Tony is a Geek

So, I've had Project 'O' on the back burner now for well over a year, I even started making headway around August 2019 ( for a week, during a vacation )....and well, yep, the usual happened.  I let myself get drawn into doing way too much stuff in the work/work environment and I have to sacrifice all my own inventions or innovations for the sake of the day job.  ( One day, I'll maybe get that changed, but I'm not holding out much hope, but we'll see ) Well, it's another vacation week, where I'm not actually vacationing ( again ), I'm going through a list of things that I wanted to do in 'my time'.  That means: 1) I've purchased a new 3D printer, I've built said 3D printer. I've had 4 failed attempts at printing with the ABS that I purchased 2-3 years ago (? cannot recall when was, but they've been sitting all sealed up in a box along with about 50 servo's that I was going to use for my robot )...spent a few lon...

Okay, so I got very excited a few years back and bought myself a 3D printer , loads of PLA and ABS reels and I even mostly build a 3D human head , fitted with servo's and web cams, hooked it up to an RPi and had it as an assistant of sorts....but I really wanted to print it in a more flexible material. Then I got very frustrated with all the messing around trying to 'level the bed', so much so that after re-trying simple prints over and over and over again, I just moved the 3D printer to the other side of the room to gather dust. I thought, I'll wait for an automated self-levelling version to come out and be at the right price and I'll get one of those. Well, guess what?! Yep...that just happened! I just ordered myself one of these little beauties....it'll arrive tomorrow: Good thing is, I have a week off (week after next), so I think there will be much 3D printing going on that week!  I've got lots of things that need to be printed.

After much hassle and delays and patience.....the 3D Printer arrived. Well, yes, it arrived on a Sunday afternoon.  Whilst I was out.  At Cheddar Gorge, because, no-one is going to deliver anything on a Sunday afternoon are they? it's safe to go out and get some cheese.... nope.  I came back home and found this box on the doorstep.  Yes, it was very wet and soaking up the water.  I pushed it into the porch.... I smiled and thought of positive things, which as it turns out was the right thing to do. The box had a box inside the box, so the 3D printer was well protected. I did the classic "sweep everything off the dining table" manoeuvre and set about putting it together: I stuck the SD Card in the side and selected a file that ended in .gcode - I had absolutely no idea what it was, but I just wanted to test everything was okay: After running through the warm up and levelling the print bed, it looked like it was time to go: Initially I didn't...