PlutoniumAcid

I've made a large number of custom prints, and all of them were created using TinkerCad. It's an amazing toolkit, stupid easy to use but versatile. That is ... until something needs a tiny adjustment somewhere. That's when I feel it would've been neat to use parametric CAD instead.

I have spent many hours following Youtube tutorials for Onshape, Fusion, and FreeCAD. Tutorial shapes like a LEGO brick are fairly easy, although I admit that this kind of modeling is a sharp departure from the kid-friendly TinkerCad.

My problem is that I don't want to make simple coasters or keychains, but complex shapes like this one. It's a holder/mount for two different kinds of walkie-talkies that I use, and the blue part slides into a tray in my car's dash where it sits nice and snug.

Question: How the hell do I even get started modeling something like this?? There's not a single straight cuboid here. Everything is slightly wedge-shaped.

The way I do this in TinkerCad is that I build the hollow first: I made a 3d model of the walkie, a little oversized, set it be hollow, and drop it into the shape - that's the red or orange shells you see.

I run an old desktop mainboard as my homelab server. It runs Ubuntu smoothly at loads between 0.2 and 3 (whatever unit that is).

Problem:
Occasionally, the CPU load skyrockets above 400 (yes really), making the machine totally unresponsive. The only solution is the reset button.

Solution:

• I haven't found what the cause might be, but I think that a reboot every few days would prevent it from ever happening. That could be done easily with a crontab line.
• alternatively, I would like to have some dead-simple script running in the background that simply looks at the CPU load and executes a reboot when the load climbs over a given threshold.

--> How could such a cpu-load-triggered reboot be implemented?

edit: I asked ChatGPT to help me create a script that is started by crontab every X minutes. The script has a kill-threshold that does a kill-9 on the top process, and a higher reboot-threshold that ... reboots the machine. before doing either, or none of these, it will write a log line. I hope this will keep my system running, and I will review the log file to see how it fares. Or, it might inexplicable break my system. Fun!

TLDR: VPN-newbie wants to learn how to set up and use VPN.

What I have:

Currently, many of my selfhosted services are publicly available via my domain name. I am aware that it is safer to keep things closed, and use VPN to access -- but I don't know how that works.

• domain name mapped via Cloudflare > static WAN IP > ISP modem > Ubiquity USG3 gateway > Linux server and Raspberry Pi.
• 80,443 fowarded to Nginx Proxy Manager; everything else closed.
• Linux server running Docker and several containers: NPM, Portainer, Paperless, Gitea, Mattermost, Immich, etc.
• Raspberry Pi running Pi-hole as DNS server for LAN clients.
• Synology NAS as network storage.

What I want:

• access services from WAN via Android phone.
• access services from WAN via laptop.
• maybe still keep some things public?
• noob-friendly solution: needs to be easy to "grok" and easy to maintain when services change.

edit: solved by printing at 20% of regular speed. This seems to give the filament enough time to ooze out of the nozzle, and the print result was excellent.

My Prusa MINI+ works like a charm, except with TPU. We have a 5-hour print task that starts well but fails after 2-3 hours because the TPU filament is no longer being pushed into the nozzle; instead it comes out of the extruder!

What could be causing this? Is the TPU just too soft and bendy? Is the shape of the extruder housing at fault?

It looks as if the TPU gets stuck and is then pushed into the extruder housing when the extruder continues to push. This happens again and again, but it's weird that it works well for hours before failing. The object is basically just a long block, so absolutely straightforward and no retractions.

We have checked that the nozzle is clean and has no obstructions. We have opened the extruder every time it happens, and there's no obvious problem to see (see photo 2 here).

We are considering to print a new lid for the extruder housing, see photo 3 here: (1) is the exit hole, and (2) is the cavity where the TPU ends up so it might help to change the lid (3) to a shape that does not leave a cavity there. Or is the problem that the roller (4) is too narrow or too soft?

For reference, the filament is Tinmorry black TPU from Amazon.

This is a Prusa MINI+ that has worked flawlessly for 3 months. Suddenly the prints won't stick to the bed, the first layer is all messy and I cancel the print before anything worse happens.

• The printer has auto bed leveling so I would rule that out.
• The plate is cleaned with 70% IPA, so it's not dirty either.
• I have tried to adjust the "Live Z Adjust" while printing that first layer, but no setting works well.
• Each filament is printed at recommended temps (+/- 215C) and bed is at 60C.
• Out of my 5 spools, only 1 works well: RepRapper 3-color PLA. Even the Prusament PLA fails to stick well, and also eSun PLA+, and eSun matte PLA, and Tinmorry TPU.

https://i.imgur.com/MEpK37W.png

Update:

• Thank you all for your kind input.
• I washed the plate, and cleaned the nozzle (have no spare nozzle).
• I also did a fresh Z-test (with this object) using Prusament galaxy silver PLA.
• That was successful and showed that my height was already very close to perfect.
• Z-test result shows that -1.425 is best. I was off by only 0.025. Image
• Started printing an object with eSun matte black PLA but the result was same as in my original photo.
• Changed back to the Prusament galaxy silver PLA and the result is perfect. (image)

So it looks like my filament storage is not up to snuff! Good thing that I only have a few spools, so not much is lost.

Printing here with eSun PLA at 215 C on a Prusa Mini, and there are lots of hairline strings.

What's causing those strings? Temp too low?

TLDR = what's a good next step after kid-friendly 3d creation tools?
Solved = Fusion360 is voted as winner, we even got a nice tutorial playlist.

Hi all - I'm still very much a new user. Highly skilled in IT but just getting my feet wet in 3D printing, since a month or so. I love the possibilities! I can physically create anything I can image, it's amazing.

So far, I've used mostly TinkerCad and done lots with it. The learning curve is practically non-existent, and it has sufficient features to do a lot.

But of course it's not perfect. Obvious example: can't do fillets, except in roundabout ways using negative blocks.

I've tried OnShape, OpenScad, Fusion 360, but found them quite a steep hill to climb.

Are these good choices, or is there something in-between that would make it easier for me to advance?

My printer (well, PrusaSlicer) always starts with a line around the object I am printing. See (1) in the image. --Why? What does that do?

There is also this line (2) at the front of the bed. --Why? What does that do?

Here's a part of a cabinet in my wardrobe where my printer lives. It's a bit noisy with all those hard surfaces so I am just about to put up some foam padding on all 5 sides.

Is that stupidly dangerous?

You can see I have a smoke alarm there, but it won't stop a fire on its own.

Edit: the cabinet has no door, it's always open like in the photo, but the wardrobe door is generally closed. The room has some ventilation so smells do go away.

Hi all, I'm not sure what to do here. The controllers vibrate extremely loudly, it sounds like I am shaving my face! I don't remember it being so loud when the thing was new, just two months ago.

Is it defective?

What's the best way to get warranty replacement? I got it from Amazon but the only course of action there is to send in the whole thing for repair. Is that the best choice?

TLDR:

• Update: the server software has a bug about generating+saving certificates. Bug has been reported; as a workaround I added the local IP to my local 'hosts' file so I can continue (but that does not solve it of course).
• I suspect there's a problem with running two servers off the same IP address, each with their own DNS name?

Problem:

• When I enter https://my.domain.abc into Firefox, I get an error ERR_SSL_UNRECOGNIZED_NAME_ALERT instead of seeing the site.

Context:

• I have a static public IP address, and a Unifi gateway that directs the ports 80,443 to my server at 192.168.1.10 where Nginx Proxy Manager is running as a Docker container. This also gives me a _Let's Encrypt certificate.
• I use Cloudflare and have a domain foo.abc pointed to my static public IP address. This domain works, and also a number of subdomains with various Docker services.
• I have now set up a second server running yunohost. I can access this on my local LAN at https://192.168.1.14.
• This yunohost is set up with a DynDNS xyz.nohost.me. The current certificate is self-signed.
• Certain other ports that yunohost wants (22,25,587,993,5222,5269) are also routed directly to 192.168.1.14 by the gateway mentioned above.
• All of the above context is OK. Yunohost diagnostics says that DNS records are correctly configured for this domain. Everything is great (except reverse DNS lookup which is only relevant for outgoing email).

Before getting a proper certificate for the yunohost server and its domain, I need to make the yunohost reachable at all, and I don't see what I am missing.

What am I missing?