip!), which made me arrive 20 minutes before they closed and they wouldn’t let me in (some do that, even at a reduced rate – probably wanted to go home early). […]

7th July 2024 7th July 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

The Ender 5 PlusPlus and some toasty PETG (#E21F5)

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. […]

3rd March 2024 7th July 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

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 (#E21F4)

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. […]

5th November 2023 7th July 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

The slightly more silent Ender 5 Plus (#E21F3)

Well, since the printer is running just fine, I used it to make some quality-of-life upgrades to it.
The bottom lid that covers PSU, all the mains wiring and the rest of the electronics has been removed and replaced by a 2 part print (due to size). Several reasons for that: a) Four of the six screws are covered by the additional aluminium frame, so it’s difficult to remove if properly fastened, b) if left unscrewed (which isn’t much of a load problem on the remaining two screws since it is sandwiched anyway), the ends of the large metal piece would be free to vibrate and resonate, c) the stock 40mm fan close to the driver board is terribly noisy and pointless in terms of air throughput, so I would have swapped it anyway. […]

3rd September 2023 7th July 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

Ender 5 Plus and the dimmable Lightbox (#E21F2)

A couple of prints later and the lightbox printer is now contained in the intended footprint, with no external spool holder needed anymore. A simple roll with pockets for two bearings, a piece of an old M10 threaded rod, a couple of nuts and spacers, and a small mechanical adapter to make everything fit onto the original Ender holder was all it needed. The LED panels are now connected via XT30 connectors, and a 1-to-3 adapter for these mates with the DC step-up that still needs to be integrated. Not sure if I should use the integrated 24V power supply (as that is maxed out when printing) or add another desktop power brick, and how to (nicely) integrate the dimmer circuit that is just a significantly extended potentiometer from the DC-DC converter. […]

27th August 2023 7th July 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

Ender 5 Plus and the lit Lightbox (#E21F1)

Fiat Lux!

LED panel brackets are installed, and so are three “45W” panels that currently max out at 135W with the supplied AC drivers. I’m likely gonna move them to a dimmable solution (a DC-DC converter with external adjustment pot…), but for testing purposes that’s just fine.

Here’s a small print (30cm x 6cm x 2cm) with single-walled towers on each side, made from matte black PLA (Sunlu), still sticking to the black Ender glass printing bed. Clearly this needs a bit more optimization in that all black parts around it could use a more reflective surface covering to brighten up the scene. […]

20th August 2023 7th July 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment