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

Allit EuroPlus Flex assortment box label holders (#P45)

Once a more a simple 3D printing part. Today, that’ll go into one of the excellent yet affordable (10€-ish, depending on the size of the swappable containers) “EuroPlus Flex” assortment box made by Allit. One of those (yup, stolen right from the manufacturer):

Outer size of that specific product is fixed at 370mm x 295mm x 55mm, and the inside is, aside from the front part that integrates the handle, fully configurable. There are 1×1 boxes in red, 2×1 in yellow and 2×2 in blue. For really large items that still need to be inside a container, there are also 3×2 green and 4×2 gray ones (not shown here), but I tend to just stick them in there without a container. […]

13th October 2024 14th October 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

eSUN 3D Printer Flexible TPE 83A Filament 1.75mm Dimensional Accuracy +/- 0.05mm 1KG (2.2 LBS) Spool 3D Printing Material (WHL #103)

Printer filament. Well, not directly, but in a way.

I guess this could also be a rant since it’s not about the filament itself, but more an issue of packaging. This concerns eSun, which I avoid because of this, but for this very filament, I needed to buy eSun.

eSun makes TPU (they call it TPE, same thing really) filament in 83A shore hardness. I don’t think anyone else does, and very few do similar materials, especially in the 1.75mm DIY filament diameter and not for industrial use in the 3mm realm. The smaller the number, the softer the material is. […]

29th September 2024 22nd October 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

MicroQR scanner phone apps (#R23)

I’m not reeeeally into app recommendations, but that one bothered me for a long time…so here it goes:

For all your barcode needs on a mobile phone: Use the Cognex scanner! Available here for Androids and there for low hanging fruit.

Why the recommendation? Because, for reasons unknown to me, no standard camera app on both systems, nor any other barcode app that I could find for Android does support MicroQR codes. Basically everybody does Code 128 and 39, some do weirder stuff like interleaved 2-of-5, and 2D apps often support things like standard QR, Datamatrix or Aztec. […]

15th September 2024 15th September 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

For Dell Laptop DC Power Charge Converter Adapter Cable Cord 7.4*5.0 to 4.5*3.0 mm Female (WHL #102)

Here’s something not to burn your house down with: DC power supply adapters.

My lighbox currently draws power from the 3D printer power supply, which does work, but has its limitations. Sure, I do have to move down the gantry to take photos in the first place, so the printer will be on anyways, but I am not able to run it during prints (time lapse?) due to power constraints. The build plate heater is 400W and only gets pulsed on-off (so no linear “oh 200W will do at the moment” regulation), and the power supply is a 500W unit from MeanWell. […]

8th September 2024 8th September 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

Dreame W10 mop pad drill adapter (#P44)

Super quick and silly STL file for today: Don’t you hate it when your round mopping pads for the Dreame W10 (/Pro) cleaning robot are still dripping wet after the robot “dries” them by spinning them around for a bit? Don’t you think the automatic air dry function where it blows warm air over it, wasting 50 Watts of power for literal hours, is the most infuriating quirk of the entire system?
Don’t you worry any longer! Spin it yourself! Dry it with the power of the over-9000-RPMs! :D

In all seriousness, the warm air dry function is a joke and not being able to deactivate it completely is the single most annoying thing of their stupid software. […]

25th August 2024 13th October 2024 By Bzzz In 1 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

Fluke spare parts availability (and cost) (#R22)

Is it a rant, or is it an editorial note? Well, it’s probably a rant.

Spare parts. Fluke spare parts, to be precise.

Earlier this year, I sniped a Fluke 187 off eBay. 150€ delivered, really minor blemishes, probes included, fully functional except for the tilting bail. A fully functional unit is about double that, so I consider this a bargain. The stand is shown in the photo right besides this post, someone simply broke the two clips that make it hold onto the main unit. Mechanically super simple stuff.

Fixing the tilt is of interest to me, as using it sitting flat on the table only is sometimes annoying. […]

28th July 2024 29th July 2024 By Bzzz In 1 Comment

1pcs 15mm*10m Adhesive Basic Decoration Masking Tape Stickers Rainbow Color Washi Tapes Set for Gift Album Diary (WHL #101)

“Tool” time today – almost an editorial note, but then the Chinese had a laugh at what I ordered.

With the (basically) fully-working Ender5++ light box, it’s easy to take photos of small to medium sized items 24/7 with consistent quality. One thing that still bothered me, though, was the auto white balance feature of GIMP. Generally works well for colorful items, but can be totally off for objects that only have colors along the white-gray-black axis with no major amount of RGB. Stuff like the white doorbell (WHL #98), the black test print cap in (#E20F3), or the shiny silvery-metal USB drive in (WHL #45) are good examples. […]

14th July 2024 7th July 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment