Category: Uncategorized

So I now have it (for some variable number of pages books, that are ganged together, and have different stocks per page) proving the records, ganging them together, and saving the file. Or I would, but it’s thing random errors. I think I need to bounce the street in the AM.

Now to get it to read the hidden code for what sheet gets printed on what.

Also, I really wish it played nicer with closing the PDF I’m mangling.

I was washing my hands and looking at my face in the mirror. My scraggly beard needs a trim. While I know it needs a trim, I don’t want to over trim it. Unfortunately, it really needs a trim because of all the split end because I never do trim it. Possible solution.

Small rotary trimming head with a variable height trimmer. As the trimmer moves, it pulls the hair, via a vacuum pump, as far as possible. Then, using an light sensor, it determines the length of the hair, moves the sensor in and trims.

No, that won’t work. Every pass, it would get progressively shorter. Again, this is way too much shaving discipline for me.

I could map my face, so that a series of movements trimmed the whole thing? Maybe one of the head rests like at the optometrist?

I should think this one through.

…which means I’ve been avoiding the Den. My current thought experiment, outside of the obvious what to design and when, is start writing short stories. I was in between books at the time, and so I picked up Stanislaw Lem’s Mortal Engines (I assume not to be confused by the upcoming movie (and I further assume based on a book)). It’s a hilarious set of short stories where in a fantasy universe everything is from the robotics perspective. Now, while I’m inspired by the work, I don’t think that’s the subject matter I want to go with. I’m feeling more of a hard science space Lovecraftian view. I’ll have to bang out the first one and see if it works.

The den can get cold, especially if the test of the house is cold. I did nothing last night, but try to be warm. On the itinerary is getting back to working on the Wif’s smartwatch. I should do that while printing things. I should design something to print. Ooh, it should be my pill-bottle-to-parts-boxes-scaffold. That’s be a handy thing before I start adding more parts throughout the den. I’ll whip up a starting design tonight, assuming I’m not freezing. I should do that while I try throwing on a y-axis tensioner. Or maybe I should check my actual print accuracy first.

Whichever.

Last night I did my usable parts from start to finish. It did take nine iterations to get a workable design, probably because it had to press fit on a metal D shaft, or I’m just whining and bad, whichever. The final result isn’t quite round. I needed four but only had three prints stay adhered to the bed until the end. The are is proving in the wrong direction. The finish is terrible. Some of them have hard PLA spikes aft of angles.

They’re done, and they’re mine.

Next is designing the scaffold for making pill bottle part bins.

While I have all sorts of games to play, I haven’t been. I even got Civ 6, and promptly got bored. While I’m still having some challenges with motivation, I’m getting some stuff done. The printer mostly works. I know how to do a thing for work. I know a bit more JavaScript.

Now I’m actually running through the Fusion 360 videos. I mostly have my thermostat knob designed, but it’s not quite there yet. I’m also wondering how well it will print with the bump around 8mm, but we’ll see. The one thing I still need to nail down is making the central home a D rather than an O. Doing that is easy. Doing it parametrically is kicking my ass.

So after I get things printing, I’ll keep working on that as appropriate. I’ll do some more designs, to keep any skills I develop fresh. I do want to make some action figures. I’m still thinking if how I want to do that exactly. You know, what kind of articulation and stuff.

During prints, I need to get going on the Wif’s smart watch. I have the parts, and now I need to start prototyping the UI, both in the physical and digital. I should start with the digital, and go from there. First, light up an OLED with an ESP32.

So I map the data, then I create an array with all the fields I need. I then create my payment book with a detail table where the row height is equal to the page height. Each row of the detail table then becomes it’s own page. Problem solved.

Obviously this sounds janky, but janky is my middle name. Or at least it should be. Janky works.

Now why the hell clone() isn’t working, I just don’t know.

I was entertaining a new hire while my coworker (who is her primary trainer) was in a meeting. At the moment I was working on that imposition with the composition tool. While describing it’s not-monolithic processes, and the comparison with InDesign coupled with SmartStream, I had an ahah moment. At the time I was still trying to impose huge files into a 5up dutch cut in one pass. What if I impose one sheet at a time and then imposed them after the fact. This worked.

Okay. I have a randomly huge number of rows of data. I need to split the rows into 5 stacks, so we end up with, given 15 rows for example:

1 6 11 2 7 12 3 8 13 4 9 15

Wait. So this is because I need to impose a large number of rows of data, 5up on a larger sheet. I should think this through. I should do a test before I go to town. The base line way of doing it worked, all the way until it went to crap. I to a dummy file of 2.5M and made it 39M. This was for 50 out of 79k records or so. That won’t work.

I should relook at that API. Maybe there’s a different and better method to use. I should also look to see if I have any other tools that can do the same thing. While I’m doing that I’ll reach out to HP and OL to see if they have any bright ideas.

Or, if the test works, bully.

Update (ish):

I think I’ll need to go with the reading method due to the way or bindery wants prints like this. Otherwise, I’m looking at 70k x 50kb, soo… Is that 3.5g?

Now, that’s not to say I need to impose as in the way I’m thinking. That’s to say by creating a 5up Dutch cut file with the art in spades on the sheet. I just need to rearrange the data. One the single pages are created, I can then go back to the drawing board for imposing. However, I’ll be able to do infinitely tall stacks broken into multiple files.

Everyday my importer syndrome seems to diminish just a bit more.

Last night, I was able to run a full dry run, and it “looks” like everything printed right. Tonight, I’ll power it up, verify the extruder and try a live run. Admittedly, I dosed the threads with a boat load of bike chain lube, but as I’ve types before, I’m not super worried about the damage I do. Since I need to order parts for other things anyway, I’ll probably get some bearings (to replace the one I thrashed) and belts (to something something something) while I’m at it.