Stephanie Engineers Herself

You ever want to take apart something prohibitively expensive and find out what's inside? I do, all the time. Lucky for me this cast aluminum massager is broken (it won't turn off). So I get to try to fix it (hopefully). It's likely just a bad mosfet. But it'd be fun to upgrade. It's surprisingly low power. 19.5W, 13v @ 1.5A 13v is a bit strange to see, but whatever. Could very likely be replaced by a 12v supply without significant loss in power. One screw came out halfway and appears to stop. Maybe it has a retaining clip? The other at the end won't budge. Time for a bigger screwdriver. It took a bit of prying. The retaining ring is glued on (I was worried it was screwed on). A bit of wiggling and it's free. The screw that I thought had a retaining clip actually has a screw standoff to hold the PCB in. I might try to take them apart, but it's not necessary to. And now for what you've all been waiting for. It's an incredibly simple...

 Cats. What can I say that hasn't already been said. But this is about a process to turn a picture of my cat into a lithophane. The difficulty: the shape should match the outline of the cat. To go about this I needed 4 tools: image editing software, an image to lithophane converter, Inkscape, and a STL editor. The first step was to isolate my cat in the picture: This was probably the most time consuming aspect, carefully tracing her outline and removing the background. For this I used paint.net but you can use whatever you are familiar with. The result: After isolating her I also made a 2nd image, which will be used later for creating the outline. This image is simply the area where the background was but filled black, the inverse of above. You can see I smoothed the edges a bit too: The next step is to use a lithophane generator to create the STL. My favorite is:  http://3dp.rocks/lithophane/  . You will want to use a flat model, turn off the border, and set base/stand d...

I love Marlin Firmware. What they have managed to squeeze into the 8bit 16mhz microcontrollers is impressive. But what is even more impressive, is their documentation. The Marlin documentation is far and above anything I have seen for an open source project. In addition to great documentation, they provide some very useful tools. Like the K-Factor Pattern Generator for calibrating Linear Advance in Marlin. I wish Duet provided a similar tool, as I find it invaluable for calibrating your pressure advance settings. What I have managed to do, is use the developer tools of the Chrome browser to edit the javascript and modify a few things to make it work. Why go through such lengths? Well, for a direct drive extruder the calibration values for duet are very low, and very sensitive. how sensitive? I have found differences in value changes of 0.00002 And because I don't take "close enough" as an answer, I had to dig in and make the script fit the resolution I require...

I like to make things. I also have ADHD. The two of them don't always go together. I sometimes get ideas on what I want to make, get really into it, start a few things like ordering parts and a design, and maybe even assemble a few parts. And then I find something new. Something shiny and interesting. It's easy for me to burned out on a project, expending all my energy into it until a point of exhaustion. Or getting stuck due to lack of parts, lack of ideas on how to continue, or a lack of tooling. To combat this, I've decided to make this blog post, which I will update from time to time with my current projects, and what is keeping me from completing them. Hopefully having them listed out will allow me to sort through them, work on what I can, and get what I need to complete what I can't. So without further ado, I bring you... The Project List: CoreXY 3d printer build Lap Bed plate flat Assemble Z Axis Ballscrew Assemble Extruder Carriage...

I know what most people imagine when thinking about ramen. Those little pucks of noodles that we all eat to get through hard times. This is not that kind of ramen. This is a laborious adventure of meat and flavor. I have searched the internet far and wide, and didn't find a recipe that reminds me of this wonderful ramen restaurant off of the 101 in San Mateo when we went to the SF Bay Area Maker Faire. I know this likely isn't authentic, but it has flavor, oh so much flavor. It's as close as I could get to the various ramen I have tried. This recipe also makes a LOT. Typically 6 huge bowls of Ramen. It should be easy to halve. Tonkotsu Ramen Recipe  Tonkotsu Base Broth (makes 10-12 cups of stock): 5-6 pounds pork leg bone (cut into several pieces) Or 5-6lbs pork neck bones Or 5-6lbs pork ribs with bone 1.5-2 pounds chicken bones or 2lbs chicken thighs 2 inch knob fresh ginger (sliced to 4-6mm) 6-8 pieces garlic (whole) 1 large white onion (...

In my various projects, I have come across a need to cut metal things. Crazy, I know. However the issue is that I lack the funds to purchase a big expensive chop saw that can cut hardened steel, as well as the amount of noise they create. A few years back, I saw a post in Hackaday of a 3d printed power hacksaw. Now I'm not the type of person who just prints out someone else's designs. When I have a particular set of requirements in mind it then becomes an obsession. It wasn't until a couple of months ago that I had finally purchased a working 3d printer. My first project would be to design and build this powered hacksaw. The goals are simple: use off the shelf components with near zero modifications required, and must be strong enough to cut hardened steel. First up, the motor. In this case, I was looking for about 30 rpm. The result of my search is a 12v 30rpm planetary gear motor from eBay. It's small but quite powerful. The price has unfortunately gone up quite...