@trevorflowers@machines.social
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trevorflowers

@trevorflowers@machines.social

I make tiny art machines.
Tiny dogs run my life and I'm OK with it.
#machining #electronics #miniatures
#neurospicy #anxiety
#seattle #retrocomputing
#cadcam #3Dprinting #CNC #lathe #mill

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trevorflowers, to random
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Lasers are cool. ⚡
This is a prototype silicone rubber part for a 1:3 scale VT100 keyboard.

trevorflowers, to random
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Another day, another influencer slamming FreeCAD because it isn't exactly like the apps they learned first and they're not willing to learn the differences.
You'd think that the many successful projects using FreeCAD would be a clue that it's usable with a bit of effort, but I guess not.
🤷‍♂️
Better? Worse? Those are all up for discussion and preference. Follow your heart, friends.
Unusable? Disproved by counter examples.

trevorflowers, to random
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

Goodness. Four additional helium leaks and five thrusters going offline during ISS approach maneuvers.
I know this is a shakedown flight but just wow.
All flights have risk but the Starliner crew has to be unusually worried about reentry, right?

trevorflowers, to random
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

Is anyone making a Humane-like pin but specifically and solely as an interface to Home Assistant?

trevorflowers, to random
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It's funny when people using the most common units believe that people in the US don't understand their units.

I can assure you that ~every nerd in the US converts between units on the regular. If we care about your measurements then we will convert them.

The people complaining about your units are either ignorant, performing outrage, or both. Feel free to ignore them.

mcdanlj, to random
@mcdanlj@social.makerforums.info avatar

Big #FreeCAD news!
Feature freeze for FreeCAD 1.0 is now on. If you have held back from trying development builds, please consider running weekly development builds starting this week and filing clear bug reports. The may give you ideas what to expect and look for, but also lots of testing has been focused on explicitly new behavior, so just using the new version for general use (of course saving early and often!) is likely to uncover a few stray problems here and there that would be great to fix before the big 1.0. 😁

I'm not one of the FreeCAD developers (my sole code contribution so far has been fixing a tooltip typo, and I've contributed to a couple Workbench extensions), but if you, like me, were previously scared off by the "no bug reports not first discussed in the forum" rule, that rule is gone. FreeCAD now take normal GitHub bug reports and even have someone dedicated to triage. Bug reporting for FreeCAD is now a good experience!

trevorflowers,
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@mcdanlj I spent an hour exercising the weekly build and now I'm even more excited about the sketcher improvements.

trevorflowers, to random
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After ~20 years in West Seattle and one aborted attempt to move to Amsterdam, I'm looking at land East of the mountains. I just can't do what I want here for reasons of cost of land and too dang many people who for some weird reason don't want loud CNCs and air compressors in their quiet dense neighborhoods. 😸
It'll probably take a year or two to find, buy, and renovate or build a shop and home but the wheels are in motion.

trevorflowers, to random
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

You know I love a good orrery.
https://www.instructables.com/Astronomical-Clock-1/

trevorflowers, to Watches
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

Today's read, "Guilloché, a History and Practical Manual" by Calina C. Shelvin. If you're interested machine design aor precision machining then just from flipping through I can tell that this will be a good time.

A photo of the table of contents page of "Guilloché, a History and Practical Manual". The page is patterned with lines resembling guilloché patterns.
A photo of color plates of several machine tools in the book "Guilloché, a History and Practical Manual".

trevorflowers,
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

Apparently, the main period when people manufactured guilloché machines was 1760 to 1920 and globally they made less than 8000 machines, each one custom fitted with ~no interchangeable parts. 🙀

trevorflowers, to random
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

Here it is, your moment of machining Zen:
https://youtu.be/tHdg_emv9bs

inlovewithpda, to random
@inlovewithpda@chaos.social avatar

What a great little machine :) @mntmn reform

Pocket reform
Pocket reform open batterys

trevorflowers,
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

@inlovewithpda @mntmn 🤤 I want one sooooo bad.

trevorflowers, to random
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

TIL from the Backyard Ballistics restoration channel about micropulse tig welders like the Lampert PUK. They provide precision deposition of hard metals with relatively low heat spread which is great for repair and tiny part assembly.

https://www.lampert.info/en/products/dental/puk-d6/
https://youtu.be/wcnULURtt00

trevorflowers, to random
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

As I caught myself considering whether to manufacture 1:3 scale tubular cam locks for smol computer panels I decided that my 12yo self would be confused but happy about how this phase of my life unfolded.

I told my friend the other day that I feel a bit post-singularity in the sense that ~three years ago I left a straight-forward career and at the same time the world went sideways so I have ~no ability to predict what will happen even next year.

Surprisingly, I'm mostly OK with it. 🤷

trevorflowers,
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

@mcdanlj Yes, though for the 1:3 scale PDP-11/70 panel it just needs to look like a lock and key and act like a switch. Preventing access isn't a requirement since attackers can simply unscrew the top or bottom panel of the rack. :-)

trevorflowers, to retrocomputing
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

My new tactic with insomnia is to use those involuntary conscious hours as bonus time for CAD. Last night I started laying out a 1:3 scale front panel of a PDP-11/70 for the Desktop Computer Lab rack: https://codeberg.org/trevorflowers/desktop-computer-lab/
When I was sleepy again I started a test print and went to bed so as soon as I've broken fast I'll go see how it turned out.
#retrocomputing #FreeCAD #pdp11 #desktopComputerLab #miniatures

trevorflowers,
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

Here's the rough print of a 1:3 scale PDP-11/70 front panel taped in place on the DCL rack. I'm now convinced that this is a good scale and that using off-the-shelf Eurorack rails rotated 90° is a good hack.
The next step is to build a cabinet around the rails and then build the rest of the PDP-11 to hold a SBC so I can play with shared resources like power and network.

A photo of a shelf holding books and a 1:3 scale computer rack with a roughly PDP-11 shaped front panel taped in place.

trevorflowers,
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

If you're reading this and you have photos of 70s era computer racks that are empty or mostly empty then I'd love to see them so I can correctly make 1:3 scale Desktop Computer Lab racks.
If you know of someone who has some of those racks then please share this post with them.

trevorflowers, to kicad
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

Just one of these schematics is correct. Can you see why?

A screenshot of a circuit schematic with all labels correctly in place.

trevorflowers, to random
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

I do love a weathered terminal with a Fresnel lens.
https://hackaday.io/project/196223-post-apocalyptic-terminal

trevorflowers,
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

Do you know of any artists making and selling fantasy terminals like this? I think I could be pretty happy making full size terminals but the only people I know doing similar things are working in ads and/or film which is too stressful for me.

trevorflowers,
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

@luis_in_brief Yes, I personally lean more toward alternative timeline solarpunk futuristic than toward grungy or cyberpunk-ish distopian. So, worn but not dirty or pessimistic. That said, if it's a commission it can be whatever.
Flip-boards are the best partly because of the lovely noises they make when changing the glyphs.

trevorflowers, to random
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

405nm light printers are amazing EOM

A close-up photo of six printed pegs with the letters QWERTY embossed on them. They are roughly 6mm tall, so tiny!

trevorflowers, to random
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

Groggy morning thought: A GPS receiver remade and weathered to look like a piece of equipment carried by a famously lost traveler like Amelia Earhart or Peng Jiamu.

trevorflowers, to random
@trevorflowers@machines.social avatar

There are people like me who make small stuff and then there's this joker, out there showing us How It's Done.
I fell out when he made the dash parts.
https://youtu.be/tlfTFadX2k8

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