https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4347707
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4351520

These are just a couple signs which are designed to be printed. They help explain some of the ins and outs of wearing a mask, and also why, for folks that may not know.

If you are a mother, I hope you have the best, classiest, strongest Mother's Day, believe me!

This is a quick project I was working on to make it harder for the large 32oz bottles of hand sanitizer to walk away on their own.  I have not had this problem with the ones I placed at my office, but if they were wall mounted outside it could be a problem.  It is really a very limited use case, but I had the idea stuck in my head to make a mechanism like this, and wanted to try it out.  A small coin (like a penny) is used to open it. 

I don't have any pics of this in action since I don't have a need for this particular design at the moment. I also don't have any more 32oz bottles of hand sanitizer.  I have one that is now nearly empty though :-)  

Stay safe!

It can be found on Thingiverse using the link below:
www.thingiverse.com/thing:4276185

I posted this to Thingiverse a couple weeks ago, but never posted it here, fixing that now.  The spool has a ratchet which keeps it from spinning free, but with the addition of a rubber band it is not annoyingly loud.  It will print with minimal supports - I think I had them set for 85% overhang and it worked out fine.  The PLA I used for the green was pretty old and wet, I should have dried it first but was in a hurry and it shows.

You can find it here:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4237279

The desk mount clamp is remixed from philbarrenger's awesome "Monster Mouth Headphone Holder - Clampable"

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1657541

Some people believe in facts, others believe in their gut, both are equally annoying, but only one is usually right.  I'm getting tired of trying to explain to certain people I know, who still think this will just magically blow over, that it is actually more likely to blow through than over.  I suspect that some people have relinquished their critical thinking skills to whichever talking head they last heard on TV, so its hard to get them to kickstart that part of their mind, but still worth the effort when you care about them.

Anyway, I read this back on March 12, which I was going to recheck on April 30th to try and have an objective gauge of how we responded to this mess, based on what we knew going into it.  But was bored today and I decided to check it, and it's pretty clear we are likely to see the low "Degree of surveillance and intervention" scenario they considered back on March 12 (with currently ~ 213,600 cases today, on April 3).  It will very likely be worse thanks to the several weeks (wasted) that it took for some states to even muster the courage for a limp response, by mandating stay at home orders (with plenty of loopholes of course).  It will probably be several more weeks for these geniuses to move to close the many exceptions and do what has to be done (likely only after the public pressure forces their hand).  Seeing the sloppy response is like watching a toddler who refuses to take their medicine and ends up getting half of it all over their shirt, but that's what passes for leadership in 2020. 

A footnote on that Times article - it states that the model "will continue to be updated as the model adapts once more is known about the virus’ behavior".  However the numbers for the Low, Moderate and High "Degree of surveillance and intervention" scenarios have not changed since March 12 (so it seems like that interactive graphic is a bit of a time capsule).

So that's all I am gonna post/rant about Covid19 in this tiny random corner of the Interwebs for a while.  It's too sad to think about or dwell on this slow motion train wreck the world is experiencing.  Soon it will be back to 3D printing stuff and other useless and more random stuff, once I get my printers running again.

Update: On April 30, there were approx 1.1M confirmed cases of COVID-19, which is just higher than the "low" surveillance and intervention number of 1,382,926 given ny the model described in the article from March 12.  A low-moderate number was 795,593 infections.  So we got a D- according to the model, maybe we will do better next time.

It's pretty unbelievable how poorly prepared we are for Coronavirus (or any health emergency for that matter).  Setting aside the testing problems, which is partly due to reliance on various components and chemicals which would have needed to be stockpiled well ahead of the flood, the lack of basic equipment which would apply to any public health emergency - masks, personal protective equipment and the various consumables required to allow our health system to function in an emergency - is unforgivable.  It is also an unfortunate feature of our system.

We live in the "just in time" era, when companies like Amazon have nearly perfected the science of keeping goods in constant motion from the time they drop off the assembly line, to when they arrive at the customer's door.  State governments have shed responsibilities to the private sector, have trimmed budgets to the bone, government departments normally operate below full staffing levels, and the result is we have reduced services which bring home the point that Government does not work.  It's a cycle perpetuated when we elect people that do not value what good the government can do, and then we are surprised (or not) that it fails us when we need it.  We will hopefully learn from this, and be better prepared for the next time, but it is too late now to "prepare".

We need to repair, and that will take more than the ungodly sum of 2 trillion dollars - a package seeded with many handouts to the wealthy as well as a potential disincentive for people to even try to participate in what is left of the economy (though something had to be done for them since unemployment benefits are dismal in many states).  To fix this we need, firstly, leadership which we can trust, which takes the crisis seriously and understands at least, how to find a way out.  Since we do not have that, the way will be found the same way you find a light switch in the dark, by fumbling around until you find a wall or something familiar, then carefully feeling your way to the switch, while trying not to jam a toe or trip.  The path we are forced onto is going to cost many more lives than if we had a realistic, clear and unifying direction which we could all begin to work to, but it's what we got.  It won't help in the near term that many of us still value evidence based facts more cheaply than our personal truths, but as this goes on, even the "dipshits" will hopefully get with the program.

Barring a breakthrough, its seems likely that we won't see "normal" for months.  With luck, the normal we create after this is all over, will be a break from the old normal which got us into this mess.  By then, we will truly need to Make America Great Again, and hopefully we will recognize that cannot be done without the efforts, contribution and shared rewards for All Americans.  Thats a big hope, but this is a big problem, with big stakes that will probably be bigger next time.  We may only get one mulligan.   

With apologies to lemmings (which don't actually run themselves off cliffs - unless chased by a sadistic mouse).

One of the most interesting national disgraces this past week is the fact that people have decided to make toilet paper scarce.  As if people did not have enough to worry about, they now have to spend time and money to locate an essential item that most people need daily, and if they can't find it, it is very likely they will use whatever is at hand - and I am not talking about oak leaves.  So to compound the problems of the Coronavirus in general, all the not-toilet paper which gets flushed could wreak havoc with municipal treatment systems, and for what?  It's not like people started pooping five times more often.

I know that general hoarding is probably the biggest reason for the problem, but the of selling toilet paper on Ebay at 5 or 10x markups is the most egregious.  I'm sure the sellers feel like true heroes of Capitalism, but in truth, they are doing it no favors.  So it's good to see that some stores are cracking down, but it's probably not very effective right now.  It does not take more than browsing the first page of listings for toilet paper on Ebay to find examples of gouging.  

Although it 's a pretty limp response from a platform that should be able to automatically figure out when people are gouging on items like masks, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper, rather than leaning on users to do it for them... price gouging on ebay can be reported at the link below.  I don't recall being able to report sellers earlier this week for price gouging (seeing a 4 pack going for $30 plus shipping made me curious), so I think this may be a new thing:

www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-items/disaster-tragedy-policy?id=5051

In order to report an item, you need to first browse the item, and then when you go to the link, it will show an image from last several items browsed (with the most recent one on the left side).  When you click the pic of the item to report, you will get directed to the next page with the the item listing name, and the item number (but no description or price).  Then just select the item and report it by selecting "price gouging" for the first two pull down boxes, and then select the last box which describes what type of item it is (for TP it would be hygiene items).  

And if you actually got ripped off or just feel like turning things up to 11, many states have price gouging laws which may apply.

consumer.findlaw.com/consumer-transactions/price-gouging-laws-by-state.html

The sheer stupidity of the great toilet paper gold rush of 2020 will hopefully stop soon.  It's a side show, and just adds more grief to people's lives in a time when people are already losing jobs, risking their lives to make a buck or trying to care for vulnerable family members - or trying to care for all of us.  

And now for some good news, I saw this yesterday - Harbor Freight is donating it's entire stock of n95 masks and PPE to hospitals that need them most:

https://www.nj.com/business/2020/03/harbor-freight-stores-donating-all-masks-and-gloves-to-help-fight-coronavirus.html

Although I have had a 3.5 star experience with items from Harbor Freight over the years, this just bumped them up to five stars in my mind.

I have been a bit obsessed with making things to clip on my cubicle at work lately.  All the things fit on Haworth Compose cubes which have a thin flat top plate.  It started when I saw a design a co-worker made to clip over the cube wall, and then a light went off.  I redesigned it to clip more securely, and then it was all down hill from there.  I've made some hooks, a poster and whiteboard holder, a hand sanitizer holder and lately I've been working on a few different headphone holder designs.

I wasn't really happy with the headphone holder though.  It has been working well, but I wanted something simper (to use).  The current iteration is shown below.  It uses a spring from a ball point pen that pushes a claw which engages on the geared edge of the cable reel.  The idea is to lock it in place when it is coiled up, so it does not get loose, but it should be easy enough to turn that it can be spun to reel it up with a finger or two.  I have still gotta test it, but I printed the parts of the claw and spring holder and that all works.  If it all goes well (and it never does), it should be posted this week or next.

Update: here they are:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4202518
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4215219

I'm also gonna post a version that can be mounted on a wall:

I hooked up a 3D Touch to a co-worker's Ender3 Pro (with the 1.1.3 board) and thought it would be a good idea to add some links here to helpful videos and sites.

A quick overview though.  The Ender3 and Ender3 Pro have a board that requires a bootloader.  The simplest way to do that (for me) is to use an arduino.  After the bootloader, the software is installed (Marlin or in this case TH3D - which is a fork of Marlin).  Then the 3Dtouch was wired up and installed.

I've done this a few times already but it has been a while, so I sought out some videos, and found these covered it very well:

And this video from TH3D which goes over the whole setup for a bootloader.

If that is too long, well the basics are:

• Set up the Arduino as an ISP
• Make sure the Ender3 is unplugged and powered off - the update process is done without power to the printer.
• Connect the Arduino ISP to the Ender3 ISP header (connections are one to one, except for reset which goes from the ISP reset on the Ender3 to pin 10 on the Arduino.  It helps to have the Arduino and the Ender3 Boards positioned as they are in the above video from TH3D here.  Watch the videos above if you are not sure about anything though, they cover everything.
• Double check everything before powering up the Arduino (which will power the Ender3 board).
• Make sure you have the Sanguino third party hardware add-on installed (https://github.com/Lauszus/sanguino) and to install it see here.
• Watch this to make sure you have the correct settings in your Arduino IDE youtu.be/U9MGIlQgzkg?t=460
• Then just upload the code.
  

The next part is installing the 3DTouch.  I won't go over the software side, but if using TH3D, you can use their configurator tool here which should help with the setup.

The following video is a very good overview of setting up a BLTouch probe on the Ender3 (3D touch is the same basic setup).  Note however the 3D Touch has slightly different wire colors.

Brown = GROUND
Red = +5V
Orange = Signal

The Black and White wires remain the same as the Bl-Touch.

A couple tips though.

- Use good quality wire, I used some silicone 22 AWG UL3132 wire to make the harness and added some latching connectors to replace the duponts on the probe end. 
- Additionally, on the board side, I soldered the signal (orange) wire to the cable connector for the display (rather than just adding a connector),
- I soldered what I am pretty sure was a "JST xH" connector to the black and white wires (pay attention to polarity it matters on this).  I salvaged the JST connector from an old 2 pin fan. 
- The other pins were just wired up with duponts on the board side and I dabbed some hot glue on all the board side connectors but did not get it all over the ISP header. 

Again it pays to double and triple check connections before applying power and closing up the control box.

I also added a cable protector while I had the printer control box opened.  This is I feel necessary since Creality cut a pass through for the cables though the aluminum extrusion which has some very sharp edges.  I designed a protector for the ender3 some time ago and just uploaded one for the Ender3 Pro as well, you can find them on thingiverse.

Ender3 Pro Cable Pass Through Protector

Ender3 Cable Pass Through Protector

One final note, I gave the printer back after upgrading the software and getting the 3DTouch working, however I did not test it with an autolevel or print due to time constraints.  I was told however that the probe will home, and autolevel without a problem, but that the probe drops once it begins printing.  I suspect that the problem is due to the probe needing to be re-magnetized, or possibly the grub screw needs to be adjusted.  If that is necessary, the following video has tips on how to resolve it:

This is just a quick remix of the TS-80 case I made a while back.  This one is larger though, so a USB cable can be stored in it.  It is now posted on Thingiverse (but not yet tested):

www.thingiverse.com/thing:4164450